In the early 2000s, when I was a sports reporter with The New Indian Express and had yet to meet my wife, Rekha, I fell in love with another sports reporter. She was a spunky girl called Ananya Bandyopadhyay (name changed).

Back then, finding a girl who loved sports was difficult enough, but Ananya was several leagues ahead – she didn’t just follow sports; she covered it for a national daily.

I am not sure what it was – a part of me says it was pure love. A bit of me believes that it could have been lust. She was pretty and loved sports, and that explained most of my affection for her.

Since we were both the youngest members of the sports reporting teams at our respective newspapers, we would get assigned to the least important sporting events.

We would cover the events together, and sometimes, when one of us was late, the one who reached on time would fill the other in with the details.

This is the story of our first date and why she never answered my calls again.

I had been trying to persuade her to go on a date with me for a while.

Back then, we youngsters only had movie heroes as role models, and they had taught us that if you kept on chasing the girl, she would relent one day.

Today, I know it is cringe. But back then, that’s what I did – I kept on asking her out, and she kept on refusing.

Some may think I was patient and determined, but the truth is that I hadn’t found another girl. I guess, in some instances, persistence is just a lack of alternatives.

Finally, after nine months of continuous persuasion, Ananya agreed to go out with me.

But she had one condition.

“You are not going to touch me or try anything funny,” she warned.

These were the days when dating plans were made in person and not on Instagram or WhatsApp.

So, when Ananya said “anything funny,” I could see her expression and understood that she didn’t mean comedy.

As you are already aware, we Rajans are gentlemen…so I promised to behave.

We decided to meet at Spencer Plaza on Anna Salai in Chennai.

For those of you who don’t know, Spencer Plaza was constructed by the British in 1863–1864…and was India’s first shopping mall.

For the first few minutes, we walked around the mall. Since we had only met in a professional setting until then, she found it difficult to be romantic. She was human, after all.

I thought it was a good idea to take it slowly.

“So, finally, here we are…huh?” I said, looking at her sideways as we walked along the corridor on the ground floor.

Ananya kept looking at the shop windows, watching people walk past and occasionally checking whether any of the exits were still open.

“I have already been in a relationship – from 9 to 12 – so I know how to behave with girls,” I said, trying to make her comfortable.

She didn’t react…just kept on walking as if she hadn’t heard me.

But I don’t blame her because it was a crowded day…and her long, thick hair was hanging over her ears.

As we walked past a gift shop, I asked her, “Do you want to buy something?”

Yet again, there was no response.

I felt bad for her. It seemed like the poor girl was worried about her next day’s assignment – a national basketball tournament at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

A bit of me also wondered if she wanted to get the whole ‘date’ thing over with.

But remember, we Rajans don’t give up easily. She had agreed to the meeting after nine months of persuasion, and now I only had a few hours to show her my 70% true love and 30% lust.

If she had agreed on day one, we might have been holding our baby right then, but because of her casual approach to our relationship, we were starting nine months behind.

The thought of the baby made me wonder if Ananya was thinking about how she would run a family with me. I was, after all, only a junior journalist earning very less.

I bet she was worried about whether what we both earned would be enough to raise a family. And it was only fair for her to be concerned…life wasn’t all about roaming around in shopping malls.

As we walked around the first floor of the mall, to allay her fears, I told her how hard I worked, how much all my colleagues loved me and how I was likely to get a raise soon.

I think she was pretty excited about my professional future because she kept nodding her head while staring at people entering and leaving the shops.

It occurred to me that she was a woman of few words. But when you are a young man trying to impress a pretty woman, you can’t afford to hold back…so I kept talking.

Finally, she interrupted me and asked, “Are we going for dinner or what?”

To be honest, it was my mistake. It was already seven in the evening, and maybe she was used to having dinner early.

I apologised for getting carried away and escorted her out of the mall towards my Yamaha.

The happy young man inside me gave the parking attendant a ₹5 tip. By the time I realised the financial folly, the parking attendant had disappeared.

Five rupees was a lot of money in those days. You could buy tea, a snack and possibly the goodwill of an entire family with it.

But then I reminded myself that I was on a date, and men in love don’t think about money when they are with their girl. They must think about it after dropping the girl home and regret it for the rest of the evening.

As we approached the motorcycle, I could feel a sense of excitement in Ananya – probably, she was looking forward to the ride.

But being an Indian woman, she couldn’t say it directly…so she used reverse psychology. She said, “I don’t want to sit on your bike.”

Being a gentleman, I understood what she was going through – not all girls want to be seen riding with the man they plan to marry before the wedding.

But the restaurant was almost fourteen kilometres away, and taking an autorickshaw wasn’t a financially viable option. I had already lost ₹5 to the parking attendant. I couldn’t afford another ₹50 for an auto.

After a little convincing, Ananya agreed to sit on my motorcycle.
She sat so far behind that there was enough space between us for another passenger.

Honestly, I was disappointed.

I had imagined her riding pillion, holding my shoulder, even as the breeze coming in from Marina Beach kissed our hair.

