It was January 2020, when my parents started bringing different rishtas and proposals my way. I got introduced to Gaurav through the similar channel. It was sometime during March, just before the lockdown when we started talking. I still re call my first conversation with him over phone (that was our very first interaction). It was somewhat awkward in the beginning but eventually we ended up talking for almost over an hour.
I remember we were trying to pick a day for our “rishta meeting” that week, when out of nowhere the lockdown was imposed. I was kind of disappointed at that time as there were talks in both the families to put things on hold and pursue the talks, after things get settled. So during that time all kinds of marriage talks were officially put on hold. But it was probably fate or attraction that we unofficially decided to pursue it and see how things go. We started talking and texting regularly outside the knowledge of our families and a month later something that should have been a typical Indian arranged marriage interaction turned into love. We would spend hours on phone. Sometimes even staying up till 4 in the morning. It was an emotionally difficult time for a lot of people but we luckily found comfort and love in each other. It took us some 8-9 months to make the families meet, to build a solid bridge between my Punjabi family and his Baniya family and to make it all still look like arranged marriage to finally get engaged. As simple as this sounds our journey till the D day wasn’t smooth. From a huge personal family loss to postponing the wedding date due to another lockdown to drastically changing all wedding arrangements with every new government announcement everyday. We have seen it all. Our ride till the wedding day was a bumpy one but I’m happy we sailed through all that and came out stronger and closer than ever. Fate has different ways of uniting soulmates, ours just happened to be during a lockdown in the middle of a pandemic 💝
