'We met the first time a day before our engagement'

I cannot say that this is a love story, but there is definitely the love factor in it.

I have been staying away from my family for quite some time even when I was working in India and later the UK.

So they thought it would be ideal to tie me down when I came down to Dubai for my new assignment.

Both my parents were looking tirelessly for the perfect match in terms of the girl, family, education and most important of all the horoscope, though I had no belief in it.

One day, my cousin showed me a picture of a girl on shaadi.com and I was taken away then and there itself.

I would listen to no one and turned away requests of my parents to look at the profile of any other girl. My father took the details and spoke to her Dad and from him learnt that she would like to talk to me first before making a call.

The next day I called her when she was in office during the lunch hour.

Out of complete shyness of talking to a girl I had not known or seen I started out by asking her "tell me about yourself".

Because I was so nervous I could not even speak in our native language -- Malayalam.

At one point she interrupted me and asked me to speak in Malayalam and that was truly the defining moment for me.

Her open mindedness created and immediate impact in me and we spoke for about half an hour after which she warned me not to call her unless the horoscope match turned out to be positive.

For me I had already made up my mind to marry this girl, irrespective of what the outcome may be and now this posed a new hurdle because even her family would not agree without the compatibility check is ticked off.

That day after coming from work, I took my mother by force and went to a lesser-known astrologer in Dubai, so that things would go the way I intended.

The astrologer was a very diplomatic person who knew how to build the bridge between positives and negatives and make it good so that you never knew what you actually wanted.

On account of his interpretation that the horoscope matched just fine, I forced my family to communicate this to her and her family in India so that things can go pretty quick.

From next day on and our Internet chats and telephone calls started at full momentum.

We realised we had a lot of things to talk about. We even fixed the names of our kids (both boy and girl) within the first week of getting to know each other!

After work I would rush home, only to chat with her and on my way lost nearly 3 kilos due to lack of food and proper sleep.

We first talked on the June 2 and our engagement was fixed on August 17.

In the meanwhile we had got to know each other very well and had fallen in love!

On August 16 I reached Cochin from Dubai for my engagement and from the airport went straight to her house!

This was the first time we were meeting! We could not talk much because her relatives were around. But I did not want to leave without her.

On the day of our engagement our wedding date was announced and after three more months of chatting, talking and fighting, on November 18, we got married.

It's been three years since the day and the spirit of our love is just as alive as it was when we met.

We are expecting our little one to join us next year.

Share your romantic experiences with us! Write in to getahead@rediff.co.in (subject line: 'My love story') along with a photograph of you and your spouse if possible and we'll publish the best entries right here!