Mujhse fraandship karoge?

A funny thing happens to your friendship ecosystem when you have a baby. There is a huge chemical shift, almost creating an imbalance of sorts, like electrons running amok in an sp2 orbital (those of you who don’t get science, look it up). Or read this.

 As if marriage wasn’t bad enough for friendship. Various friendship tests had to be passed in ours (with my friends mostly, since I am the one who has more history with friends) and he had to be voted either ‘really nice’ or ‘really fun’. Somehow, the husband managed one or both. As for his, the friends were as old as the last clubbing night, and all you had to do was cheer Man U , hug like you’re long-lost buddies who’ve met after years, think costume parties are cool and you passed muster.

For the first two years in our marriage, we were doing fine, and had a roaring social life, despite the disparity in our friends (mine did books, his did shots).

And then the baby happened. Things changed.

Single women suddenly flew off the radar (there are exceptions and you know who you are). I don’t know if it was because we were no longer set-up potential, i.e. we were more likely to know married people with babies, and not necessarily single men so what was the point? Or whether we were in-your-face reminders of how they would like their life to be extrapolated. Or we drew attention to their tick-tock biological clock? Or that they were so used to not having conversation that it was suddenly too tedious? (when you have a baby, you tend to go to places where you can be heard). Or that no matter how hard you tried, they always slotted you as smug-married?

The married-with-no-kids were too busy trying to get pregnant, or trying not to. Or pretending they had the cooler life and didn’t really care about their clocks.

Single men took a deeper interest in you. (Get it, biaatches? If only you had stuck around!). They wonder if this would be their life if they had met women who were interested in their wombs. Also, a child is good arm candy for a single guy.  Good with kids = good marriage potential, and so his equity in the market soars up. I have had so many single guys taking to my baby that I am seriously considering them for baby-sitting on a rainy day. And unlike single women, single men are not ashamed to acknowledge their clock.

New male friends are not welcome by the husband, unless they are spectacularly ugly, really short, love Man U or are gaming buffs. Gay best friend is no longer an option as the husband is homophobic.

You almost wonder. Where have all our friends gone?

And then you realise, you have a bunch of new ones. The married-with-kids. The We- are-as-fucked-as-you are couples. These sooner or later gravitated towards you, whatever your history with them. 

Now this is where the power struggle among couples begins.

Two men. Two women. Plenty of dynamics.

You like him, she doesn’t like you. Or you like her, he doesn’t like him.  Or he likes him, but he doesn’t like her. Or you both like them equally, but the babies don’t get along. Or you like them both and the babies like each other, but they live in a different city.

There are other types:

• Friends who are so working so hard on weekdays that they just want to sack on weekends. Or get trashed with other singletons (somehow a baby seems to demand a code of conduct most people are not willing to put work into)
• Friends who are looking for that job with the perfect work-life balance.  I read somewhere that it means both your work and your life are equally fucked.
• Friends who are always "wanting to ask you over", but don’t, for some strange reason.
• Friends who say, drop in anytime, but never say when.
• Friends who forget to reply to emails or messages or (sic!) wall posts. Or ask for a raincheck!

I don’t want to get into the hothouse for friends, although there was a time when I met random people every Friday and pretended that they were my best friends. I notice what while people are all very effusive when they meet you, how many homes have you been invited to in the last month? Okay, three months? I mean really invited, not told to ‘drop in anytime’?

I don’t much care about birthdays or anniversaries, but if you don’t hear from me in a month, call /email/ do something. That’s what friends are for. Not random bumping and then saying, “Oh, I was just thinking of you!” No, you were so not. I know a bad lie when I hear one.

So I have decided. I need new friends, because I am tired of working on the old ones and their issues. Applications are invited.

Here is the deal: You should be funny. And compassionate. It is a very tough combination, but I am worth it. Also, you should be willing to do the work.  At least some of it. Which means making plans. Calling us over.  Showing up when we invite you. Thinking weekend getaways. Baby-friendly trips. Lunches. Dinners. Drinks. Games. Whatever you can manage. It doesn’t matter if you are single or married. Baby or no baby. Old or young. Proactive is the key word. Creative is even better.

Okay, here’s a sales pitch. I am good with food. The husband is a great bartender. We have a gorgeous baby and two cats. We are both funny (in different ways). But we have finally decided that we will do the work only to those who do unto us. All you have to do is earn it.

