Dear Team,
As you would appreciate, I’m on leave and unable to respond to any work calls. I will prioritize all concerns the day I’m back.
Regards
Aanchal Madan
VP, Marketing, DeliverFood
‘LATE!’ screams Vanita happily as she hugs me.
She’s gotten fitter for the wedding, which is saying something because she’s anyway always been all muscle and no jiggle. It’s like hugging a granite sculpture of her and not her. I can’t help but feel a twinge of envy and motivation all at once. She takes my suitcase and tosses it on the backseat of a rented Mustang with ease, as if it’s a plush toy and not luggage.
‘You shouldn’t be allowed to drive,’ I tell Vanita as she zips dangerously through the impossibly wide Dubai roads and incredibly fast traffic. ‘. . . and all this . . . this is reckless.’
‘I can drive with my eyes closed, hands tied behind my back. I have been driving since I was twelve.’
‘First of all, that’s bad parenting,’ I point out. ‘Your parents should be ashamed of themselves. And I’m not talking about driving, but your marriage. Who gets married at twenty-five?!’
She rolls her eyes. ‘If you pull up all-India statistics, literally every girl in India gets married by twenty-five!’
‘Girls with careers, I meant. Of all the girls in our class, how can you be the first one to get married? At twenty-five! Twenty-five!’
‘To be honest, mentally I feel like I’m twenty-three.’
If getting married at this age is her first mistake, having the wedding in the peak season in Dubai is her second. I had told her she was better off setting a pile of cash ablaze. She called me Uncle Scrooge, who would die clutching wads of cash.
‘We are going to make a quick stop at the tailor’s, some last-minute adjustments to mylehenga.’
‘Are you making more space for your abs to fit it?’ I ask her.
‘Soon I’m going to have a married-lady paunch,’ she tells me.
The tailor tells us to wait for another half hour. We step out of the shop and make our way to the nearest restaurant. I reach into my bag and pull out two cans of gin and tonic from the stash I bought from the airport and wave them in front of her eyes.
‘. . . and you’re drinking both of them,’ she points to the can. ‘I have long days, can’t be drunk all the time. It’s my wedding, I don’t want to black out and not remember anything.’
‘BORING! You’re already getting old!’ I protest, my can already half-empty. ‘Who cares if you black out? We will have videos!’
I’m not an alcoholic even though my weekend enthusiasm might lead someone to mistake me for one. But I would never drink a) alone and b) on weekdays.
But on weekends, in those fleeting moments of tipsiness, all the stress and worries dissolve into nothingness, leaving only happiness and lowered inhibitions. And I have never experienced a hangover that can’t be cured with an eight-hour sleep and some spicy Maggi. My boss tells me that it’s only a matter of time before age catches up and makes hangovers so bad that I will swear off alcohol entirely.
‘Aditya’s the handsomest guy I have ever met,’ says Vanita, as if to explain this ridiculous wedding.
I have seen their pictures. Vanita looks like the hot, young sister of an uncle-ish-looking boy who works in LIC or some equally drab job.
‘He’s 3 inches shorter than you are and has a moustache,’ I remind her. ‘Hardly someone you would throw away your life for.’
‘Aditya has a big, veiny dick 3 inches too long, loves me and loves his job. And stop saying I’m throwing my life away! I want to give five years to the family, have two kids quickly, then get back into corporate life.’
‘I’m trying to imagine a company that would want a mother with no experience and two kids, and that company doesn’t exist. This is professional hara-kiri.’
Vanita shrugs as if different rules apply to her. ‘We will see about that,’ she challenges. ‘And if you have such a clear view of the future, where will you be after five years?’
‘I could be anywhere, I could do anything. That’s the best part about not getting married to some random guy,’ I answer. ‘One thing I know for sure, I don’t want to change diapers and wait for a guy to come home to give me some attention and then crib to me about how difficult his work is.’
Vanita looks at me and smiles as if she knows some secret about life that I don’t. Every person about to make a very stupid decision thinks they have cracked it.
