Waiting near monuments

It's a perfectly normal thing to do when you are meeting someone unknown or when you want your people to find you most easily in any location. I will be standing outside Starbucks. You will find me below the Gandhi Statue there. Father will be across the road in front of CCD. Things like that. Many years ago, this occurred. 1991. Am young and working in Calcutta (note the pre Kolkata name and milieu). There was a lady who wished to meet a relative of mine and the said relative didn't want to be meeting her without my presence to advise him on said person and whatever that should happen later. I went along. The monument was a big clock in Howrah station and he was to meet the lady below that clock. You have to understand this correctly. You enter Howrah station from the Hooghly river side and then look up to your left. There's this old clock, Favre Leuba or Alpha Swiss, I don't remember exactly, white and black. Black hands. Cobwebs behind it. Dusty. But the most well known landmark used by commoners. They used to say in Bangla "Bodo ghodi'r tolai". Below the big clock. So, we reach. Many people standing. We didn't have mobiles then so that we could ring and see which lady is answering the phone. It's why he's taken me along. He wants to see the lady before he actually goes across. There are many ladies standing there. My relative is in his late twenties. He did not have any girlfriend till then. So, he could be trying to befriend anyone. It's that stage of life, you see. I start patiently screening each lady standing. Lady with ration bag, not possible, no one will come on a date with a ration bag. Lady with large spectacles and clearly married, maybe not. Lady with grey in her hair and white saree, maybe not. So on. Actually, this is confusing as we could still be choosing to home in the very wrong lady. It's not done. I want to be out of there. I say so. My relative is hell bent that I should help him out with this. He's holding my arm so that I cannot run. In desperation, I continue to shortlist. I keep asking him questions as to her statements over phone. Turns out she's not given him much information except "I will know when I see you"! Ridiculous. How the hell will she know. Has she seen him before? I question. Negative, he says. Then I say that he should do an exploratory round by just walking in front of the waiting citizens. Just an easy walk and I will stand afar and see which lady is looking at him with attention. That will make a shortlist and then we will take decisions. He agrees with this idea after much distress. He moves. I watch. He goes up to the waiting citizens. He gives a cursory "searching but not so much as to be ogling" look around and keeps moving till he disappears from my sight into some crowd. I try to quickly see if some ladies have followed his walk. Four candidates. One, the married one. Second, a not so young lady who's not worn her saree even properly. Third, a young lady in Hawaii chappals and specs. Fourth, the decidedly much older lady with grey in her hair. Here, I would like to point out that those were days in Bengal when many women, though they worked and provided for households as the men could not find work, missed out on marriages at the apt time. Their parents knew that they would stare at poverty if the lady married and went away. So they never attempted the proposal thing at all. The girls simply aged. It's very possible that it was a lady from that background who was trying to meet my relative. And on the phone you'd never know. You could not pass on selfies. There were Facebook profiles. My relative comes back. He looks at me expectantly. I give the sanest possible answer. "Let's go home, man!". A year later. He's proposed to the young lady with the Hawaii chappals. She turned out good for him. She had a job and she took good care of her family. Well, like they say, all's well that ends well. So, I waited for the day someone would meet me below that big clock. Never happened. We met at the world's most unromantic spot. Beside the card punching machine in the workplace time office. I am still punching my time everyday. Present madam!