Instead, the breeze hit my back directly – the same back that had expected to feel her warmth.

We had travelled less than a hundred metres when I felt a new surge of love towards Ananya.

Here I was, getting angry at her for not sitting close to me on the bike, but she was actually upholding Indian values and culture by not getting close to me before our wedding was solemnised.

She was just the kind of girl my mother (and some of you) would like me to marry. I bet should would scoff at the idea of a live-in, if at all I suggested it.

After half an hour through Chennai’s evening traffic, we reached the restaurant ‘Rice Bowl’ in Adyar.

The moment we entered, Ananya stopped.

“Eeeks! This place smells of chicken.”

That was when I realised that during nine months of pursuing her, I had forgotten to ask one small question: “Are you a vegetarian
or a non-vegetarian?”

But being a Rajan, I was able to arrive at a solution immediately – we chose a table next to the window so that she could occasionally stick her neck out and breathe.

When it was time to place our order, the waiter walked up to us and, like the gentleman he was, asked, “What would madam like for dinner?”

“Vegetable Hakka noodles,” came the immediate reply.

Then Ananya turned towards me and said, “I just love noodles.”

That was only the second full sentence she had uttered the whole evening.

I thought to myself, “If she loves noodles, I love noodles.”

And then I muttered under my breath, “Here’s to a lifelong supply of noodles, Mr Rajan.”

That is how young men decide what they like – a pretty woman says she likes something, and within seconds, it becomes the boy’s passion.

I raised two fingers confidently and told the waiter, “Make that two!”

I had seen this in Hollywood movies, especially when the lady orders champagne and the hero says, “Make that two!”

There was a smile of victory on my face as I watched the waiter walk away with our order.

In my mind, compatibility between the boy and the girl had been established – to hell with horoscopes, we both loved noodles.

When the noodles arrived, she reached for her fork, which were placed right next to her plate.

When I first looked at the fork, I knew I had seen something similar before. One thought led to another, and I finally landed on Lord Shiva.

“Ohh, yes, it does look like a trishul…so this is a fork,” I whispered under my breath.

I don’t know if I should blame my mother, who never cooked noodles at home, or blame my father, who had never taught us to use forks. But until that evening, I had never held a fork in my hand or eaten noodles.

When I looked up, Ananya had already started eating.

She was as fluent in eating noodles as a Frenchman is in French kissing. She lifted the noodles, twisted them neatly around the fork and carried them to her mouth with surgeon-like precision.

I watched her for a few microseconds and fell in love once again.

There is a certain charm in the way women eat noodles…as for the guys, let’s not get there.

Then I tried exactly what she was doing, but the noodles slipped off.

I tried again, and this time, they swung towards my shirt like a trapeze artist from Gemini Circus and fell back onto the plate.

I changed the angle and even adjusted the way I held the fork…but nothing worked.

At one point, I had three strands of noodles hanging from the fork, and it felt as if I had finally cracked it. But by the time the fork got closer to my mouth, two fell back onto the plate, and the third got stuck on my chin.

Thankfully, Ananya was a slow eater, so I managed to keep pace by just pretending to eat.

When she was not looking, I even took some noodles and threw them under the table so that she could see that I had also made some progress.

But as she warmed up, my inability to operate the fork became increasingly obvious.

Fifteen minutes later, she had cleaned her plate.

Mine was still half full – being an optimist, that is how I chose to see it. But it was actually still full.

Now I had started sweating. The cool and composed Rajan had walked out of the restaurant, and in his place was sitting an Iranian spy who thought he was invincible but was about to be caught by Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency).

After what felt like several years, she said, “Why don’t you try using your hand? It might be easier.”

That was insulting, but I didn’t say a word. I should have been given grace marks for my efforts, but she seemed to have ignored that.

I placed my stainless-steel trident beside the plate, said ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ in my heart of hearts and started eating the noodles with my hand.

Ananya watched me throughout. I assumed she was admiring my confidence.

Today, I understand that she was probably watching so intently because she knew she would have to describe the scene accurately to her friends.

After dinner, we returned to the bike.

This time as well, she didn’t sit close, and the breeze from Chennai’s beach was hitting my back…except that this time, it felt even colder.

We didn’t speak much during the return journey. I assumed she was overwhelmed by the evening and needed time to process her emotions. After all, entering into a relationship with a man one had met only nine months earlier wasn’t an easy call.

Ananya and I never spoke again after that dinner.

During sports events, when we would meet, she turned very professional and refused to talk to me. I appreciated that; after all, both of us needed to get our careers on track before we could think of marriage.

Since neither of us had a mobile phone back then, I called her a few times on the landline in her PG. Most times, her friends would pick up and say that Ananya wasn’t there.

Once, one of her friends picked up the call and said, “She has gone to buy vegetable Hakka noodles for dinner.”

I found that cute, for it meant Ananya wanted to relive our beautiful date. But then, in the background, I heard several girls giggling…not sure why.

After a few more months, she suddenly stopped coming to cover the sports events. It has been 26 years since that single date…and we are yet to have a second date.

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