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I could distinctly find Manohar constantly gazing at Moumita while she was speaking to somebody in the room. The moment her eyes moved towards Manohar, my dear friend quickly shifted his vision towards the floor. After quite sometime, both Moumita’s and Manohar’s
parents suggested us to have a chat with Moumita separately. They probably sensed that Manohar and Moumita were not comfortable in speaking to each other in their presence. We were suggested to go to the garden if that was okay with us. We promptly agreed.

As we moved out of the drawing room, I suggested that I would like to have a better look at the flowers in the garden while Manohar and Moumita can sit somewhere and speak to each other. The next few moments were going to be extremely crucial for Manohar as he needed to assess Moumita as a person, to find out her compatibility as his would-be wife. As I stood amazed gazing at a beautiful sunflowers in the garden, I heard the conversation that was going on between Manohar and Moumita. What I heard was quite unexpected as Moumita was expressing her displeasure regarding Manohar’s moustaches categorically. She was candidly confessing her liking for Shah Rukh, Aamir, Salman and Saif (Bollywood superstars) simply because they did not have moustaches. I heard Manohar putting across his view-point by citing that moustaches are the prime identity of masculinity, which was pooh-poohed by Moumita. Moumita was further heard to express her incapability of staying along with Manohar’s parents as in one meeting only, she had understood that they were extremely conservative and that would hamper her carefree lifestyle.

As I moved around the garden predicting the inevitable, I heard the amount which Moumita cited as her monthly expenditure on cosmetics. Manohar was heard to put forth his logic as he said, "Listen, why do you need to spend so much on cosmetics and parlour? Yes, such things are required when one is unmarried but certainly not after that." As I gazed at the two from a distance, I saw Moumita getting furious and saying, "Sir, in which century are you living? Your thoughts are as good as your parents’. Beauty is eternal. Its God’s gift to girls and we girls should do every bit to preserve it. Moreover, you boys can at any point of time, leave a girl and marry someone else. What about us? For us to do the same, we need to keep our beauty intact. I felt" like intervening at this moment but then decided against.

After a pause of some few minutes, Manohar put forth a question which I suppose was quite a discomforting one but then it was not so for Moumita. Manohar asked, "Did you ever had any affair with someone while you were in school or college?" "Yes, I did have," came the reply as she continued, "And I suppose that’s no big an issue. My first boyfriend was Rajib whom I met while I was in Class X. He was a cute guy, very lovable but was extremely bad in studies. His parents, thus, sent him abroad to assist his elder brother in his business and we lost touch."

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* Contributed by -
Kisholoy Roy,
MBA (Marketing),
Content Editor, Infoedge Management Solutions.