Ex and I had a divorce by mutual consent in 2018. Luckily, we had no kids who’d have to face the aftermath of the divorce.
About a year later, of course, my mother started asking me to consider meeting people, which I reluctantly agreed to. I met a few men, but none appealed to me. I went on the dating apps and met a few guys, but again none appealed. By now, Ma and I had been having several arguments since she felt I was setting unreasonable standards for my future partner. I’d been regaling my close friends with my stories of the men, playing it up for their amusement when out of the blue; one of my closest friends suddenly called and asked if I’d been willing to meet her cousin who was visiting Delhi.
Unfortunately, this call happened within earshot of my mother, and I had no option but to agree. Well, I met her cousin, we chatted for a couple of hours. When I told her this, she almost fell off her chair since said cousin was notoriously reserved and barely spoke a few words ever. Our conversations started from there, we both were clear on what we were looking at. There was some hesitancy on both of our parts because he’d never been married. He’d lived for more than a decade outside India and was fiercely independent and didn’t want to get married simply because his family felt he needed to, while I was of course cautious because of my broken marriage.
The fact that I was his cousin’s friend and he was my friend’s cousin definitely helped since we knew she wouldn’t steer us wrong intentionally. Things went well and a few months later, we had the families meet. We had originally planned a bigger wedding, but because of the pandemic, we changed course.
We tied the knot in December in a small intimate wedding held on his parent’s front lawn in the presence of our immediate family members only. Panditji was also on Zoom, as were our extended family and friends