The unbearable lightness of Karvachauth

I can never be a candidate for Karvachauth (in which the wife fasts for the husband's longevity of life and other such). Now, considering that most men lead such debauched lifestyles that such a fast may be ordained as one of the things that could redeem, if not resurrect them, I may perhaps be disallowing the husband a huge chance at salvation. Ah! Sad, that.


But anything that involves fasting of any kind (even if it means postponing my meal by half hour) sends shivers down my spine. So, fine, I don't have the tenacity of an Anna Hazare or Baba Ramdev or a Medha Patkar, but perhaps they never had such a strong relationship with food anyway. So it must come easy to them.


Plus I am not endowed with huge fat resources, so more is the trouble. Three, I metabolise like a maniac. Just thinking about food is enough to digest it and want more. 


In fact, I didn't even realise it was the aforementioned fasting festival which involves, among other things, a moon, a sieve and a husband, until a friend of mine gloated about his wife fasting on facebook. (Thank god for facebook. The things we would miss otherwise!)


When I married the husband, the thing topmost in my mind was that "How can I act breezy about already having eaten dinner when he came home everyday?". Thing is, I have a 8 pm tummy alarm, and I can wait no later than 10 minutes to attack my meal. The husband thankfully never shows up at that unearthly hour, so I can eat my meal in peace. 


Until the child arrived, but that's a story for the other blog. The most dedication to wifely duty I could manage was to have lunch with him at 3 pm on a wretched Saturday in the early days of our marriage. Needless to say, it created a tsunami in my gastric flora and fauna. So fasting for the husband? Not happening. 


In fact, I thought to myself, why should bother, since he fasts regularly for me anyway. As in, he forgets to eat. In my mother's book, that is enough punya for the both of us.  


So happy Karvachauth darling, and I will never fast for you. It's not that I love you less. I just love food more. 

Why being married is like owning a cat

Soon after I got home the husband, I got home the cats. Perhaps what helps our marriage survive is that I have a cat barometer for my feelings about marriage, and since it’s his first experience with cats, he is perhaps getting me (or the marriage) through cat. At least that’s what I like to believe. 

While love is about newness, liberating and adventure-seeking, marriage is about sameness, and finding joy in it, much like cats do.  And that’s why marriage is like owning a cat.

So if I were a cat, this is what I would say to the husband:

• Just because we are in the same room, it doesn’t mean we have to talk. I know all that talk about nurturing, but silence is good enough.
• Sometimes I might lick you, or give you a pedicure, even if you don’t ask for it. It’s how I show my love, even though I am not expected to. But don’t expect it at the same time, every day. That’s what dogs do.
• We have just signed up to be together for life. Can we cut through the crap of ‘I love you’ and “You are the most important person in my life’ and ‘I don’t think I can live without you.’ May be you can do it, but I can’t. I am a cat.
• It’s fine, we are husband-wife, but each one of us is still entitled to the best spot in the bed. The only thing that matters is, who gets there first.
• We are so over the phase of being polite and entertaining random people and doing things to please others.  Don’t go there.
• Sometimes, I may want to cuddle with you. At other times, I may not feel like showing up when you walk in that door. It should be cool either way.
• I may do things that are out of character, like fetch a ball, or serve you your newspaper in bed, but don’t get used to it.
• When you leave town, I get to be me. I love it. So don’t expect me to say that I miss you. That’s what lovers do. We are married.
• Two people living together is enough noise. Let’s not over-communicate. 
• And please, no surprises. I hate it.

P.S 

This post is a response to a hilarious link on How falling in love is like owning a dog sent to me by my friend Natasha. I had to do a cat on it. 

If you truly want to be single, get married

To those of you still in the dating game, in a relationship, or on the verge of a relationship — I feel for you.

Not because I am a smug-married who is trying to show off a picture-perfect life of a husband, a baby and two cats (because if you see how I live, it's far from perfect). But because I have the one thing that you don't have — the freedom to be rude. To be me. To say what I feel and get away with it. Because we have our whole life to make up, and neither of us is going anywhere.

Well, I have been thinking about it, ever since the husband told me that I was much ruder now that before he married me. And I realised—this whole dating/being in a relationship thing is too much about being polite. About letting the other person have their point of view. Their thing on the menu.  Their choice of temperature for the air-conditioning. Their choice of which place to go to, or who to make brunch plans with.

