Lil Ms. Muffet and The Spider

This is the story of my dear friend Lil Ms. Muffet and her crazy boyfriend The Spider. Why do I call her that? Simple! She's pint sized and cute as hell. The Spider spun his web, drew her in, caught her in his web and almost devoured her. But as luck would have, she managed to slip out in the nick of time.

Read on...

I met him on a regular TV story assignment on solar energy. My boss had told me to do this story without giving me any leads, and it was through an online directory service that I first got connected to him.

He sounded confident, mature and knowledgeable about the future of solar systems in India. By his voice I tried to guess his age and thought he must be around 40. I decided to meet him for my research. That was 11th June, 2008. Surprise! He was not 40, he was young and handsome. I later learnt that he was born on the same day as I was, he was 5 hours older. Sign, I thought. It was too much of a co-incidence.

We met again, this time not for work. We went to Delhi’s Golf club. I reached before he did. We spent some time together there and then we came back to the parking. It was a huge parking, mostly empty, yet he had parked his car just next to mine (he had never seen my car). Another sign, I thought. (LG rambles: No such thing as co-incidence. Everything happens for a reason)

I had few shoots with him and so we met again and again. We developed a liking for each other and met often. He lived near my office so he would drop in almost everyday. He was very good to me, loving and caring too. Everything was going great and he seemed perfect.

One day, he went to Kolkata, from there he called me and asked me to leave my job. I could not understand, I thought he was kidding. I was brilliant in studies, I had worked very hard to reach where I was, and was working in country’s reputed news channel. It made no sense. I told him that it was impossible. He came back and told me it is fine and he has changed his mind. That was the first sign of his possessive/obsessive behavior but I ignored it. That is the irony about signs - you only read those that you want to read. (LG rambles: Love is blind :-) rather the emotional closeness makes us blind to a lot of faults or shortcomings)

Then as we started going out more often I would often bump into my friends, he objected to that. He would ask: "why do you have so many friends?" ; "Why do you have to acknowledge them when you meet them?". He did not like me meeting anyone especially if the friend belonged to the other gender. Saying hello to one would lead to multiple fights and my character assassination. How do I know the boy? Did I ever have a relationship with him? I started dreading bumping into friends if we were out. It was draining yet I went through it every time hoping he will realise and will stop. (LG rambles: Stay jailed at home ;-) in a burkha )

Nothing changed; in fact it got worse. If we were out with his friends he would object if I spoke to his guy friends. If I spoke to one, then I had to explain it to him that it did not mean anything. Every time we would go clubbing he would keep an eye on the people around, he wanted to make sure no one was looking at me and also that I was not looking at anyone. He would even look around when he used to come pick me up from my office.

Slowly he even started objecting to my going to the gym or a male tailor. He would not understand why did I need to talk to any man in my office - editors, cameramen are all men; this made no sense to him. (LG rambles: I think he's in love with men)

His world revolved around me and he expected the same from me. This was the longest relationship I had been in; I wanted to make it work. I tried for the longest time but then in December 2009, I decided to break up. I mourned for almost 20 days, cried my heart out.

In February 2010 he called up my father and told him he wanted to marry me - no matter what. My father spoke to me about it. I thought he had changed so I decided to give our relationship another chance. I met him on Valentine’s Day and he promised me he will never do anything that will hurt me most importantly, he said he will let me be. I met his parents who were very nice to me. He met my parents too. Both families were happy and excited.

In March, 2010 we both went to my friend’s house for holi. I met a friend (who was a guy) and he hugged me. I saw his face flushing with anger. We soon left that place and I came back home. He kept calling me all night. He wanted to know if I had relationship with that friend or if I did something indecent with him. The following morning my parents saw me crying and then they went to meet him. He again brought up the issue of me working. He told my folks that he is worried if I will work who will get the kids home from school. My parents thought he was crazy. We were not even married yet and he was talking about getting kids from school. (LG rambles: Whacko Jacko! I'm sure he has some serious issues with his parents. Or maybe was beaten up by a girl when he was a kid)

Mom flared up and asked for an explanation. She wanted to know why I tolerated this for so long. It made no sense to her that why would her daughter - who is well educated and independent - tolerate such a man for this long. They made me realise that no one ever changes and that I needed to get out of this as soon as possible. It took me another month to let it go, but my family was by my side. But what was more difficult was to make him realise that it was over. He would write me long, obsessive mails. He would just not realise why my independence was so important to me. He did not want to let me go but he did not want to change his old school thoughts too. (LG rambles: GRTBR!)

In the end, he decided to stick to them. Good for me. It gives me goose bumps today to even imagine a life with him. He belongs to an upper middle class south-Delhi family. He has modern parents yet his ideas did not reflect the society he lived in. I have never called him back or tried to get in touch. I don’t even want to.