Fiance Poem by Prabhakar Subramaniam

I never got to see her fiance

Her description of him

Was like what we see

In the matrimonial ads -

Tall, fair, handsome

Handsome salary

Employed abroad

Broad-minded, well-travelled

Fun-loving, good company -

'As soon as I finish college

I'm going to join him

Probably we'll get married there! '

She didn't show any picture

But there were many discrepancies

In her portrait of him

The eye-colour kept changing

It was sometimes black,

Sometimes cat's eye

The letter she secretly laughed over

And hurriedly hid

Looked only like an inland letter

Our suspicions about his whereabouts,

Looks, profile and career persisted

We did not probe further,

It was too personal

It was a year later

After we graduated

That I ran into them

At the Mount station

'This is the fiance

I was always talking about!

We got married only last month.'

I still don't know why

Somebody would lie about her beloved

Be ashamed of her own kind

Pretend he looked like someone else.