You Cannot Download this book untill you login but you can read it .

---

Login Register

as we could till we were buzzed enough to take a cab back home."

"On my birthday, the bartender sent us a complimentary long, ice filled, pink drink. We toasted."

 Cheers! I said.

" To your resolve, Aditi replied."

"Aditi was a conventionally good looking woman. She had long brown hair, a slim figure and dark eyes. She could have passed off as a model if it hadn t been for her very bad skin she had pockmarks left from a severe case of chicken pox in childhood that no amount of make-up could conceal."

We looked around and saw a few men at the bar and a couple sitting at a table. The men didn t look interesting at all. They were the corporate types in plain blue shirts of various shades and grey trousers. A few even had laptop bags on the floor.

" Well we can t start with anyone here, I said breaking the silence."

" Clearly not! she agreed.  What we need is a list of things that you do not want in a man, she said. I looked at her questioningly while she continued.  See everyone is going to say sense of humour and rich. But what you need to know is that every man does have a sense of humour and most men can fend for themselves at our age. So what is it exactly that you do not want and then eliminate those types of men. Otherwise we ll end up like them, she said and pointed to the couple at the table that had, already bored with each other, started text messaging other people."

"I nodded to the group at the bar,  That for starters, I said with a grin."

 No! Please! She stretched her words for effect.  No one wants that for starters.

Maybe for dessert &  she punned.

" You know what I mean. I m not like you. I can t do with just anybody, I laughed."

Aditi had a history. She had slept with some forty-two men and then lost count. She believed that men were only supposed to be used. They were good for only one thing and so she wanted to use that thing well.

 Hey! she exclaimed.  That hurts!

 You know what I mean. I didn t mean it in a bad way. I admire you for it. That s why I ve come to you for help.

"I didn t really admire Aditi for all the men she had slept with. I believed that there needed to be a better way to vent your day s frustration than to pick up just any guy you knew. I mean, go to the gym, or get a massage or something. But Aditi had a different viewpoint. She believed that one day she would get married, and then she would be faithful to her husband forever. That meant at least thirty to forty years of being with only one man. So she thought she might as well have as many before she hooked up with the one. But by the looks of it, Aditi wasn t planning to get married till she was fifty."

"My philosophy was different. I didn t believe in infatuation. Infatuation, guised as love, made people lose focus. There are so many things one needs to achieve and one has got very little time to do so before old age creeps in."

"When you get involved with a man, half of your life is wasted in waiting for his call, then asking him to propose, then waiting for him to come home, and then wishing he was away. By the time you realize that love and men make you weak, you want to be single again, but by then you re already in your early forties and have done nothing to show for in your life."

"For me, I had to be married to have sex. And marriage meant finding the One Great Love. I had always assumed that I would get into an arranged marriage, then fall in love with my husband and then be with him for the rest of my life. No infatuation involved! And in the meantime, be as much as I can be, and do as much as I can do. And even though Aditi had found the idea boring, she had admired me for my resolve."

All until now.

"My thirtieth birthday. I was not married. I didn t have a guy whom I loved or was even remotely interested in, and all the suitors my parents had set me up with didn t match up to the definition of a man, much less the One Great Love. I was slowly beginning to see myself as Mrs Haversham from a Dickens novel, who was alone and senile."

"I knew that Aditi was secretly very happy that I was leaning towards her philosophy, albeit a little late in the day."

" Oh, hot guy, three o clock, entered, she said all of a sudden. And indeed there was a nice, clean shaven man in light blue jeans and a white shirt who had just walked into the bar. And right behind him was his friend, a nerdy guy in glasses, short and very unassuming. I immediately picked  the nerd . He seemed as unsure as I was. Maybe we would have a conversation and be friends before we venture down the dark alley & "

"However, Aditi had a different plan.  Go ask that white shirt guy out, she prodded me."

 Are you crazy? He s way out of my league! I screamed incredulously.

" If you don t aim for the stars, you ll always remain a virgin, Aditi screamed back."

" That doesn t even make sense Adu, I said, laughing.  And besides, I think I would be better off with the nerd. "

" The ugly boy there? she asked, shrugging her shoulders. I nodded.  Damn, girl, he s a three pinter! Three pinter, of course, means you would need to be down with 3 pints of beer and buzzed in order to like the guy."

