We'd asked you, dear readers to share your love stories with us.
Anil Dhawan tells us how he found his partner for life in Rachna.
I had always wanted a girl fluent in English as my life partner.
I dated a girl -- if I can call it that because back then it had to be a hush-hush affair. But we fell apart when I failed to make it to the NDA.
Several years passed by and I concentrated on my career.
When I had to choose a life partner a lot of things had happened.
My father had passed away and my mother was looking for a daughter in law who could fit into our family.
After several searches she and my sisters zeroed in on a girl from Kanpur.
Her father was a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and she was a teacher at the Central School there.
We met each other at my Dehradun residence.
I had landed a drab job in the National Dairy Development Board (having pursued an equally drab course at the National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal).
I was not sure whether it would click and whether I would be able to check her angrezi skills. Luckily her family found me OK and left us alone to chat.
To my utter delight, I found her to be quite fluent though extremely tongue tied.
I thought I could correct that if given a chance.
Fate intervened and I got posted from Punjab to Lucknow -- which is a stone's throw from Kanpur.
I made frequent trips to IIT-K on one pretext or other; always meeting her at her school.
We invariably had snacks at the IIT-K cafeteria.
Though I remember very little about the stuff that we talked about, it is noteworthy that our meetings coincided with something terrible happening at the macro level.
A few examples: Our first meeting coincided with the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination.
The second -- when I went to greet her on her birthday -- coincided with the Bhopal gas tragedy.
When our marriage dates were fixed, we kept our fingers crossed and hoped that nothing untoward should happen.
Luckily nothing of the sort happened either then or through our various anniversaries.
We have been married for long now and have a son Ankur who is pursuing hotel management.
We do not need a Valentine's Day to remind us that we love each other!
