#JabWeMet: My arranged love story

We had invited you, dear readers, to share your love stories.

Rediff reader Kamaljit Medhi tells us how a chance meeting rekindled love in the sleepy town of Digboi.

The oil town of Digboi has a small sleepy railway station. The Intercity Express from Guwahati to Ledo runs through this station besides the Ledo-Dibrugarh passenger train and the goods trains to transport coal and other raw materials out from this region.

At Digboi, life passes at its own leisurely pace and so does the passenger train. No one knows when the driver will stop the train for an unscheduled water break or to meet someone at a village in between stations.

I too have a story of my own at this Digboi Railway station -- my love story.

But to tell that story, I first need to retreat a little down the path.

The first time I met her, I didn’t bring a box of sweets, but a collection of the immortal classics of Kishore Kumar. I told her that if we were not destined to be together, then the songs would someday remind her of our meeting. Her family offered me enormous amount of good food and I ensured that nothing was left untouched. It was an arranged meeting by our families to find out if we would make a compatible couple.

Long phone calls and occasional meetings, which followed that evening, did prove that we were compatible. But there were lots of twists and turns in the story and we were on the verge of closing a beautiful chapter of our lives. There are too many people involved in an arranged relationship set up that can lead to a fall off.

Those were tough days for me. I stayed at Bungalow 26, Indian Oil guest house at Digboi. The evenings suddenly became melancholic. The Patkai mountain range, visible from my room, looked gloomy…

That day, I had a hurried lunch and left for the refinery. However, I had to come back to my room after a short while, for some work. On my way, I saw a group of students assembled in the hall.

Life always presents some very pleasant surprises for you. Seeing her that day at the Digboi Indian Oil guest house was surely one of those for me.

She was on a field visit to Oil India, Duliajan, as part of the mass communication course she was pursuing. From Duliajan, they were taken on a day trip to Digboi. From Digboi, they were to visit Margherita the same day. Oil India did a wise job to host their lunch at Bungalow 26 which was also the address of this fugitive for some time.

She and the group left the guesthouse for Margherita after about half an hour. That same evening she would go back to Guwahati from Margherita in the Intercity Express.

She asked me whether I could come to the Digboi station on her return.

I borrowed a motorcycle from my friend Abhijit Deuri who worked at Engineers India Limited. His Yamaha bike was a special one. The brakes hardly worked. He showed me how to use both the feet to create friction with the ground to slow down the bike.

By the time I reached the station, I was already late. I dropped the bike and swiftly picked a Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate from a nearby stall. As I entered the station in that November evening, it was almost dark.

The train had arrived at the platform. And there I saw her, frantically searching for me amongst the small crowd.

As the train started to move, I gave her the chocolate.

We were together for a minute or so, but that special minute was something beyond the scope of words. Perhaps that chocolate did wonders to our lives.

We got married the following year.

In the last twelve years, life has presented us with many surprises but meeting my (now) wife Arpana at Bungalow 26 and that November evening at Digboi Railway station remain special.

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