I was this girl from the South, who had recently come to Bombay and had no clue what the city was all about. I was staying at the YWCA hostel, and one evening I went out for hostel night at Villa Theresa with my friends one evening, though not I was not much of a dancer. It was also the first time I wore a western outfit—a pink frock to be specific. A little lost and not quite sure what the protocol was at an event like this, I was just hanging around with my friends observing people. There was this one guy who was also waiting for his group of friends walking up and down and checking out all the girls. My roommate who knew him introduced us. Since both of us were at loose ends, he decided to ask me for a dance, and I accepted. I didn't know how to jive, but he led extremely well and we jived and jived and jived for what seems like forever (though it can't have been more than half an hour). He just kept on dancing and I didn't know how to get him to stop. At the end of the session I was still spinning and so exhausted, that I swore to myself I would never dance with him ever again.
A week later, I walked into his office looking for a job and he looked at me as if he didn't know me at all. Oh! How I hated him. Anyway, I kept attending parties; he would also be present, as most of the parties where hosted by common friends. At every party I would see him with a different girl; not that it made much of a difference to my life.
Once, I happened to call his office for a payment and spoke to a guy with a great sense of humour, not realising it was him. We kept chatting and he asked me out for coffee. We met often for a cup of coffee and spent many an evening laughing at the various anecdotes he would narrate. I discovered that it was his great sense of humour and his love for dancing that made him a ladies man!
I was the naive girl on the third floor of the hostel, who didn't realise that he had girlfriends on floors one and two as well. I once even dropped home a girl who came to a party with him. And then there was a girl who told me he would never marry me—a non-Goan—as his mother had selected her to be his wife. My friends warned me to forget it as he would never settle down.
We had a three-day-long beach wedding on the 12th of November 1989, just before Diwali. What was hate at our first meeting in November 1986, is now unconditional love for the man, who is an awesome friend and husband, a wonderful father to our two kids, and nothing like the boy I met over two decades ago—though the ladies still like to sake a leg when he takes to the floor.
27 years have passed since our first dance; I'm still dancing to his tune and looking forward to many more years of togetherness.
~Cheryl D'Mello, Event Manager
Read more cool love stories:
Virtual Strangers: dnai.in/czef
Marriages are made in Online Heaven: dnai.in/czeu
That thing around her neck: dnai.in/cyZx
Will you be mine? (Starring three awesome women who made the first move) dnai.in/czf9
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