" I see potential, I added my two bits confidently."

" Okay, then go ahead. Make your move! She encouraged me as if she had just given me permission to marry her dog."

"At precisely that moment, my courage deserted me."

"I looked pleadingly at Aditi,  As you might have noticed over the past eight years that we have known each other, I don t have a move! "

" Fine, I ll show you. She got up, straightened out her dress, picked up her clutch purse and walked to the bar, right next to where the boys were standing. Then she leaned over ever so slightly to call for the bartender while giving the men a glimpse of her cleavage. I watched the Master Flirt in action with a smile on my lips. I had seen this before, but never for a date for me."

" Hi, she said to the bartender who knew us really well and was aware of her tactics.  It s my friend s birthday today and I want to give her something special. Could you please see if there is anything back there that could surprise her? The bartender nodded.  And I ll have a whisky and soda please! "

"This time, the bartender raised his eyebrow. Adu gave him one of her famous stares."

"Then she turned towards the boy and said,  Nice shirt. And walked away."

"Back at the table, amply swaying her hips and crossing her legs when she sat down for the boys to see her long legs, she said,  Five minutes, and they ll be here. "

And they were. With the two drinks that she d ordered. Aditi knew men as if she had studied the science.

 Happy birthday! said the nerd holding out a drink for me. Aditi waved them to sit and the white shirt sat next to her putting her whisky in front of her.

" That s pretty hard liquor for a lady, he said."

" I m celebrating and need a buzz faster than these colourful drinks are giving me, she said flirtatiously."

"They introduced themselves and started telling us about their professions. It turned out that the nerd was from IIT. He was a computer code programmer or something like that. He said he loved retro music and kept giving me information about the bands as each song played through the evening. Aditi, meanwhile, and as expected, had hit it off with the white shirt. He was an RJ on a popular radio channel and was telling her about all the celebrities he had interviewed. They had a lot in common. I could see him as another potential number on her list."

"As for me, I didn t feel the chemistry. The man was a bore. I felt I would just explode"

if I heard another fact about Duran Duran or Wham. And my morals came flooding back.

"I thought I would have been ready to give my virginity to just anybody. But that little voice in my head said that if I had waited this long, I could afford to wait a little longer."

"When the nerd tried to put his arm around me, I moved away slightly and picked up my drink and looked in the other direction. But men never give up, so he tried again. This time, I was clear in my communication,  Look, I can t be touched. You see, I have a heat rash all over my body and my skin is extremely sensitive right now. From there the conversation took a downturn. Not that it was going anywhere anyway. All I wanted to do was get out of that place. I could see Aditi was having a good time. So I excused myself and told her to join me in the ladies room."

" What s up with you? she asked, as soon as we got in."

" Adu, I ve got a headache from all that drinking, I lied.  And that guy has a bad case of body odour. I m just going to go home. But you chill. "

" No, no, I ll come home with you. It s your birthday, she insisted."

" No, seriously. I m going to go home and sleep immediately. What s the point of you coming with me then? We ll catch up later this week. "

" What about the mission? she asked with a twinkle in her eye.  Let s work on that again soon, huh? I assured her with a smile.  Are you sure? she asked apprehensively."

 Yah. Now go have fun. Call me later! I walked out towards the front door and she went back to the bar.

"As I walked back home, I realized that maybe giving up one s philosophy wasn t that easy. I was a traditional girl living in a modern system. I should have been proud of myself for sticking to my beliefs. I had seen how much trouble a man could bring to a woman s life. Women had been trying to understand the opposite sex while pouring over girly magazines, having long discussions with each other in office loos, writing to agony aunts in magazine columns and even Googling on the subject all the while pumping each other s egos about the fact that they were far better and deserved much more. Why would I want to be like them now? I had always been unique and proud."

"But I knew the answer to that one already. Because no matter how much you achieved in life, a day would come when you would feel all alone in this world. And today was"

just that day for me.

