Vishnu Dyuthi was in quite a nauseating situation. After a lot of uneasiness triggered by the emotional cold war her mother spearheaded, she had agreed to meet her arranged marriage date - Dinkar.

Dinkar was indeed a good-on-paper person - he had a PhD in aerospace engineering, a good job with an enviable pay and was the only son of an affluent businessman. He and Vishnu had graduated from the same IIT institution, albeit in different years and different streams of education.

Vishnu and Dinkar had spoken to each other a few times on the phone. For Vishnu, it had felt like a very formal talk with a lot of awkwardness and a dialogue that seemed to have been written for a business interview.

They asked each other what they do on a normal day as routine, what their expectations from marriage were, what ideal qualities they wished their partner to have, their likes and dislikes. Normally, that is how all couples being set on an arranged marriage date would talk to each other. What disturbed Vishnu in that talk, however, was the tone Dinkar used with her.

The way he asked Vishnu questions about herself seemed more like he was crossing off items on a checklist of “Things To Know About Your Blind Date”, like he was going through the motions of reading a guide on how to formally talk to your arranged marriage partner.

Normally, Vishnu wouldn’t have found his approach too iffy. He wasn’t the first man she was talking to in such conditions. She had had arranged marriage dates before with men that didn’t work out due to multitude of reasons, some tragically concerning dowry, others because the men thought Vishnu was too frigid for their taste. The only common point was the way all of their conversations started and went about.

They were all formal, business like conversations.

For someone like Vishnu, who was an ardent fan of Korean dramas, it was all amusing in the beginning. Maybe she had watched too many dramas on arranged marriages turning into enviably loving relationships, Vishnu had always bolstered her insecurities around marriage with the hope that maybe she would find a drama like ending in her pursuit of marriage too. But as she navigated through the marriage market and met men who were completely off the trajectory of her expectations, she started sinking into a heart wrenching reality. 

Life is never a K-drama.

By the time she started talking to Dinkar, she had lost the initial passionate steam of finding love in her marriage partner and was just going through the motion of meeting the intended person, getting to know them and discerning if they would be compatible enough to get married to. What actually threw her off about Dinkar was the way her spoke to her.

Vishnu always initiated their conversations on a cheerful, positive inflection, her tone always a note high in excitement to get to know him. Dinkar, however, came off as nonchalant and aloof as any man in such a setting could possibly be. Vishnu assumed he was introvert and shy by nature and not much of a talker.

Turned out, he wasn’t much of a listener either and bothered only to get his opinions across and be done with it. What the other person thought of those opinions was not his concern either.

It would have been a positive trait had his opinions been resonant with progressiveness or righteousness. It was neither. He simply was a mysogynistic and uncaring man who didn’t bother to correct his thought process or try to be considerate of others.

It became evident the first time Vishnu even met him. Over their phone calls, Vishnu had shared her dislike for beards - she had grown up watching her father who was always with a clean shave and had somehow grown averse to the concept of beards. Dinkar had hummed an agreement and said he never grew beards too. But the first time they met in person, he turned up with a callously grown beard.

“I thought you didn’t like growing beards,” Vishnu reminisced.

“Yeah, but you said you hated them. So, I thought of growing it out,” he answered with an irritatingly sarcastic smile.

And that was their first interaction in person.

When Vishnu later shared her review of Dinkar with her family as an inconsiderate and deliberately discomforting person, citing the beard incident as an example, her parents and sister laughed it off saying maybe he was just teasing her in good humour.

In retrospect, that was never the case. Trying to find hidden meanings in the blatant actions of people don’t wipe out the problems, they simply try to make you blind. Unilaterally masking people’s statements as jokes doesn’t really turn them into one; they simply delay your reaction time and by the time you realize they were serious, you are too late to respond. Dinkar’s intentions had never been on the side of good humoured teasing, he had simply wanted to make a point that he wouldn’t accommodate any of Vishnu’s interests.

“Have you ever dated anyone?” Vishnu had asked when they sat opposite to each other having lunch in a restaurant the first time they met.

“Yeah, I had a girlfriend,” he answered.

“How long did you guys date?”

“She broke it off with me after a few weeks,” he replied.

