After this, Vennela started being harsh with me. For no reasons, she started doubting me and thinking I was having an affair with other women. She always checked my call records and read my SMSs whenever she had a chance to hold my cell phone. If she called and by chance it happened that my phone was engaged, she would create a fight out of that and accuse me of talking to other women when she needed to talk to me.
I got a breather when I was shifted to night shift in the company we worked for. This meant I could meet her only on weekends. This prompted her to force me to quit the job in that company and work in a small company that was owned by her uncle in Navi Mumbai. Our relationship now was very formal and the happy spark had died off. I was going through depression. I thought she was out to punish me for something I did to her or she just found pleasure in making my life miserable. At one time I came close to telling her that we should call off our relationship; little did I know that I was making the biggest mistake of my life.
Her reaction to my suggestion was so radical that she threatened to commit suicide if I ever left her. She also threatened to tell her parents that I was planning to leave her after ‘spoiling her’. For sure I was stuck. I regretted every moment I had spent with Vennela. As I was regretting, she was moving fast to set up our engagement. During this period, she was acting in a very loving way and apologizing for any wrong she had done to me in the past.
We were engaged in a hurriedly planned ceremony in Kerala and the wedding was set to take place six months later. Six months was a like a week to me. I dreaded the thought of getting married to Vennela. But since I was caught up in this, I decided to find ways of making it work. I started searching the web for ideas on how to love and manage someone like Vennela. I came across a forum discussing an issue like mine. One of the contributors was a girl who was only known as Mysterygal. When I posted my problem, she was the first to respond and soon it became like we were chatting. She would reply to my comments within minutes of posting them and then likewise I would post a reply.
I found comfort reading posts from Mysterygal. I longed to be on the net just to read what she had written. Although there was no way one could get contacts of the contributors, I managed to get it. It was not hard after all. I wrote a suggestive post, where I indicated that someone had mailed me on my email (which I typed in the post) concerning our topic. Within an hour I got an email from Mysterygal. Our chats were officially out of the forum to emails, then to Hi5 and later to SMSs on cell phone and occasional calls “to know if you are doing well.”
She was not Mysterygal anymore, but Priyanka from Jamshedpur and a good friend of mine. She was a friend indeed. She was a solace I needed in the times of turbulence and shoulder to cry on. Of course she was not there in person but her words calmed me down. When Vennela picked up fights, I calmly looked at her just thinking of Priyanka. At one time, Vennela asked me why I was not reacting even when she said that she needed a man in her life and not a damn boy like me. We had gone too far and I was wondering where was the love that flourished a few years back. She was not Vennela who I lovingly called Vinnie Kutty (little Vinnie), but a cruel girl crazy about getting married to someone she loved to torture.
Anyway, I had discovered a new friend in Priyanka who I had never met. One day she said that she admired my writing style and suggested that I try contacting some newspapers for a job as a writer. I found her suggestion injudicious. I was a commerce graduate and had never thought of being a journalist. Priyanka insisted and I thought I will give it a try. To my surprise, I landed a job as a column writer with Indian Express. They were paying me better than the company I was working for thought my new job demanded that I submit my stories on time every day.
I loved the work. Vennela did not. She thought I was wasting my career but I felt like I was born again to a better life. I didn’t tell her that there was a girl called Priyanka who had suggested this job for me. The next thing Priyanks did was to preach to me about the need to be strong if I needed to liberate myself. She said that we should all pursue happiness and not pursue sadness. If I was not happy with Vennela now, she said, how would I be happy if we got married?
I got the point, but there was no way I could explain to Vennela that I was not ready for marriage. I tried a few methods of communicating this point to Vennela but nothing seemed to work. I had bought a laptop from my savings and also bought a camera. These were tools I used to write my stories. With the laptop, I was able to connect it to the internet so I did not have to go to an internet café. This meant I had more time to chat with Priyanka. Three months before my wedding day, I proposed to her and she accepted. She was officially my girlfriend. I was so in love that the world around me stopped existing. All I could think about now was Priyanka. Even when we managed to have a good time with Vennela, the only person who came to my mind as we kissed was Priyanka.
Priyanka also inspired me to write a short stories book and was now looking for a good publisher for it. I was also about to finish my first novel. In fact, it was complete but for a few corrections I was working on. I was happy again, but still wondering what I would do with Vennela with the wedding date fast approaching. Even the brilliant Priyanka could not come up with a fool proof escape plan.
Anyway, things were going as planned. We went through the normal Hindu pre-marriage rites awaiting the main wedding day. As this was going on, my mind was racing fast to come up with a solution. When nothing seemed to come into my mind, I decided to use the traditional plan exhausted in most Hindi movies.
The plan was simple. A month before my wedding day, I gave a notice at my work place that I was quitting the job. This meant I could get some financial benefits in terms of loyalties since I was a column writer. Two days before my wedding day, I quit the job and was fully working on our wedding. Vennela was beaming with joy knowing that she had finally won. But I had other plans. I made sure that I kept our honey moon tickets and bookings with me and waited for the main day.