Four

"The next morning my dietician reprimanded me for having alcohol, muffins and coffee.  Coffee? I asked, and was told that it was a terrible addiction and if I wanted to lose any weight and make progress, I would have to stick to green tea. After taking my measurements and other indicators establishing that I was very fat, the dietician gave me a strict exercise schedule and a near starvation diet that I had to adhere to before reporting back in two weeks time."

"I ve always had a love hate relationship with my body. I ve tried to love it enough to look like the model of a Cosmo cover, but ended up hating that it didn t adhere to any of my diets or workout regimes. But I hadn t given up yet. I still believed that if I needed to lose my virginity, I might need to lose my weight first."

"My mother s words came back to me. I had been to five dieticians so far. From eating every two hours to having soy milk when I was hungry to only drinking lime water through the day and, the worst, to having juice made from vegetables thrown in a blender that would make my skin glow, I had tried it all. And no matter how hard I tried to hold up a diet, at the end of a gruelling week of starvation and workout, I would fall back on my wayward eating habits by taking a trip down to Coffee De."

"Then, as I walked back home after my appointment, I realized that if I walked all over Bandra everyday, I would get forty-five minutes of exercise and would save money from travelling in an auto."

That little voice spoke again and I knew that wouldn t happen for too long since most of my  resolves were broken in a few days. I recognized that the decisions I made myself were trashed as soon as I understood another viewpoint. I had lived life on the bench most of the time and I was happy about it.

"Suddenly, my phone rang. It was the Italian Embassy. I was told they wanted me to do some work for them and I had to go to their office immediately. I took an appointment to reach in about an hour s time so that I could go home, change and make it there before they closed for lunch."

"Back at home I scavenged for my grey business suit, the one I always wore for interviews and the one that I noticed had now faded at the back. I pulled it out, rejected it, and for the next twenty minutes I took out every piece of clothing from my wardrobe to find the appropriate outfit to make a good impression."

"I have always been indecisive about clothes. Most of the time I was trying to hide my ungainly hips, so everything was oversized in my closet except for a few nice things that"

Aditi had picked out for me.

"I somehow fitted myself into a full sleeved, white shirt and black trousers and added small pearl earrings to complete the no-nonsense look. Then I marched right out and caught an autorickshaw. Half way to the embassy, I realized that the buttons on my white shirt were popping open and there was no time to go back and change! I desperately needed this assignment since I had no other way to pay my rent. So I bought a bunch of safety pins from a lady at one of the traffic signals and tried to put a few on my blouse but it ended up looking all lopsided while the driver had a field day watching me in his rearview mirror. When I got to the embassy, it had closed for lunch but I was shown into a room where there were some people waiting for me. I was sure it would be another brochure translating assignment and wanted to take their work and leave quickly."

" Kaveri, please come in, said the man I generally interact with at the embassy. He was a typical, aged Italian wrinkled skin, blue eyes, and a smile that must have made hearts melt in the old days."

"I went and sat down and said yes to a cup of coffee. I loved the lavazza they served and, being the caffeine addict I was, I never missed an opportunity to have several cups while I was there."

" Kaveri, these are the new documents that have just come from the High Commissioner. It s a new brochure they plan on printing in Hindi to encourage more Hindi-speaking people to travel to Italy. Can you please translate them? "

" Sure, I said.  But why didn t you just have it couriered to me? "

"He looked thoughtful for a moment and then gave the most genuine answer,  I forgot! Then he smiled and my heart melted. Of course I would do it! The man still had enough charm in him to persuade women like me!"

"When I got home I quickly got to work on the project. I was one of those people who didn t wait till the last minute to finish things. I wanted to be ready well before. That s why I always met deadlines and I was always called back by the embassies. They knew that what a normal interpreter would take two weeks to deliver, I would finish in three days."

"But just when I got to understand the subject, random thoughts flooded my head."

"I realized that my resolve to lose my morals was coming from a feeling of deep dissatisfaction in my life. Maybe if I wasn t pursuing all those interests and making deadlines, I would have been with a man. Maybe my idea of love and arranged marriage was all wrong. I had presumed that there would be a sign somewhere telling me when I should fall in love and when to get married."

But there had been no sign.

"So maybe, there would never be a sign."

