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The last proposal

Last Wednesday, out of the blue, I got a buzz from Agastya, a friend of mine from junior college. He planned a trip to Bangalore and wanted to stay at our place for the weekend. I happily agreed. The evening he came, we went to a lounge. We had a lot of things to catch up on. After the formal things like the city and job life, the next obvious question was ‘’bhai bandi mili kya’’? He was blushing like crazy as I posed this question. I got the answer and asked him to elaborate on the same. It was a cute story. I asked him whether I could share the story on my blog and whether the girl would be fine with me sharing their story. He approved of the idea of sharing their story and assured me that she would be happy to read it. So, here is the tale of Agastya and Priya.

Agastya was an IITian and to add to that a mechanical engineer. So, with an extremely skewed ratio, the chances of him getting a girl during those 4 years were almost negligible. Again, after college he was supposed to join a firm in Chennai. With nearly no hopes, he packed his bags.

The first couple of weeks there were dull and monotonous for him. The unbearable heat, auto-rickshaw people with goddamn attitude and tiring search for a decent apartment left him exasperated. In a month or so, his situation improved slightly. He got an apartment, installed an air conditioner and enrolled for his company cab. Life, then felt, a bit relaxed. But still, that forever alone feeling was bothering him.

One day, he had a new cab-mate, Priya. She was tall, slim, had high cheekbones and wore a patiala and kurti. He liked her instantly. But striking a conversation wasn’t easy. She always had her earphones on whenever she sat in the cab. After two long weeks of waiting, he finally got a chance to talk to her. She forgot to carry her earphones that day. Once they started to chat, he realized that there were a lot of things to connect to. Both of them loved reading books. They would spend hours and hours discussing about a writer’s perspective on his novel. Their Sundays would be spent in Crosswords reading and finding new books. She had an excellent sense of humour. He would get trapped in her sarcasm and satire quite frequently.

A few months into all this, they were practically inseparable. Both of them knew that they were addicted to each other. Now, western civilization gave us a lot of things. One of them is the girl’s expectation from the boy to propose her in a unique way. Rarely do girls understand that due to our huge numbers, the probability of a unique proposal decreases drastically.

With no extra talent other than reading, Agastya started to find a cool way to propose her. He challenged himself and decided to propose her with two things he totally sucked at – singing and guitar. He picked up Enrique’s Hero, a song that was very close to his heart. For the next two weeks, he would lock himself in his room and practice the chords and the vocals. One fine day, when they were skyping, he told her that he would like to give her a surprise. He took out his guitar and started with the song. As soon as he finished the first stanza, the girl burst out laughing. She even suggested him to try his luck in stand-up comedy. He was dejected, dumbstruck and embarrassed. The moment was gone and he was devastated.

But he was not the kind who gave up easily. He started to find some other way. This time though, he knew his limits to try out new stuff. He decided to keep it simple with a rose and a short speech. But again, the expectation of the girl bothered him. Would a simple rose and a couplet do the trick? He thought hard to conjure something special, a thing that could stay with her for a longer period of time. He had his eureka moment when he remembered his school time hobby, origami. He decided to make a red rose using origami paper. After about 5 hours of effort and 3 failed attempts, he finally succeeded in crafting a beautiful rose.

The next day, he called her and asked her for a dinner date and gave her the venue detail. He went there a little early and gave a hundred bucks to the waiter to give them some more time after the desserts and play a slow romantic tune. She was totally unaware of this plan. During the course of the dinner, she was cracking jokes while he was nervously waiting for everything to get over. So, as soon as she was about to finish her dessert, with tu bin bataye from Rang de Basanti playing in the background, he got down on his knees, gave her the rose he had made for her and said these lines –

“You have been someone with whom I’ve enjoyed each and every moment. Deep down my heart, I know that if there is anyone with whom I would like to experience the journey of my life, it has to be with you.You’ve given me so many reasons to celebrate life. I would like to spend my life to try and make you feel the same way. I love you!”

He was nervous and stammered a couple of times. But somehow, he succeeded in completing the lines. Now, it was her turn to get smitten by the love and the affection showered by him. She cried for some time and smiled thereafter. She still didn’t say any word. His knees started to ache. Finally, he could not bear the pain any longer, he asked her to atleast reply. She was jolted back to reality and said a yes. He got up, jubilant and contented. They both hugged each other. He whispered to her “Thank you for relieving me from this proposal business. I am never proposing again in my life”.

P.S. : The valentine’s season is approaching. Best luck to all the Agaystya’s out there. Be unique! 🙂

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