The Valentine Knock

Old parents, bless their rapidly diminishing temporal reserves, often clutch at one singular, perhaps slightly delusional, aspiration: the marital incarceration of their progeny. It's not merely a dream; it's a biological imperative, an evolutionary echo that reverberates with the urgency of a fire sale on eligible partners. This instinct, as ancient as the first awkward pre-nuptial grunt and as persistent as a telemarketer at dinnertime, ignites the moment they lay eyes on any individual possessing a pulse and vaguely compatible chromosomes. 

They commence their silent, intricate labour – the knitting of an invisible tapestry, a grand, often hallucinatory, projection of matrimonial bliss for their darling offspring. My mother, a woman whose primary Olympic sport was competitive worrying, was, naturally, a gold medallist in this particular parental pastime.

On the auspicious, or perhaps ominous, occasion of my twenty-ninth birthday – an age at which society begins to eye one with the distinct suspicion reserved for unexploded ordnance – Sarita materialized at my rather humble doorstep. It was an hour when only milkmen and the truly desperate are typically ambulatory, the city still engaged in its collective morning yawn. She bore a small, suspiciously warm cake, suggesting either a recent oven extraction or a minor pyrotechnic incident en route, and a glint in her eye that could only be described as mischievously premeditated. 

My mother, who had, with the impeccable timing of a heat-seeking missile, chosen that very week for one of her extended ‘wellness checks’ on my solitary existence, was already performing reconnaissance from behind the living room curtain. Her silence was not the absence of thought, but the sound of a finely tuned engine revving up. 

I knew, with the certainty of a condemned man hearing the sharpening of the axe, that the mental knitting had commenced. The click-clack of those metaphorical needles, a sound more familiar and arguably more terrifying than my own heartbeat, was already weaving Sarita into the grand domestic narrative she envisioned for me. In Sarita, my mother perceived not just a young woman of charm and cake-bearing capabilities, but a solution. 

A dazzling, definitive, full-stop to my inconveniently protracted bachelorhood. She saw in Sarita something I, in my chronic state of emotional and financial insolvency, couldn’t afford to acknowledge: Possibility, with a capital 'P', probably mortgaged to the hilt.

But this “Possibility,” I was painfully aware, was a peculiar sort of cryptocurrency, one that couldn’t be simultaneously cashed out from both our existential bank accounts. Sarita and I, you see, despite the shared crucible of a chemical engineering degree and several subsequent years of a companionship so hesitant it practically curtsied, were operating on dramatically different planes of socio-economic reality. Imagine, if you will, one of us orbiting in a sleek, private satellite equipped with artisanal coffee and reliable Wi-Fi, while the other was diligently attempting to signal for help using two damp sticks and a faint hope. There was no sturdy, reliable thread connecting our disparate worlds, only those infernal needles – far too many, and all of them alarmingly, preternaturally sharp.

The glorious career path I had managed to carve for myself, after much grovelling and CV embellishment, had led me to a magnificent industrial establishment situated a mere twenty-five kilometres beyond the city's burgeoning, flabby waistline. This temple of productivity, a factory exuding the subtle perfume of sulphur and ambition, was picturesquely nestled between acres of indifferent scrubland and roads so thick with dust they could have qualified for their own geological epoch. 

The daily commute was not merely a physical translocation; it was a Sisyphean exercise in the attrition of spirit. It systematically drained time, siphoned off desire, and vacuumed out any coherent thought, leaving behind a husk that faintly resembled a human being. Five days of the week were thus sacrificed to this altar of industry, passing in a sort of numbing, motionless blur, like a badly buffered video of someone else’s life. 

Whatever pitiable residue of ‘me’ remained was jealously hoarded for the weekend, those two fleeting, shimmering slivers of temporal freedom. And it was within these precious, narrowly defined parentheses of existence that Sarita and I carved out our peculiar, unacknowledged sanctuary.

We had, without any formal treaty or tedious verbal agreement, cultivated a series of rituals. Saturdays were sacrosanct, dedicated to the lakeside. This involved a lengthy, meandering perambulation by the water’s edge, where the air hung thick with the tang of coconuts being expertly decapitated by vendors whose machete skills were a testament to generations of practice. This would be followed by the modest, reassuring clatter of stainless steel utensils at our ‘usual’ eatery – a place chosen not for its culinary excellence, which was debatable, but for its comforting anonymity. 