Needless to say, you end up doing a lot of what you don’t really want to do, because there is all this pressure of being good. About being sensitive. Because after all, you are in it for the long haul (or at least, that's a good way to go about it)

It's always about, "Honey, would you like to do (insert activity that gives you a rash here)? And you are like, "Sure, when would you like to go?"

We also had a cute a/c thing going in the first few weeks of dating that ceased being cute when I realised that he slept optimally at 18 degrees. I hated air-conditioning, and could, at a pinch, bear it at 24 degrees. But we played keeping count just to humour the other.

Honey, is 20 ok for you?

Ummm, may be 23?

How about 22?

Ok, done!

But things change after marriage. Now there’s freedom. Freedom to say no. Freedom to veto. Freedom to express your views about their life, their friends, their idea of a good time. Freedom to give a rat’s ass.

Now it’s more like, “I’m sweltering here, I need the a/c tonight!”

“But I am freezing..! And it’s pouring cats and dogs outside.”

“Well you can wear a jacket!”

“So, you can shed some clothes.”

Marriage is no pressure at all, its freedom. It’s how it was designed to be. Eat what the hell you want, be as bad as you want, say what you want and never say what you don’t want, and all will still be well.

 Now it's more like, "Honey, there’s this wild party on Friday..."

"No I am not going to a party where you have to come dressed as a monkey, get your own booze, your own food and your own toilet seat."

"Ummm okay"

The fight lasts forever, so there is enough time to be rude. Now isn't that actually liberating, than dragging yourself to said party, hanging around with bimbettes and himbettes who are too busy getting wasted, and expecting you to drop them to addresses they are not sure of themselves? Or being told that OMG, you are the best married couple ever, because you are so cool, and you party even after you’ve had a baby.. blah blah (fill in the blanks)

A child gives you additional room to be rude. Any obnoxious trait inherited can be attributed to the spouse, and the good stuff can be gloated over as coming from your gene pool. So convenient, no?

I love being married.

Why do men marry?

 So I am back. After a three week hiatus, some of which was technically a vacation, a rather feeble attempt at finding ‘me’ time post marriage. Okay, I am one of those people who loves travelling alone (although now, I am inextricably linked to a blooming toddler whose boarding pass still lists him as an infant, much to our collective annoyance). 

Yes, I did miss the husband when it came to negotiating luggage and trolleys, but that was about it. I guess when you’ve been single for as long as I have been and married for as little as I have been, you value the ‘me’ time even more. The boy is a good traveller, low maintenance, loves airport lounges, the outdoors, markets, parks, new faces, new food and practically everything I love, so was a good travel companion. He is also in that phase where his smile melts hearts and faces, giving me additional me time to wander, ever so slightly out of his radar.

The very next day, the husband called. Now, I have said this before, but I can’t deal with these “miss you” calls, whatever that makes me out to be. “Sorry to bother you darling, but Nadia...”

Nadia is my first born, my feline goddess, the resident slut.

Turns out, Nadia jumped out the window on to the ledge (don’t panic, I live on the second floor, so it wasn’t really danger zone), and decided to go walkabout around the perimeter of the building. The husband had, in the meantime called an animal NGO,  an ambulance and the fire department. Two hours and no interventions later, Nadia walked back into the house.

Phew! And it was only day one, I thought.  

On day two, he called again. No, actually, this time he croaked.

“What happened to your voice?”

“It’s pouring cats and dogs in Bombay. I think I have got the sniffles. Also my throat hurts, and I can’t talk much.”

How wonderful, I thought. Would that mean no more calls?

“Why don’t you talk to me instead? Should I start a course of Amoxycillin? Is it better to start it now, or wait till tomorrow, because I really really want to go to this party tonight and break it down. It will cheer me up.”

I was tempted to start a lecture on the demerits of mixing alcohol with antibiotics and the pharmacist in me (yes, I have one of those degrees tucked away under my clothes in the cupboard) was outraged at the abuse of my favourite, cheap and cheerful drug which helped me wean him off the ten-times-as expensive antibiotic that he was addicted to, prior to meeting me. Not that I am one for drugs anyway, but they help with the whining. 

Whatever.

Turns out he did go to the party and he did break it down with the five-inch heel types and did get his Party Hard Driver (yes!) to drop a certain nubile nymphet home and did go to an after-party too, and did feel twice as miserable for the next two days.

But the calls stopped. And I was able to get back to ‘me’ time.

