Anil and Kusum Kalgutkars are my dad’s best buddies and now our family friends. Since their daughters and I were a baby we have been going out on vacations together and its been fun. As a kid I always found them adorable but did not know any back story. But as I grew up I could pick up certain ‘not so normal’ (read arrange marriage) traits and finally one day over dinner grilled them. What came out was a bag of revelations of not just their stories but of my parents‘ too :)
Anil kaka and Kusum kakee were college sweethearts. And my dad was the third wheel in their relationship, a witness to almost everything!
Kusum was this young pretty looking girl from Ajmer who had come to Mumbai to study architecture from the “JJ School of Arts” and Anil was this hairy bearded Andheri boy studying architecture from Raheja College.
He was two years older to her and lived in a different town and was from a different college altogether. And they DID NOT have any common friends nor did they find each other on ‘Facebook’ (forget mobile there was hardly a landline then) !
So how did they meet? Well they were interning/ working at the same workplace while they were studying.
Kusum had come over for an interview. Anil’s boss had put him in charge of giving her an assignment and looking how she was doing it. As she sat on the table drawing sincerely Anil was checking everything alright. But it wasn’t the drawing he was looking at. He was looking at her and couldn’t take his eyes off her!
So when my dear kaki after spending some time on the drawing showed him what she had done... He scrapped it and made her draw another one!! Ofcourse that was so that he could see her for a longer time. By then she had already passed the interview and was permanently welcomed by Anil Kaka in his life :)
One of the naughty incidents that Anil kaka enjoyed sharing(much to the annoyance of Kusum Kakee) was the ‘train incident’. This was the time when people didn’t have any communicating device. They would follow the time and place as fixed in their previous meeting and WOULD TURN UP without confusion! Their common place of meeting was the Churchgate station.
It was a Sunday and they had decided to meet sometime in the afternoon. Though Kusum lived at Churchgate in a hostel that day she was visiting her cousin in Goregaon (another town in Mumbai). Since it was a Sunday afternoon the trains were empty and she sat into the gents’ compartment reading her book. Anil was going to meet her at Churchgate directly.
As destined, Anil got into the same compartment at his station and saw Kusum sitting in the middle of seat. She was engrossed in her book. He tried to get her attention but she was following a ‘I-don’t-want-to-see-nor- entertain- idiotic-men’ policy. So Anil went and sat next to her. She still chose to put her head into her book. Anil then shifted closer to her. Kusum shifted further away wanting to get away from this man. Anil Kaka shifted closer. Kusum shifted farther. He started drawing closer. Now Kusum lost it, “Who was this man irritating me?” And when she finally looked at him there he was flashing his white teeth amidst his black beard- my Anil Kaka beaming at her naughtily!
Though the two belonged to different communities and castes the two got married almost without any glitches. Kusum had already told her parents that she was going around with this guy from Mumbai the day she started seeing him. Anil’s mother had just one worry- “Will Kusum, a vegetarian adjust with our non-vegetarian food and the smell in the house?” :)
Today the two are in their twenty-sixth year of marriage and thirty years of togetherness. They have two lovely daughters- Deepika and Ketki and run their own architecture firm in partnership and going strong like never before!
Last night as I asked them and my parents, “Did you go on double dates before marriage?”, they exchanged confused looks, “What’s that?” And when I elaborated they smiled and said, “A lot! It was fun and has been a lot more fun taking you kids out with us.”
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