There was a profound, almost narcotic comfort in this repetition, in the unspoken script. It furnished us with something that, if squinted at from a certain angle in poor lighting, bore a passing resemblance to love, though neither of us ever dared to dignify it with such a loaded appellation. It was more like a well-worn pair of slippers: not glamorous, perhaps a little frayed, but undeniably comfortable.

Sarita, in stark contrast to my trudging servitude, had plunged into the world of industrial alchemy with the dramatic flair of a prima ballerina taking centre stage. She wasn’t merely employed within her father's sprawling manufacturing empire; she was the empire, or at least a significant duchy within it. Hers was an iron-clad hierarchy of gleaming production lines, tirelessly whirring assembly belts, and battalions of deferential employees. 

Unlike my humble self, whose daily grind involved punching in hours for the greater glory of someone else’s quarterly profits, Sarita stood at the helm, a veritable Napoleon of nuts and bolts. She oversaw, she commanded, she transformed nascent chaos into profitable order with a mere glance and the decisive flourish of her signature on a purchase order. Her pronouncements were not suggestions; they were edicts.

“Workers,” she declared once, with the serene confidence of a philosopher queen, as she elegantly spooned a mountain of rice onto her plate during one of our Saturday lunches at the aforementioned haunt, “are born with a certain… inertia. Like matter at rest, as Newton so astutely observed. Fundamentally unwilling to move unless acted upon by an external force. Preferably a significant one. Pushed. Hard.” Her spoon paused mid-air, a silver sceptre emphasizing her point.

I managed a chuckle, a rather hollow, defensive sound, like a trapped bird feebly flapping against its cage. “Perhaps,” I ventured, dabbing at my lips with a flimsy paper napkin that disintegrated on contact, “it’s not the inherent nature of the workers, Sarita. Perhaps it’s the system itself. The overarching mindset. The cosmic joke of employment. Maybe that’s what requires a robust, and possibly violent, adjustment.”

She tilted her head, a slow, deliberate motion, a smile playing on her lips that was both charming and faintly condescending. “You would say that, Vishal,” she observed, her tone laced with an amusement that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You are, after all, one of them.”

She meant it, I believe, as a jest, a playful jab between friends from vastly different postcodes. But truth, even when gift-wrapped in humour, has a nasty habit of leaving a bruise, a lingering ache in the ego. And the unvarnished truth was, I was one of them. My daily uniform consisted of slightly stained overalls, a laminated ID badge that perpetually hung crooked, a fetching hairnet that did wonders for my non-existent hairline, and the rhythmic choreography of clocking in and clocking out. She was the celestial body, radiating power and influence, dictating tides; I was tethered to the mundane gravity of Planet Paycheck, trudging through endless shifts and the Sisyphean promise of overtime. 

Our worlds, so astronomically different, only ever brushed against each other because we, or more accurately, she, permitted it, on those carefully curated weekend interludes. Even that, I was beginning to suspect, felt less like a mutual arrangement and more like an act of considerable grace, a charitable donation of her precious time, extended by her from on high.

And yet, with a perplexing regularity that defied all logical explanation, week after week, Sarita would navigate her way to my modest, somewhat dilapidated apartment on Sunday evenings. There was no fanfare, no heraldic trumpets announcing her arrival. Just Sarita, and occasionally a small, thoughtfully chosen offering clutched in her hand – a recently published book she thought I might appreciate, a box of intricate, sugar-laden sweets that would send my dentist into paroxysms of anticipatory glee, or sometimes, most eloquently, nothing at all. Her mere presence, however, filled the cramped space more completely, more vibrantly, than any collection of expensive objects ever could. It was like bringing a supernova into a broom closet.

One such Sunday evening, as a fragrant steam curled lazily from the tea I had inexpertly brewed (my domestic skills being on par with my financial acumen), she smiled, a slow, enigmatic unfolding that always hinted at secrets. “You simply will not believe,” she began, her voice a low, unreadable purr that sent an involuntary shiver down my spine, “what your dear mother confided in me today.”

