A.  Parental Arrangement
    B.  Speed-dating
    C.  Severe Thunderstorms
    D.  Sujal Shah
    E.  Indian Internet Website

Did you guess correctly?
The answer is - or I should say the answers are C. Severe Thunderstorms and D. Sujal Shah! (Mitu loves correcting grammer :) )

Here is how my story goes:

Last July, I went to see a friend of mine, Neetu Chhablani. While hanging out at her place, her brother Rahul’s friend Sujal came over and we all starting chatting. Of course the conversation steered it’s way to "let’s introduce Sunita to a man." This conversation came up daily in my life, at home, with family, at work, with friends. (Everyone, and I mean everyone, really wanted me to meet my special someone and always seemed to know the perfect man for me.)

Well that night in July at Neetu’s place, Sujal mentioned he new "a guy in New York that likes sports." I told Sujal, thanks for thinking of me (it was always a compliment when someone wanted to set me up) and should I go to New York, I would get in touch with Sujal.

Later that week I was going to Charlotte to attend the wedding of two of my friends (Haresh and Poonam Harpalani). As I knew the both of them, I really wanted to attend their wedding. Since I was a teacher on a tight summer budget I ended up buying my ticket using Priceline.com. My priceline request to Charlotte came through but I ended up having one connection, and that was Cleveland.

On the day of my flight, I went to the airport. When I checked in, I was informed that the Cleveland flight I was scheduled to be on had been cancelled due to severe thunderstorms in the Midwest. The ticketing agent re-routed me to Charlotte through Newark, and I was soon on a flight. After arriving in Newark, I headed to the gate for my Charlotte flight, and found it was delayed. With nothing better to do, I found a spot to eat dinner at the airport, ate, and returned to the boarding area. Each announcement made kept delaying the departure time, as the storms had really messed up the airways; the airline didn’t have planes for some flights, and was missing flight crews for others. I waited and waited and waited and waited and then an announcement was made informing passengers that they could continue waiting or fly tomorrow. I decided to fly the next day mainly because I did not want my cousins in Charlotte, Prakash and Tejal Wadhwani coming to the airport at 2:00 AM to pick me up. I rescheduled and called my cousin Aarti Wadhwani in Manhattan, and asked her if I could spend the night. She said no problem, and soon I was on my way to New York City.

I arrived at Aarti’s place safe and sound, and we started chatting. Since Sujal’s comment of "a guy in New York that likes sports" was fresh in my mind I told Aarti about it. She said - call him! Since she was studying, I decided to go out (In the back of my head I could hear my dad saying "He (my future husband) has been born - you’ll just have to find him."). Seeing it was another opportunity to meet someone, I wanted to call Sujal - but how? I didn’t have his number. So first I called Neetu, and told her I was in New York. She said, "I’ll call Sujal and call you back." She then called me back and gave me "the guy in New York that likes sports" name, Mitu, and phone number, and told me he was waiting for my call. I picked up the phone, called, and we picked a time and a meeting spot, Bull McCabe's.

And that’s how met my prince charming!

After a great time at Bull McCabes, Mitu walked me to a cab, but did not ask for my information, or offer me a business card, so my assumption was he wasn’t interested :(. But later on that week, I was happy to get an email from him. That email led to a phone call, which led to MANY phone calls, which led to meeting in LA in November, which led to many flights back & forth between LA & Chicago, which led to Mitu’s proposal and my acceptance on April 6th.