Negotiations had broken down, so the couple did not meet. Their families withdrew reluctantly, both sides murmuring polite regrets and trying to console themselves. It had looked so right when the first exchanges began.
“Aah… their karmas didn’t merge. The next horoscope… the next ‘candidate’… let’s start again.”
Father left wordlessly on a business tour.
Mother and daughter each tried to hide her disappointment from the other.
“I’m off to work then… don’t worry about what happened.”
“Oh… I’m not worried. I’m sure we’ll find the right person soon. Don’t forget the Horlicks we need. Buy it from Shankar’s on your way back in the evening.”
And so the week went by.
It was Sunday, and the morning episode of Mahabharata had just ended with its studio sounds of conch and Gita-chants, “sadhooo naam…” which always made them chuckle.
“What’s for lunch?”
“Rasam. Yesterday’s potato fry and some curd-vada. Should I make a payasam?”
“Yes… no! Let me make it,” she said, as the doorbell sounded, sending her hurrying to check who it might be.
“Must be the flowers I ordered. Take the money on the telephone table.”
“Okay!”
She opened the door to a strange young man.
“Yes?”
“Is this…er…10-B? There’s no number on the door.”
“Yes, the number plate went missing some time ago and we didn’t...”
She found herself jabbering.
Who was this anyway?
“I’m… I’ve come to return the photograph.”
“Photograph? Whose photograph?”
“Yours.”
What was there to say?
“Well, come in and have a lime juice or something.”
“All right, but I don’t want to spoil your Sunday.”
“No-no… nothing like that…”
He entered, and looked around, and then turned to her and smiled.
They talked for two hours.
Her mother let them be.
When the bridal couple eventually came home for the first time, the envelope with her photograph in it was still on the mantelpiece where he had placed it when he had come home to return it.
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