I looked up from contemplating the existential despair of a chipped teacup, my lips already twitching in amusement. My mother’s confidences were usually less ‘confidences’ and more ‘strategic leaks’ designed to achieve a specific maternal objective. “Let me guess,” I said, feigning nonchalance. “She’s of the opinion that I am exhibiting an unacceptable tardiness in the procurement of a suitable, preferably solvent, bride?”

“Close,” Sarita replied, her voice dropping to a near-whisper, a tone that hung in the air between us like a suspended breath, heavy with unspoken implications. “Remarkably close, in fact. She has, it appears, already found one. Me.”

A laugh escaped me, a strange, strangled sound, utterly devoid of genuine mirth. Uncertainty coiled in my stomach like a nest of startled vipers. Was she being serious? Or was this merely another exquisite example of her playful, occasionally cruel, irony? I desperately wanted to believe the latter, to dismiss it as a well-crafted jest. But there was something in her tone, an unfamiliar weight, a lack of its usual breezy detachment, that clung to the silence, making the air thick and difficult to breathe.

My mother, bless her one-track maternal heart, had witnessed Sarita laugh at my feeble jokes. She had seen her deftly arrange the birthday cake, fussing over the precise angle of the solitary candle. She had observed Sarita press a cool hand to my forehead, scolding me with mock severity for my chronic inability to consume regular, nutritious meals. This, apparently, was the sum total of evidence required for my mother to mentally Photoshop Sarita into the hallowed, gilt-edged frame reserved in her mind for ‘Prospective Daughter-in-Law.’ A masterpiece of wishful thinking. 

But my mother, in her optimistic architectural frenzy, was blissfully unaware of the Sarita who operated in a different ecosystem. She didn’t know the Sarita who, in another setting, donned impeccably tailored blazers like a suit of bespoke armour and barked orders at engineers twice her age with the calm authority of a seasoned general. She couldn’t conceive of the thirty individuals, souls very much like mine, who waited with bated breath each day for the subtle semaphore of her nod or frown, a gesture that could make or break their week. Sarita, in her natural habitat, was The Boss. I, in mine, was merely stone.

"Then why," I finally managed to articulate, the words emerging as soft and fragile as spun silk, terrified of the answer, yet needing, desperately, to be certain, "why do you persist in coming here, to this… this humble abode, every Sunday?"

She looked away then, her gaze drifting towards the peeling paint on my window frame as if it held the secrets of the universe. "Because," she said, her voice barely audible above the distant hum of city traffic, "I want to." A statement of such profound simplicity, it felt like a seismic event.

And I, in my infinite capacity for filial obedience and emotional cowardice, relayed to my mother, as I always did when confronted with her matrimonial machinations, the standard, wholly unconvincing party line: “We’re just friends, Ma.” But even as the words left my lips, I could feel their utter inadequacy, their transparent flimsiness. It was like attempting to describe a category five hurricane as a "passing drizzle," or a rampaging elephant as a "slightly oversized hamster."

Then arrived a Sunday that shattered the comforting, predictable rhythm of our carefully constructed weekends, a Sunday that resonated with the discordant clang of impending doom.

A fortnight, a whole fourteen excruciatingly long days, limped by without a single word from her. No lakeside walks, no shared coconuts, no Sunday evening visitations. My apartment felt cavernously empty, the silence amplifying the drip of a leaky tap into a maddening water torture.

When she did finally reappear–unannounced, naturally, materializing on my doorstep like an avenging spirit–her breath was sharp, not with the exertion of climbing my three flights of stairs, but with a cold, focused anger. She dispensed with the customary pleasantries the polite inquiries about my well-being. Her eyes, usually alight with playful intelligence, were narrowed slits of fury. “Two weeks, Vishal,” she stated, her voice dangerously calm, each word a perfectly aimed dart. “Not a single call. Not one pathetic, misspelt text message. What, pray tell, am I to you? An optional weekend activity? A charming diversion when you have nothing better to do?”

