This is the Part-2 of the story. Please read Part -1 first.
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Padamesh was confident that he will able to change the mind of Sweetie soon but her behavior reveals the intention to break up after 3 months. Padamesh with low hope to salvage this relationship, registered himself to all dating sites to find a perfect match. He is now eager to find a new girlfriend within the notice period. He was wondering 5 years of Sweetie’s company will not give him any gratuity, unlike the IT company he left last time.
“Please, tell me about yourself?” was his first dating interview question after 5 years on a blind date he got almost immediately after registration. His nervousness was quite visible even when he spoke about himself. The moment next questions started coming from across the table he found his mind gone totally blank and then he fumbled, make weird faces drank lots of water and soon said: “I am coming back from washroom”. It was the last nail in the coffin of his first blind date when he explained that NASA found new solar system named Trappist-1 with few Earth-like planets and has a probability of life in it when the question was, “tell me about any current affairs you had.” This time his date said, “I am coming back from washroom” and ran away from that restaurant to never return.
****
One evening while having snacks with their friends, Sweetie announced that she is breaking up with Padamesh. Simran looks towards Padamesh and said, “Does Padamesh aware about this?”
“Yes! off course” Sweetie replied.
“Are we having a breakup party now?” Simran said, “you both are still sitting together having snacks like nothing happened, hence asking.”
Sweetie said in excitement “No, he came up with a brilliant idea of three-month notice. Here we will continue what so ever we are doing for another three months and then fully break up. In these three months, we are free to find each other’s replacement,” Sweetie replied.
“Seriously, it’s a brilliant idea.” Simran said with excitement and Meera, Raj, and Rahul nodded with agreement, “this will be the norm of breakups soon. I will definitely follow this process for my breakup”
“Simran, You don’t have a boyfriend yet,” Padamesh said which subdued Simran’s excitement.
“It’s Ok, this is a new concept,” Sweetie said, “by the time her breakup will align she will be aware of good and bad part of this concept.” Sweetie tried her best to cover-up.
“Do both of you started finding the replacements?” Simran asked to showcase that she didn’t mind about it.
“You know my charm, the day I want to have one will get one.” Sweetie said with a swag, “He is trying, but can’t trap anyone like me yet,” and laughed with others.
There is the similarity between love and break-up. When you fall in love you least aware of the surroundings and you just think only about the love and when you encounter break up, happenings at surrounding hardly matters. Same was the situation for Padamesh, with all noise around he was busy thinking about his future. He already received few rejections. The first one gave him the confidence to go for few more dates and with each date comes new challenges and he left rejected. He knows if the pattern continues, he will be the most experienced dater of this city, if not for the country. Whenever he moves ahead in dating rounds and disclosure of notice period comes into picture then no one agrees to wait for three months to start a new relationship.
Padamesh was dejected so far with his love hunt which was not running smooth as his job hunt, he did last time. He even thought to tell lie about this situation while on new dates and maintain another relationship in parallel. After last day of this notice period, he will dedicate fully to his new love. Then he realized about his busy schedule with Sweetie which will not allow him to maintain two relationships in parallel.
His day starts early with heavy breakfast and light exercise for himself followed by … washing dishes, cleaning clothes and cleaning house of Sweetie. After this heavy exercise for Sweetie, he needs to prepare light breakfast for her and heads up to the office. He needs to finish his work early and on time because Sweetie may come up with something of her own work which he needs to resolve in the night. Those works can be critical or non-critical based on how good or bad her day was going on. He also had to cook for her in the night since she prefers fresh food. The night, Sweetie don’t have headaches during sleep time are his lucky days. Padamesh also has a place to stay which he is paying rent regularly but hardly go due to his outrageous busy schedule.
Overall, he loves Sweetie to the core to his heart and this break-up made him realized that market is really tuff to become a boyfriend of someone. Nowadays, good looks and a nice sense of humor do not work. You need specialized skills to woo the would-be girlfriend. Padamesh was quite unsure about projecting these skills that he gathered during the tenure with Sweetie. He told himself that he will now reveal all these hidden skills in his next date. All these rejections had made him desperate and for him, it’s now or never.
He logged into that dating site and sent match request to everyone with the pics of shoulder length hair, the fetish he always had. One request got accepted and via chat, he found her interesting as she started flirting with him instantly. It’s positive sign and they decided to meet the very next day. He can’t wait for the next day and already started dreaming about her and he also loved her name.
****
Next day he went to the restaurant and found her at the corner table drinking, the breeze moving her shoulder length hair to reveal her face slightly. That’s a beautiful face, Padamesh thought and walk towards her to introduce himself “Hello I am … are you Florin?” Padamesh said so loud that everyone in the restaurant turned their head towards them. A man taller than Padamesh stood up from the chair lean towards him said with heavy voice
“Yes, I am. Who are you?”
Padamesh stammered quite hard and long and finally able to say, “I am your date, Please tell me about yourself.”
While they both are still standing, Florin said “Wo! Wait! I expected a girl for this date.”
“I also expected the same.”
“So, are you?”
“No! I am not. I guess it’s because of your hair and face combination, I thought you are a girl. Plus, your name also does not reveal the true gender identity.”
“That’s my ponytail, you idiot. I have just used my DP with that tail untied. Don’t even you check the gender?”
“No! Looks matter to me and you been extra clean shave with long hair confused me. I will put the gender filter criteria next time. My bad but why you accepted my request?”
“I was using this site for the first time and when your request came up I thought you as a girl. I thought your name came to me as Padamesha which is clearly a girl name.”
“No, my full name is Padamesh Agarwal. In my profile, I mentioned it as Padamesh a. That might have confused you”
“Why don’t you have given a profile picture or filled up personal details”
“Actually, I was more focused on skills, I will rectify it this time.”
“It’s a day wasted. Let’s sit down and have some guy talks since we came a long way to meet each other.”
“I bet.”
He realised that he can easily document each dating sessions during his love hunt as lesson learnt. He came back to his profile did some necessary changes to get the dating ball rolling. Padamesh realized that he filled up his profile like job hunt profile not as dating profile and that could be the root cause of his low acceptance and high rejection in this love industry.
He works in IT industry but he believes there exists a love industry too. An industry which flourishes on the need of love and relationships. All these flower shops, dating sites, gift and card shops are all part of this industry. If love is the driving force for most of the things in the world, then it can drive the whole industry based on the need and trend of love. Like industry here also trends do change from time to time. Like earlier no live-in concept no it is, earlier only husbands used to wash clothes and do the dishes now boyfriends' does that. This belief had given him the idea to define his profile like the of resume IT industry which he realized may differ.
The changes bought the fruit he deserved and received the request for a blind date again next day. This time he verified the request came from a girl.
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This is the Part-2 of the story. Please read Part -1 first.
©Tapas Majumdar, Not for reproduction without Author's permission.
