Before she could make sense of this whiplash, Tanya was looking at a guy on his knee complete with a ring in hand, ready to pop ‘the’ question. The ring was smiling just as much as that guy. She could not believe this was happening to her. Even more so because it was this very ‘guy’ she never wanted to marry. She had a clear distinction of what made someone a ‘guy’ or a ‘man’. While she was still trying to think of a way out of the situation her mobile phone came in handy. It was ringing. ‘Alarm Clock1’ was the sound.
Tanya has always wanted to change that alarm tone but was never really interested in checking other tones out. Her alarm tone had been called cringe-worthy in the past. She actually agreed with it, but like her best friend and confidante, Urvashi, often cunningly stated about Tanya, ‘she would rather go with something cringe-worthy than try something new.’
So that’s Tanya, 31, Doctor by profession, practicing at two of the biggest hospitals in the city, considering getting a PhD and at times waking up with weird-marriage-proposal-dreams. But she usually has no time to think about dreams because her day starts early, ends late and is often disrupted by emergencies. Mostly the cases of accidents. You could tell her days weren’t very exciting. And to top it all off, Urvashi had just returned from her honeymoon and couldn’t stop bragging about the exotic locales. Tanya, being single and with no plans of marriage on the table, needed none of that. After all she didn’t consider herself a ‘romantic’.
But don’t let that fool you into thinking that she was single. Far from it actually. Enter Parag. The Man. Tanya has had a couple of boyfriends in the past but none of them were even half a ‘man’ Parag was. She had this peculiar definition of what made a man – a man. And it was quite simple: A male patient who was constantly worried and kept nagging despite getting the best medical treatment wasn’t man enough. He was a sissy. Or just another guy. Men, on the other hand, were not afraid of the operation theatre, faced their illness head on and walked out of the hospital on their own.
Parag was a well-polished man. He embodied strength and confidence. Someone meeting him for the first time might find his communication skills a bit dreary but he made up for it with his well-built stature. After all, he was an army officer posted in the North-East.