“I… I had to visit my village,” I stammered, the words tumbling out in a clumsy, unconvincing heap. “My mother… there were some family rites. Ancestral obligations. You know how it is.” The excuse sounded lame even to my own ears, thin and reedy against the gale force of her displeasure.

But her fury, it seemed, had already achieved escape velocity, spiralling beyond the reach of my pathetic explanations. “Forget it,” she snapped, cutting me off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Just… forget it. You will accompany me to my parents’ house. Tonight. Seven o’clock. Sharp. And Vishal,” she added, her gaze unwavering, “no excuses. Not a single one.”

I nodded, a puppet whose strings she effortlessly controlled. But my heart, that unreliable organ, performed a complex, painful contortion within my chest. I knew, with a chilling premonition, what this summons signified. This was it. The final act of our little drama. A revelation was imminent. It would either be a proposal… or a meticulously orchestrated, brutally efficient farewell. The guillotine or the garland.

Sarita's father was a man seemingly chiselled from a block of cold, unyielding logic, a monument to pragmatic capitalism. His office, I recalled from a previous, equally terrifying encounter, was less a room and more a shrine to financial success, all gleaming mahogany and hushed reverence. He had, on that prior occasion, generously, or perhaps strategically, offered me a position within his vast industrial conglomerate – a respectable, mid-management role, safely insulated from the factory floor. Sarita, bless her defiant heart, had vehemently, almost violently, refused. She didn’t want me existing beneath her, she’d declared, neither literally on the factory floor, nor figuratively on the corporate ladder. That singular act of bold, almost reckless, defiance had stayed with me, a warm ember in the cold grate of my insecurities, longer and more profoundly than any shared meal or lakeside stroll. It was a gesture of such unexpected solidarity that it almost made me believe in… well, something.

When I arrived at their palatial residence, a veritable fortress of affluence that made my apartment look like a discarded shoebox, I was ushered in by a uniformed servant who regarded me with the polite disinterest one reserves for a particularly uninteresting piece of furniture. Her father, Mr. Chopra a name that echoed with the authority of a thousand invoices, sat enthroned behind a teak desk so vast it could have comfortably hosted a small diplomatic summit. His fingers were templed, a pose that radiated calm, patriarchal power and the distinct possibility that he could, at any moment, order my immediate execution.

“Vishal,” he began, his voice smooth, modulated, the vocal equivalent of expensive single malt whisky. He did not offer me a seat, an omission that spoke volumes. “I will not insult your intelligence by wasting your time with unnecessary preamble.” A slight pause, for dramatic effect. “My daughter, Sarita, has always… admired you. Your intellect, your… quiet fortitude.” He almost made it sound like a chronic illness. “Loved you, perhaps, in her own way. Though youthful affections are notoriously unreliable.” Another pause, during which I could hear the frantic thumping of my own heart. “But admiration, Vishal, however fervent, is not, alas, the same commodity as compatibility. These are, you understand, entirely different entries on life’s ledger.”

I listened in a silence so profound it was almost devotional. What else could I do? Argue with the oracle?

“She has,” he continued, his gaze unwavering, “received a most… advantageous proposal. From a young gentleman based in Singapore. A highly successful businessman, I am given to understand. Her equal, shall we say, in ambition. In lifestyle. In, forgive my bluntness, financial trajectory.” He let that hang in the air, a gilded guillotine. “You understand what I am communicating, yes?”

Oh, I understood. With a clarity that was both excruciating and, in a twisted way, liberating. The unspoken subtext was as subtle as a sledgehammer to the kneecap.

“You,” he went on, his tone softening almost imperceptibly, a surgeon offering a word of comfort before the amputation, “are a fine young man, Vishal. Dedicated. Intelligent, in your own sphere. But love, admirable as it is in poetry and popular song, is not always… sufficient. Not when the monthly bills arrive, denominated in Singaporean dollars. Not when life, in its relentless pragmatism, demands more than mere affection and shared sunsets. It demands, if I may be so bold, a robust portfolio and a sensible five-year plan.” He leaned forward slightly. “Please, I implore you, as a friend of the family, talk to her. Persuade her to choose wisely. For her future. For her happiness.”

