In Harini’s own words
“I was a student at Miranda House, Delhi. A few of our college friends set up a samosa stall during Saarang, IIT Chennai’s cultural fest to raise money for a social cause. My prospective husband Satish Madhira, was a student there and his friends waged a bet--‘Delhi girls are smart boss, you can’t fool them’. Satish lay a wager that he would get those samosas free. So on the first two days of the fest, he bought the samosas and on the last day, he put up a sad face after eating the samosas with his friends. ‘I forgot the wallet, we will be back and was never seen’. We had a train to catch and were frustrated-boys will be boys! As destiny would have it, several years later I saw him on a matrimonial site and was fuming with anger-what sort of a man would play such a prank!
The proposal
To my surprise, he proposed and said I know you must be mad at me, for not paying for the samosas, now as a punishment allow me to cook for you all my life and take you to the finest dinners you will ever have. That’s how we got married. If this seems like a scene straight out a movie story, it might as well. On many occasions my husband and I pulled this off on gullible friends to end it all with a hearty laugh. The real story goes a bit different… These days meeting your partner on a social networking site or online is probably the in-thing. I am referring to an era when social media probably did not even exist. Urban youngsters did not really believe in finding a partner through an internet site and on the contrary it was made fun of or was considered unreliable. And here we were who not only explored this option very daringly but also got hooked!
Short Courtship
Our marriage is a good example of ‘Chat Mangni put Shaadi’. Our courtship was just about a month and now when we look back we really wonder that two complete strangers from different parts of the country, one from North and other from South could connect over a marriage site randomly and within a month decide that this is the kind of partner they were looking for.
Soulmates
We are complete contrasts as far as our personalities go. Satish is an introvert, on the face of it, a very serious person and I on the contrary, an out and out extrovert with loads of friends. Even though we had clearly different habits and interests, what brought us together was also a deep interest for music, singing and cooking. Satish has a great sense of humour beneath his serious demeanour. In fact, people are surprised after listening to the samosa story that love can happen in the most unexpected places and manners. Surprisingly, we never disagreed on any of the decisions. I guess when one is talkative one comes across as the dominating person but here he is a silent killer. Very clear in his thought process and decisions. If I could put it “Ek garajnewala badal hain ek barasnewala”!
Meeting the parents
One more filmy and funny thing I remember the first time we were supposed to meet in person. I was in Delhi and he was flying down from the US. I was supposed to pick him up from the airport and that’s when my father asked my mother to accompany me. My mother was concerned as to how we would recognise him as we had seen just one picture of his and that too only once. Little was she aware that we had discussed the dress code and all. So I decided to play around with amma. I told her don’t worry all you have to do is look for a very obese person and that will be him. She was frantically looking around the airport searching and as providence would have it, a very very obese person struggling to walk was right in front of Satish. I was waving at Satish and my mom’s heart skipped a beat as she thought I was waving at the person in front of Satish. As the man passed us, Satish emerged behind him in a truly filmy style. My mother was embarrassed and I guess also happy to see this not so fat lad - it pays to keep expectations low!
I would say it’s been 12 years and fun still continues, we both continue to play pranks on friends and each other. Singing, cooking, long drives has become more joyful with two of our girls who are equally crazy.