2012: A Love Story
It is not often that a Kashmiri boy falls for an Assamese girl, but when they do, sparks fly :)
Sunit and I have been married for five years now, but we have known each other for a decade. They say love can find you in the most unlikely places. For us, that place was The Asian Age, a daily Indian newspaper and both of ours’ former workplace in Green Park, New Delhi. Sunit was already working as a sports reporter — cricket correspondent to be specific — when I joined the paper in March 2011.
Sunit says when he first saw me, he thought I was the prettiest girl ever. I disagree, even today. I tell him that I must have looked really geeky with my round specs and pimpled face. He says he didn’t care about my pimples then and don’t care about them now. Well, good for me!
We didn’t really talk much initially as he was mostly out covering cricket matches. Once, I missed my office cab at night because a weekend page had got delayed. I must have sounded terrified as I spoke to the receptionist asking the timing of the next cab. Sunit heard me and offered to drop me home on his bike. Turned out, he lived just a short distance away from my hostel. I accepted as I did not want to wait around for the next cab, which was after 1am.
When he dropped me at the gate that night, he gave me his mobile number and said I could call him if I missed my cab again. I simply saved his number, thanked him and walked away, not knowing then that it would be the start of our love story and that 10 years later, I would be sitting in a café somewhere in Brighton, UK, and writing about it, as his wife.
After that night, Sunit might have dropped me home a couple of times, I can’t recall now. We started chatting and bonded over Harry Potter (both of us are Potter fans). For my birthday next year, he surprised me with the complete set of Harry Potter books. I was ecstatic. But what melted my heart was the message on the gift card.
Long-distance love
I would see Sunit almost every day in office and with time, we grew fond of each other. But just when I thought I was beginning to like him more than a friend, he dropped a bomb. No, he wasn’t dating anyone else. Instead, he said he was shifting to Mumbai (August 2011) to head the Sports Desk for the Mumbai edition of the newspaper. My heart broke. I was happy for him — it was a milestone to become the youngest Sports Editor of a daily newspaper at 25. But a part of me also wanted him to stay back in Delhi. I was beginning to enjoy his company and here he was telling me that we won’t be able to meet anymore. I wanted to tell him to not leave me, but how could I? I was not his girlfriend. At least not yet. We weren’t even formally in a relationship. I had no right to ask this of him, so I kept quiet and congratulated him, pretending to be happy about his promotion.
Now, when we speak of this day and I joke that years ago, he left me alone in Delhi and went away to Mumbai, he gives a cheeky smile and says he compensated by marrying me five years later!
In July 2012, I visited my maternal aunt in Mumbai for two weeks, so I got a chance to see Sunit too. It had been a year since we met and started talking. I knew I was beginning to like Sunit more and more with each passing day. But neither of us said ‘I love you’. Now when I think of it, I realise the feeling must have been implicit in our relationship and didn’t need words to be expressed.
The cycle accident that melted his heart
During my trip to Mumbai, we once decided to visit Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivalli. Sunit suggested we hire two bicycles to see the park at our own pace. I wasn’t too sure of my cycling skills. The last time I cycled was in Class 8, when I had actually learnt to ride a bicycle. But I didn’t want him to judge me, so I agreed. It was a bit of a struggle at first to get my balance right, but I managed somehow.
We continued to cycle for about half an hour, and I was doing pretty well, until we came to a slope. Sunit was riding a few metres behind me and he suspected nothing, assuming I would make a smooth descent. I don’t know what got over me, but as I started speeding downhill, I got scared and thought I would fall. So, instead of letting gravity gently guide me forward, I suddenly applied both the brakes with full force. As my cycle came to an abrupt halt and tumbled, I fell down flat on the road, my arms outstretched and bleeding, backpack off my body and the cycle wheels slowly turning in the stillness of the forest in that hot, summer afternoon.
Sunit must have got the shock of his life. Who applies sudden brakes while going downhill? He jumped off his cycle and came running to me. By that time, I had stood up, blood and all, too embarrassed to speak. I felt a rush of blood in my head. I had badly bruised myself and it was starting to hurt. I don’t think I cried, because I wanted to appear brave, but deep inside, I was cursing myself to not have used my common sense.
We rushed back to Sunit’s rented flat as he insisted to clean and dress the wound as soon as possible. By then, I had started bleeding a lot from my right elbow and left knee (I still have the scars), and it was really painful. Sunit probably did not have any first-aid at home, because he brought out a bottle of Brut, an after-shave gel. He said the alcohol in it would help disinfect the wound until we got to a doctor. By then, the pain had become unbearable and I had started to cry, fat teardrops streaking my face, already red from the Mumbai heat and all the blood-rush from the fall. Sunit said the Brut would sting a bit. I had no idea how much. As he poured a small quantity of the liquid and dabbed it across my wounds, my mind went blank with a sting so sharp that I felt like punching him hard for subjecting me to the torture. Of course, I did not. Once the moment had passed and the pain subsided, I opened my eyes, red with tears, and looked at him innocently. Little did I know then that it was in this moment, between the tears and blood and the sting of Brut, Sunit fell in love with me. He told this to me a few months later, when I asked him casually one day. ‘Seeing you cry like that broke my heart into a million pieces, and it was then I realised that I wanted to take care of you for the rest of my life’, he said.
A decade and counting
We dated for more than three years before we got engaged in December 2015. And we tied the knot in December 2016.
We have come a long way since that fateful bicycle accident. We have ridden, hand in hand, the crests and troughs of many storms together. We have laughed and cried and made priceless memories to last a lifetime. Whenever one of was broken, the other has been a rock of solid support. We have changed careers, homes and countries. But what never changed is our love for each other, not for a split second.
Sunit is my sunshine in stormy days. He is my biggest critique and my anchor. He understands me better than I understand myself. With him, I can be free. I know that I always have his back, as he does mine. We don’t know what life has in store for us, or where it will take us next. But we do know that as long as we are together, that is all that matters.
As I sit in the café writing our love story, I relive our memories and smile, oblivious to the people around me. I am grateful, every single day, for this gem of a person I am blessed with. I feel nothing but happiness to wake up next to him every morning, knowing that I can feel his love every day for the rest of my life. He is not only the person I want to live with, he is also the person I can’t live without.