And then it was time to return.

I came home to a few things, apart from a tender husband:

An Aquaguard that had stopped working.

A broadband datacard (that is what Reliance chooses to call its abyssmal internet connector) that wouldn’t work.

Random lights and bulbs that had gone bust and hadn’t been replaced.

An absconding maid.

Over-fattened cats, thanks to a thriving diet of Whiskas (because the husband couldn’t really follow instructions on how to cook rice for their fish).

A strange red feather stole, a prop from aforementioned theme party that was gifted by nubile nymphet, as a token of appreciation for dropping her home.

Unfolded clothes.

Unchanged sheets.

A leaking bathroom.

Various takeways in the fridge that had begun to provide accommodation for flora and fauna.

Toenails on the verge of curling (his).

Which is when I realised that men are innately irreversible pigs, no matter how old they are, how long they’ve been married. And however hard you may try to work on them, they go back to rolling in their own filth (and are somewhat comforted by it) the minute your back is turned.

So even though marriage is the last chance for a man to redeem himself, it is far from perfect.

So far and yet so near

You know you are truly married when it’s hard to say ‘I miss you.’  

The husband has been away for three days at a scam fest (sorry, ad fest) and will be back tonight, so I write this in a hurry.  Through what seems to be an act of some divine pact betwen the ‘misser’ and the ‘missee’ in these situations, the misser calls the missee with some regularity (in this case, once or sometimes, twice a day). Not that I am complaining, but it seems somewhat expected of the missee (me) to say the aforementioned three words to the misser (him). Which means the missee also has to pretend to be the misser. O, whatever!

Unlike most people who fake it and say the fateful three words with a great degree of nonchalance (I am sure some of them mean it too) to their significant other, when they are away from them, I don’t. I can’t. Say it. To anyone.  I have explained this to the husband, who is still learning to deal with it, but I am sure it strikes him (and many others) as odd.

I don’t miss people. Or places. I remember all the times I have been away, and there have been plenty of those, and the calls back home (whether to the mother or the husband) have always been more of an obligation than a need. I am in the here and now, so flashbacks seem like a waste of time. May be the homeopath was right. May be I do have too much testosterone.

Marriage is full of motions, and saying that you miss your partner when he/she is away is one of those. Although I have come to terms with many others, I am still grappling with this one. I also think the true test for when you love someone comes when the person is away. It gives you the objectivity, distance and space to examine your love, to nurture it, feel it all over again. If you still have through the ‘I miss you’ motions, you never get the room to do it. Makes sense?

So yes, I had three days (going on four) of life without the husband. It felt strange to have a house to myself again, although said house is populated by a baby, two cats and a maid. But the point about these are that pleasantries are not expected and it’s a ‘to each its own kingdom’. It is liberating. The boy is just happy to have me around and speak without being spoken to, the cats are in their own hidey holes, waiting to be excavated, feeling a sense of calm that the paranoid cutlet who is always worrying about them running away is actually away. As for the maid, she is a girl after my own heart. Efficient, pro-active, and likes her silences.

The one thing that was truly liberating was that I didn’t have to act excited about a 42'' (television, what else?). There was less garbage generated (what’s with men and garbage?), easier to plan menus (the husband likes four vegetables, so I made all the rest in the vegetable kingdom in the last three days), read the paper and grab the pot without having to make a dash for it.

I think marriages should come with a built-in contract of one partner being away at least a few days a month (I would bargain for a week). It feels good. It gives perspective, objective. I have a friend who is constantly whining that her husband is never around (he is a pilot) and I wonder what her problem is.

Tomorrow, it will be back to business and choosing from four vegetables again. I am already plotting my getaway. 

Two cats, a husband and a baby: Love, actually

It took a nine hour date to seal the deal.  All of which was spent sipping a single malt (Glenmorangie, 12 years), talking (some), listening (a lot) and watching a Don DVD (of course, the old one, what were you thinking?).

Now if you know my attention span is worse than that of my 20 month-old, that must have been a big deal.

It happened when it didn’t matter whether or not it happened. I was, at that point, having the greatest love affair of my life – the one with myself. Yes, I am gorgeous, but it took me a long time and many wrong guys to fall in love with myself. When I finally did, along came the one.

