Engagement Story

mnamma tagged me on my Engagement Story and here it is ..

It was the end of June 2002 when the first ‘R’ effect happened. I was in the middle of an extremely stressful job search. Marriage was the last thing on my mind. As I have said in previous posts, I was a very career oriented person. The only thing I wanted was to get a job after my Master’s and be independent. So whenever my mom would start the marriage topic, all hell would break lose. I was a very feisty girl and was sure that ‘arranged’ marriage was not for me.

On one of the usual weekend calls back home, my mom mentioned something about a great marriage proposal. She said that our horoscopes matched too very well. As usual I took it lightly and moved on to other things. In a few days I received an ‘About Me’ mail from R. The mail had a very friendly and pleasant tone to it. It did not speak anything about a marriage. All it was was an introduction to him. I was very skeptical and did not want to give him false hopes. I mentioned in my reply mail that it was great getting to know him and gave an intro speech about myself. I ended the mail asking him to expect nothing but friendship at this point since I was in the middle of a stressful phase.

A gentleman that he was (is), replied back offering to help me with my job search and spoke nothing of marriage. So our mails continued back and forth. All this time he was vacationing in India. So he would give me accounts of his travel etc.
While I was totally oblivious to what was going on in India, this is what was happening…my parents went to visit him and his parents. They instantly fell in love with R. I remember my dad telling that R had absolutely no airs about him and it was very very easy to talk to him and to see his straightforwardness. Now my dad likes straightforwardness. So I guess R hit the target alright! They did not have any special photo of mine to show to him, because I did not believe in taking special pictures for marriage prospects. They just showed an existing picture from our family album and R now says that he fell in love with me then ;) (I know..liar!) . When R called my dad before leaving to Houston, my dad asked him to somehow convince me into marrying. He said that his daughter was a brat and it would be up to R’s talent to get me to marry him. Wow...I can’t believe R did not run away and persisted on meeting me after this!

He came back here and after a week or so gave me a call. It was strange hearing his voice for the first time. We started exchanging phone calls (I was in Pittsburgh then) and this went on for a while. Some time in August he asked me if I would like to meet with him.
I wanted a break from my boring life and readily agreed. So we informed our parents that I will be meeting him in Houston.

I came to Houston late August 2002. It was an awkward kind of pleasant feeling when I first saw him. Since we had talked for about a month now, I was more comfortable around him. Now I have to mention that although R is a very charming person he is horrible when it comes to remembering directions. The first thing we did was lose our way in the airport!..yeah..can you believe that? Then he missed an exit on the way to his house and we lost our way again. Some way to impress your future wife! :)

I stayed in Houston for 5 days. We must have driven close to 600 miles in just 5 days, seeing various places and hanging out. All this while, we never spoke a single word about marriage. In some unsaid words, it seemed like we were just made for each other. We complemented each other in many ways. On the final day when it was time to go back to Pitts, R came back a bit late from work. We were chatting and there was a traffic jam, I was late for the flight. I had to miss it and was very upset. We then went to a Starbucks store near his apartment and finally sat down to talk about marriage!!

I asked him all kinds of questions and he did too. I tried to talk to him about all my negatives and tried my best to scare him. His mind was made up and he did not sway one bit. He said that he was in love with me and that he would be very happy if I considered marriage. At some point during our conversation it finally hit me that he was the one for me! The knucklehead that I am, I said that I would go back to Pittsburgh, ‘discuss’ with my parents (I don’t know what there was to discuss) and let him know.

I came back, did not think twice before I made a call to my parents and said that R was the guy for me. My mom just could not believe that I was saying this. She had expected that I would churn through zillions of marriage proposals before I decide. This was the first proposal and I had found my soulmate. I also called R and let him know that I could not wait to marry him :)
As they say ..marriages are made in heaven and I truly believe that you can recognize your soulmate the moment you meet him/her.

P.S: only later did R reveal that he purposely came late from work the day I missed my flight. He wanted to let me know his feelings for me and spend more time with me, so made me miss my flight!...well all's fair in love, so I forgave him :)

and my husband is a great great fan of Rajini. It was the time Baba was about to be released and he sang 'Dippu Dippu Kumari' song.. (YUCK!) for me :) . In trying to fine tune him , I sang a lot of romantic songs like 'Mere Humsafar' in refugee, golden oldies and so on. He finally sang 'Ingi Iduppazhagi' from Thevar Magan for our nalungu...!

Middle Name Tag

First off all I would like to apologize to mnamma for taking quite some time in getting to this tag. I have been basking for some time now. Anyhoo..here are the rules are the rules :

a) The rules must be mentioned in the beginning of the tag.
b) You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
c) At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

If left to my family, they would chose 'sleepyhead' as my middle name..but since its too late in the game ....let me do this tag with my blog name, Dee..

D - Drama : a big time drama happened in my life when I first landed in the US at the O'Hare airport. I was carrying this file folder that had all my critical documents right from birth certificate to my passport. I had to get a connecting flight from Chicago. In the excitement of everything, I placed the folder on my trolley and happily walked off to the connecting flight. This gate was 26 gates away from the gate I landed in. It stuck me in the waiting lounge that I was missing something and once I did realize what it was, I was devestated . I have the memory of an elephant. So I walked back 26 gates (I was new to the place and everybody was a stranger and this airport was so damn big and I had no clue how else to get back to the first gate). I asked everybody I could if they saw my folder. Half the people could not figure out what I was blurting out..but luckily one sweeper said that an air hostess was holding on to a folder she said she had found on a cart. I ran to her with tears almost dropping out of my eyes and asked her if she saw a red colored folder. She had safely kept it and had planned to give it to the embassy!
Man..I could have fallen at her feet for keeping it safe and saving me from going through a ton of crap on my first day in a new country .. away from home for the first time :)

E - Engagement
My engagement day with R is a day I will forever remember. I was in Pittsburgh and he was in Houston. Our engagement was virtually happening in Chennai . R could not meet me because of a deadline at work. But R is the kind of guy that loves to live and enjoy life's moments truely. He all the while told me that he would not be able to make it to Pittsburgh..but on the day of engagement he called me and asked me to come to a place close to where I was staying. I was waiting expecting to see him there...instead I see this huge LIMO! ..out comes my man with a huge boquette of red roses. He took me on a chauffer driven Limo to a high end French restaurant on the banks of Albany river. I had a piano playing for me while he read out a beautiful romantic poem written by him. The whole experience was so totally romantic and hats off to R for making it so special instead of just staying back in Houston and calling up to wish me :)

E - Enthusiasm
My energy and enthusiasm for life has increased a million fold with the birth of Chintu. I have always had these two qualities but combining this with mommyhood is totally something else. Being Chintu's mother is the greatest blessing that God could ever give me and I am sooooo lucky! (touchwood!!!)

I am tagging Sheela and Boo :)