Vishnu shifted in her seat as she asked awkwardly, “Might I know the reason?”

Dinkar took a moment to think it over as he sipped his drink and then said, “I don’t know. She just said she wasn’t interested any longer and left.”

The expression of confusion on Vishnu’s face must have been too evident, for Dinkar added, “Yeah, I was confused too. But, I didn’t pursue it any more.”

As the lunch progressed and they spoke about their personality types, Dinkar confessed, “My friends all say I am more like Sheldon Cooper.”

Vishnu looked up from her plate and remarked, “You do know that Sheldon’s not exactly the kind of person people would want to hang out with.”

“You don’t like him?”

“I like that series and the character is interesting, but in real life, I wouldn’t exhaust myself over someone who is so self centred. Especially not as a life partner. You cannot have a thriving relationship with someone who is always on the receiving end but complains a lot to give in even once.”

“Hmm…” Dinkar simply looked away unbothered.

The topics shifted to their political and social views.

“Ah, those Roe v. Wade debates… I don’t understand why they are making a big deal out of it,” Dinkar expressed as he stared blankly at Vishnu. “I mean, women got be careful in first place. They don’t mind having fun in the first place and then start talking about their body rights.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Vishnu was exasperated at this point. “Are you for real? You seriously don’t think the only cases of getting abortion are from reckless nights of “having fun”, do you?”

When she couldn’t find even a flitting expression of understanding on Dinkar’s face, Vishnu slightly slapped her forehead, ran her hand through her hair as she exhaled, straightened up in her chair and remarked, “You really have to do a lot of reading about it. And I see you have very low opinion of women.”

At this, Dinkar raised his hand defending himself, “No, not at all. I respect women. I just am not on board with the discussion on abortion rights.” He paused and then doubtfully asked, “Don’t toll me you are one of those overbearing, extreme feminists.”

Vishnu really wanted to smack him on the head with her hand and knock some sense into his brain, but she didn’t want to pick a heavy fight there with her date and then hear back a series of complaints about her behaviour from the people involved in the arranged marriage setup. So, she reluctantly controlled herself saying, “Let’s talk about it some other time. I will explain it really well then.”

They strolled around a mall discussing their lives till that point, and all Vishnu could think of was - there was no spark at all between them. Dinkar seemed disinterested in Vishnu and he wasn’t exactly the straightforward person he painted himself to be. Vishnu got the vague feeling that he was disclosing only favourable insights about himself.

There was a famous dessert place opposite the mall and Vishnu suggested they have some chocolate or coffee while continuing their “date”. As they made their way out onto the busy road outside the mall, bustling with traffic and tried to walk across at the intersection to make it to the dessert shop, a biker heading in the wrong direction came straight onto Vishnu, crashing into her.

And that crash cemented an outlook on Dinkar's character that Vishnu could never shake off.

The bilker had applied brakes at the last second and as Vishnu tried to avoid the collision, he still ran over her foot with the bike. Thankfully, Vishnu always wore sports shoes rather than delicate sandals and that day, they ended up protecting her feet. Though the bike ran over her right foot, the angle of the way it went, the speed of the bike and the quality of the shoes, all prevented Vishnu’s foot from suffering a major injury.

She did end up falling on the road though, and injured her elbow.

The biker stopped his vehicle, apologizing vehemently to Vishnu for hurting her. Vishnu got up from the ground, lashing at him for coming in the wrong direction and for his lack of control on his vehicle.

“Are you seriously blind?” she shouted at him. “And seriously, is this the way to go? Can’t you see the traffic lights or can’t you discern the right direction to drive?”

To his credit, the biker acknowledged his mistake and apologized, saying he was in hurry for an emergency. As he tried to explain his situation in detail, Vishnu noticed the traffic they were holding up behind. She didn’t feel like dragging the situation. Shaking her head, she asked him to just leave. 

In all that commotion, she did catch sight of Dinkar doubling over laughing at her.

Vishnu was shocked.

She hadn’t realized it, but wasn’t it normal to come to the aid of your date when she meets with an accident?

Dinkar hadn’t stepped up to help her up from the ground, he hadn’t caught hold of the biker to make him explain and apologize to her, and he didn’t even offer her any words of worry, caution or comfort. He had laughed at her instead.