"You won't be the 'runaway bride', no?"

A random conversation, with an ex-classmate-cum-ex-colleague-cum'to-date-good-friend, is never as random and inane as one usually makes it look like.

Most of the things these people say, if you are in the habit of reading between the letters, say a lot about you. Each comment, each opinion, each gesture, each expression carries with it an entire baggage of all the time spent together, of all the lessons learnt the hard way, of all the caveats rendered subtlely .

So when one such friend, rather carefully asked, "D, you won't be a runaway bride, no?", I was slightly taken aback. I smiled, ia half-hearted manner, spoke about the weather, the new pain-in-the-wrong-place colleague and tehn when I thought enough time had passed by to make it look like just another casual question, I asked, "Oye, how come you said that?"

T: said what?

D (also, me): …that thing about not beinga runaway bride…

T: Oh that….well, it's nothing…

I didn't insist. But I'm sure she must have just thought that how come a wayward brat, (pampered goose is one of the many endearements showered on me by T) like D, somebody so to the point, somebody so reckless, so crass, settle down? Let's say this is one of D's hasty decisions, still what when she finally realises the baggage that she's agreed to be a aprt of is just more messy than her messed up self? MAybe she'll be the runaway bride.

Maybe not!!