Tanmay and Suruchi were meeting for the first time ever. Their parents had been in talks for their marriage for over a month. Now that the horoscopes had been matched and both sides had done their due diligence regarding the social stature and financial status of the other side, the future couple were finally allowed to meet. They were made to sit in her room while the relatives feasted on tea and snacks in the drawing room. Both Tanmay and Suruchi felt a little awkward, but somehow they managed to strike a conversation. So Suruchi, I have been told you left your previous job because you got bored of it. What exactly happened? Tanmay began. I wanted to do something creative, something more personal in nature. The software engineers job was not for me. I will probably look for a creative agency that can hire me as a freelance writer. I always wanted to be a writer, she replied. Writer? Does that pay? Tanmay asked with a fair bit of surprise on his face. His IT job wasnt too creative either, but it paid him a decent salary. Suruchi smiled. She had seen that expression before, on the faces of her parents, her relatives and her friends when she had first told them about her decision. Tanmay was confused. He had thought that Suruchi would continue to work in a proper job and earn at least thirty to forty thousand a month. Together with his own forty thousand a month, he had hoped to manage their joint expenses post-marriage. But this new development had taken him by surprise. Suruchi, you know we are not exactly rich, and it is going to be very difficult to sustain a good lifestyle if only one of us has a proper salary, like we need to have a flat and a car at least, he explained. Tanmay, I get your point. But I spent two years preparing for engineering, four years to get the B.Tech degree, and worked for three years in IT. Having spent nine years in this field I know for sure that software or any related job is not for me, and writing is what I am going to do for the rest of my life. I cannot promise that it will fetch me a big salary, because I do not want to write content for BPOs and KPOs. I want to write about things that catch my attention and compel me to write. People arent exactly going to pay me big money if all I am writing about are dense forest canopies, you know, she replied. Over the next ten minutes, they both realised that things were not working out. Tanmay continued to stress on the importance of a steady supply of money, and to him Suruchis arguments appeared to be immature and impractical. Suruchi, on the other hand, viewed Tanmay as a typical General Engineer Male, afraid of taking risks, not ready to live a fuller life, and more keen on building tangibles like a house and a car. And so, no marriage took place between them. Tanmay grew in his career, married a software engineer (the car came as a wedding gift), did an executive MBA and eventually bought a two-bedroom apartment in Noida where he now lives with his wife and two little kids. Suruchi started writing for a travel website and managed to write a nice novel side by side. The novel brought her a fair bit of fame and a better book contract. She travelled all across India to research for her next book, fell in love with a local writer in Kerala, and now the couple lives in a pretty cottage near Kochin in a lush green environment. And yes, there are dense canopies too. ~ Abhijit
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 04:54:52 +0000
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