"And it was that thought, right there, that just scared me. I d waited my whole life for"

"something that was never going to show up. Maybe I wasn t one of those people who deserved love, or maybe Aditi had it right all along."

"But that couldn t be correct. Because I ve seen Aditi completely messed up after dumping men. No matter how much she says she has the power, a part of her has emotionally died. And one night when she became completely drunk, to the point of passing out, she blurted out that it was becoming harder to find  good men."

"Work had always been worship. I couldn t stand being dependent on anyone. Maybe my strong sense of economic security scared men off, because I wasn t the type who would want a man to look after me. I would want a man as an intellectual partner. So I couldn t do the whole serve coffee thing in arranged situations and was a flop with my parents in the marriage department. But I still believed someone would find me. I didn t have to go look."

These thoughts were making my head hurt. They were making me confused.

I had never been the romantic type. But I wasn t completely against the idea. So was I repelling the men? Was I just being a prig when I met a new man and asked him about his favourite opera?

I didn t have the answers. And the questions kept coming.

"For the first time, I wondered, Who am I?"

Five

"Aditi and I didn t meet till two weeks later. Her job was such that if she got stuck in a shoot, she would have to finish the schedule before she could even breathe again. She had often told me that it was a thankless, harrowing job with little pay, but I knew she loved it because she was just that bit closer to the film stars, which was like a six- degree separation from fame itself. I had a feeling that Aditi wanted to be in front of the camera someday but she had never had the chance. So she wanted to be as close to it as possible."

"We were at the See Vu bakery shop for a quick snack when Aditi started making a list. Her list of men that she thought I could go out with. Aditi was a few years older than me and so she thought she knew all about men. She had been giving me advice for the past eight years. But I had seen her have many heartbreaks as well. They would crush her spirit for a long time and maybe that was the reason for her promiscuity. So I had decided that I wouldn t get involved with a man. I didn t need the heartbreak, or the advice. Thinking these lofty, but foolish, thoughts I had reached the ripe old age of thirty and finally I was ready for both."

" Darling, she started sincerely,  I can t believe you ve never been on a real date. I mean, I ve been on hundreds and it s really very simple. She seemed so proud of being wanton. Instead of berating her for lack of better judgment, I felt morose. I envied her sense of gay abandon."

"Even though I had never been with a man, I realized that if I had, it would have been disastrous. With my confused, convent educated upbringing, I would feel Jesus Christ was glaring down at me every time I kissed a man. When my Hindu upbringing kicked in, I would be Sita who needed only to be with her Ram. And when I became an atheist, instead of the gods, I would feel the men were judging me."

" That s all very well for you. But honestly, going by my expectations, I think I ll remain a virgin till I get married, I proclaimed, stuffing a lemon tart down my throat."

" By the way, she said as an afterthought, completely ignoring my statement,  what were you doing when you were in all those countries? Reading books? "

" I was too young & and I was with my parents! I swallowed and continued,  Besides, I had Dad s escorts wherever I went, which kind of threatened the boys, and you could not blame them, they were only sixteen. But hello! You re not listening! I m saying this is not going to work so let s just go shopping instead, huh? "

" Shut up. Now tell me what are the things you want in a man, she asked."

" Oh, you know, the usual: good looks, extreme intelligence, well read, loves art,"

understands &  I started on my list.

"Aditi cut me short,  Boring! Boring! Boring! Are you looking for someone our age or your dad s friend who is a seventy-year-old professor? Let s do this again. I ll make the list this time. First of all, he has to be good in bed, handsome, rich &  "

"I was about to protest when the bearer came over and smiled down at Aditi, asking what more could he bring her, and she flirted back for a bit. Despite her bad skin, she always had an effect on men. I guess that s why all forty-two of them looked beyond her face and down to her cleavage, which, I might also add, was fabulous."

"Plus Aditi always had plans. She never sat around wallowing in self-pity, like I did. I suppose, because of her cheerful attitude, her count was as high as it was and mine zero."

" First of all, she started, after the waiter had left,  we need to get your hair straightened or coloured or something that makes it less blah. "

" Thanks, I added sarcastically. I was now stuffing my face with jam droplets that were in the flavours of raspberry and blueberry mini pastries. Pure heaven! She continued pointing her pen at me,