And I, Vishal, the cog, the poltroon, the man whose primary weapon was a hesitant smile, agreed. I nodded. I gave him precisely what he wanted: the illusion of my complicity in the dismantling of my own heart. I was, it seemed, an excellent employee even in matters of romantic surrender.

But when I found Sarita, sequestered alone on the sprawling veranda, staring with an unnerving intensity into the vibrant, unapologetic crimson of a bougainvillaea bush as if seeking an omen, I said… nothing. Not a word of his carefully constructed logic. Not a syllable of persuasion. I simply sat beside her, on the cool stone, and let the silence bloom between us, thick and heavy with unspoken words, with the ghosts of what might have been. The scent of jasmine hung in the evening air, cloyingly sweet, like a funeral wreath.

“I thought,” she finally whispered, her voice raw, frayed at the edges, not looking at me, “I thought you’d fight for me, Vishal.”

“I wanted to,” I confessed, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “Desperately. But I wasn’t entirely sure I possessed the right calibre of weaponry for that particular battle. My slingshot against his financial artillery.”

She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. The unspoken hung heavier than any word.

And so, the ensuing weeks didn’t just melt; they congealed, hardening into two long, bitter, agonizing months. A period of such profound desolation that my tiny apartment seemed to shrink further, its walls closing in, mirroring the constriction in my chest. I entertained the naive, almost laughable, notion that I would heal. That time, the great mythical physician would stitch up the gaping wound. I didn’t. I clung to the equally absurd belief that I would, eventually, forget her face, the precise cadence of her laughter, the way her brow furrowed when she was deep in thought. I couldn’t. Her image became an unwelcome poltergeist, haunting the periphery of my vision, manifesting in the graceful curve of every unknown woman’s wrist I chanced to see, in the deep, resonant shade of every maroon scarf that fluttered past. 

I tried, with a diligence bordering on obsessive, to exorcise the memory of the elegant, almost mathematical, logic of her fingers as they danced across a spreadsheet, the subtle, knowing smirk that played on her lips when she was about to win an argument, the astonishing, disarming way she had once, just once, dozed off with her head resting trustingly on my shoulder in the back of a violently lurching, exhaust-fume-belching auto-rickshaw. That memory, in particular, was a splinter of pure, unadulterated agony lodged deep in my heart.

Then, on the fourteenth day of February – a date so laden with saccharine sentimentality it felt like a personal affront from the universe – at an hour so early it was practically still the previous night, a knock, sharp and peremptory, shattered the pre-dawn stillness. It wasn't just a knock; it was a detonation, ripping through the fragile fabric of my miserable stupor.

Sarita. She stood at my door, not the imperious corporate titan, nor the ethereal weekend companion, but someone… different. She was dressed with an almost aggressive simplicity in a pale, unadorned salwar kameez, its fabric whispering of humility. Her usually impeccably styled hair was pulled back severely from her face, revealing the delicate line of her jaw, a vulnerability I hadn't seen before. A small, battered-looking suitcase rested at her feet, looking as out of place as a flamingo in a coal mine. Her eyes, those magnificent, expressive pools, shimmered with an emotion I couldn’t quite decipher, but beneath it, she was calm. Impossibly, unnervingly calm.

She entered without waiting for an invitation, brushing past the perpetually askew curtain that served as a makeshift door to my kitchen, moving with an air of quiet, inexplicable ownership, as if she had merely been away on a brief, inconvenient errand.

I remained rooted to the spot, a study in bewildered paralysis. My brain, still sluggish from sleep and marinated in misery, struggled to process the scene. I was convinced, with a certainty that bordered on pathological, that I was dreaming. A particularly cruel, elaborately staged dream orchestrated by my subconscious.

“I’ll make tea,” she announced, her voice startlingly normal, as if this were the most ordinary occurrence in the world. As if she hadn't just ripped a hole in the space-time continuum of my despair.

“You… you don’t know how,” I managed to reply, the words feeling thick and clumsy on my tongue. My vocal cords, it seemed, were as frozen as the rest of me. It was a pathetic rejoinder, but it was all my stunned intellect could muster.

