April in Delhi wouldn’t normally bringout the romantic in you. Forget the gulmohars in bloom and the amaltas on theverge of exploding into colour and the becomingly rare-steaky colour of theevening sky; what you’ll remember is the flush of the first hot winds ofsummer against your face and the threat of heatstroke if you stay out too longin the sun. Flowers wilt by the evening and so do Dilliwalas and only an idiotwould propose in this sort of weather. Or so you would think.
But it so happens that I did get engaged this past week. I’ve been sweatingover popping the question for two years, never mind April, and my girlfriend’spatience was wearing pretty thin. Midnight power-cuts elicited the sort ofresponse that you’d expect from a bombed hostile nation, and the thought thatan engagement ring might ameliorate her distress—and mine— did cross mymind. But it took the particular lucidity a Delhi traffic jam engenders to makeme see the light. You listen to the honking Maruti behind you and you think, youcan go over me or under me, but you can’t go around. You look at the chap inthe SUV next to you, with his driver in an Admiral’s peaked cap, and youthink, nice car. Will it get you home faster? You ponder the separation ofchurch and state as Bush Sr was said to have done when shot down during WWII;you ponder the fact that the issue doesn’t seem to have occurred to his ownissue. You think of this and that and time passes in the mellow way it has whenyou find yourself simultaneously at the mercy of circumstance and beyondirritation.
How hard is it to be married, anyway? How many kids do I want? What will I callthem and what do I want them to be when they grow up: editors, engineers,doctors, black-marketeers?
Questions, questions. I think of my girlfriend, waiting for two years for aquestion that will make her happy and, in the eyes of the people we care formost, make our time together worthwhile. A proposal is, after all, like so manyof the things that define our lives, now and in time to come—Did you believein god? Were you a good person? Coffee or tea?—only a question. A simplejoining of four words framed in an enquiry. The answer to which, in truth, Ialready know. All I have to do is ask.
Questions and issues fall away like cars in my rearview mirror as I finallybreak free from the jam. A quick stop at my parents’ to warn them not to spillthe beans, a sprint to Sunder Nagar to buy a modest ring, a stop in the LokNayak Bhavan theka for a bottle of champagne, then home for Sam Cooke onthe stereo and a shower before she comes home. Then up on the terrace, champagnein the bucket and the lights on in Humayun’s tomb, and a question asked towhich, as with all the big questions, I already know the answer.
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This article originally appeared in Outlook Delhi City Limits, May 15 2006.