A small, almost shy smile touched her lips. “I do now,” she said, a hint of her old playful defiance flickering in her eyes. “Turns out, it’s just hot water and leaves. Not exactly rocket science, or even advanced chemical engineering.” She paused, then added, as if it were an afterthought of profound global significance, “And I’ve stopped wearing makeup. All of it. I realised I don’t actually need to… to hide anything anymore. From anyone. Least of all myself.” She gestured vaguely towards her suitcase. “I even learned to make poha. Your favourite. Want some? I brought the good flattened rice, not that cheap stuff.”

The sheer, breathtaking audacity of it all finally jolted me into some semblance of coherence. “Why?” I asked, my voice barely a breath, a fragile wisp of sound. “Why are you here, Sarita?”

She turned then, fully, and looked at me. Really looked at me. Not as the formidable woman of steel and status, the heiress to an industrial throne, but as someone stripped bare, someone laying down her meticulously crafted armour, perhaps for the very last time. Her voice, when she spoke, trembled, a delicate, almost imperceptible tremor, and that raw, unexpected vulnerability made her more devastatingly beautiful than any power suit or perfectly applied kohl ever could.

“I thought of you,” she began, her gaze locked with mine, “every single night. Every morning. While staring at profit margins and five-year projections. While enduring matchmaking dinners with eminently suitable, soul-crushingly dull men. I couldn’t pretend anymore, Vishal. Not to my father, not to myself. I am not, as it turns out, constructed from marble and balance sheets. I want a home, Vishal, not a glass-and-chrome mansion that feels like a luxury prison. I want your perpetually crooked curtains, your fan that clicks with every third rotation, your charmingly mismatched plates that look like they were acquired from a historical dig. I want… you.”

“Sarita,” I said, my own voice cracking, the single word a plea, a warning, a desperate hope. “Don’t… don’t do this. Don’t say things you might regret when the glamour of rebellion wears off.”

She stepped forward then, closing the small remaining distance between us, and placed her hand flat on my chest, directly over my wildly misbehaving heart. I could feel the warmth of her palm through the thin fabric of my shirt, a searing brand. “We can’t all marry within our designated socio-economic stratosphere, Vishal,” she said, her smile gentle, yet infused with an unshakeable resolve. “It’s not a cosmic law, despite what some patriarchal dinosaurs might believe. But we can marry within our hearts. And mine,” she smiled, a radiant, tear-bright smile that lit up the dingy little room like a sudden sunrise, “has, for reasons that defy all logic and financial prudence, always been irrevocably, stubbornly, yours.”

I didn't need further persuasion. I pulled her into my arms, a convulsive, desperate embrace, burying my face in her hair, inhaling the scent of her, the scent of an impossible, miraculous reality. The kettle, forgotten on the stove, began to whistle, a shrill, celebratory shriek in the background. Light, actual, bona fide morning light, poured into the room like a benediction, chasing away the last shadows of my long, miserable night.

It was, as the greeting card companies would have us believe, Valentine’s Day.

And the only gift I received that day, the only one that mattered, the only one that would ever matter, was Sarita. Sarita, with her ridiculously small suitcase crammed with newfound humility, her soft, unwavering resolve, and her aching, terrifying honesty. She stood in my cramped living room, not as a fleeting visitor, but as a promise. A beautifully improbable, gloriously inconvenient promise.

That morning, as the vast, indifferent city finally began to stir, blissfully unaware of the monumental tectonic shift that had just occurred in one insignificant, third-floor apartment, my mother stood in the doorway. She was a silent sentinel, quiet tears tracing paths down her cheeks, her hands clasped together not in a gesture of supplication or prayer, but of a deep, profoundly fulfilled, and slightly smug longing.

And behind her, over the triumphant screech of the kettle and the thumping of my own incredulous heart, I could already hear it. The faintest, almost imperceptible, yet utterly unmistakable clink of needles.

But this time, I noted with a peculiar, ironic sense of peace, the thread, at long, long last, had most definitely found its mark. Or so, in the rosy, tea-scented glow of that improbable morning, I fervently, desperately, allowed myself to believe. The future, with its inevitable complications and mismatched expectations, could wait. At least until after the poha.

THE END