I found many shallow reasons to write him off. The fact that he looked too young (I thought at that point that he was the younger sibling of the girl who introduced us). The fact that he had an American accent (diplobrat=American schools=funny, mixed up accent of no fixed address). The fact that he couldn’t cook. The fact that he couldn’t remember the last book he read. The fact that had never watched a play. The fact that he didn’t play any real sport. The fact that none of his friendships dated more than four years. The fact that he was technically, an alien in my city.

And then I found one solid reason not to. The fact that he totally got me. The fact that he made me laugh. The fact that he still does.

Now, many of you may find the sense of humour thing a bit overrated, but it is the one thing that can keep a marriage going. And when the baby comes, oh my god, you need it real bad.

I don’t understand very long engagements or very orchestrated ones. The best marriages I know are where neither party has officially proposed or been proposed to. He chickened out on proposing to me at an Indigo brunch, where he set the mood for me to expect it. Only to do so in the cab ride back home. It was funny.

He: May be we could do this forever.

Me: You mean brunch?

He:  No, I mean us.

Me: Ha ha, you are funny.

He: Is that a yes?

Me: Well, okay.

I reminded him it was a good thing I wasn’t into rocks and bent knees and all that jazz.  He thought that made me cooler.

A year and some later, we were married.

Four years, four mistresses ( a PS2, a PS3, a PSP and an Xbox), two cats and a baby later, I am still enjoying the ride.

Happy Valentine’s day to all.

Paradigm shift

I was recently hanging out with one of my favourite twenty-somethings (yes I do have a few friends who were born in the eighties) at a birthday do. She is 24, hot (and mean cool-hot, not hot-hot, which I find uni-dimensional), great at her job, super-popular with the boys and quite an achiever. Unlike other girls her age whose chief preoccupation is what to wear this Friday, or what colour should they get their tints done or lenses changed to (yes, I know I am being mean, but there is a point to make), she gives the impression of not labouring too much about her look, yet rocking it. On most days.

I was more intrigued about her when I found out she was dating a fly on the wall till a friend told me the classic rule. Hot girl never dates hot guys. Anyway, she is not dating him any more, but from what I saw of the new guy from Facebook, he ain’t no Adonis either.

Anyway, this is not about him. Here was her dilemma: most of her peers were getting married or were on the verge and planning babies and all of that. So she wondered: if she didn’t take the whole relationship thing seriously, would she get left behind? Should she really stop serial dating and finding that one guy to marry and have babies with? She did say that she didn’t really need a guy to feel complete at this point, but what if she got left behind? She didn’t want to be single at 30!

This was new. In my days, 30 was when the alarm bells rang, the biological clock went ding dong, the parents went chop chop and the friends started dropping dead (read getting married and leaving you) like flies. So somewhere in the next few years, you eventually wound up getting married.

But 24? Seriously? I feel so out of touch.

Aren’t the young people supposed to raise the bar? Change the rules? Shift the paradigm?

In my time, 24 was about career angst and how to communicate with the parental units and how to find a way to make money doing something you borderline like. These days, young people don’t seem to be wasting time pursuing degrees that are so not them (I mastered in Pharmacy, but wanted to write, at 23). So career paths are clearer, less murky and at least you are not on the wrong road. But marriage? Babies? That was nowhere on the radar at 24 even in my time.

So are we regressing or what? Will the next generation actually have babies at 20 and be grandparents at 50?

That, to me, was the revelation of the decade.

As Good(man) as it gets

This is an old post. But I am juggling too much this week, and you can never go wrong with Linda Goodman, can you? So this is hoping that Santa brings that special someone to your life, or if there is a special someone, keeps him/her, or if there is an unspecial someone, kicks him/her out of the chimney.

JAN 10, 2009

The husband recently pointed out that according to Linda Goodman, I was the bad guy and he was the good guy in our relationship. Hmmm.. Geminis have always been presented as bright, creative and communicative, but also fickle, breezy, too easily distracted and flighty, in the era when I used to read these books. Intrigued, I googled (yes, officially a verb) the Gemini woman-Cancer man compatibility and this what I found:


A Cancerian man needs lots of love, care and attention, which is definitely not her cup of tea. She has too many interests and distractions to do this.


Gemini will bring light-heartedness and banter in the life of the emotional Cancer. The Crab is much more emotional than the Gemini and tends to be more deeply attached. Gemini, on the other hand, likes to keep everything superficial and on the outer surface.

I was going to give up when I found something positive.

He is the most loving of the sun signs and she, the most driven by her mind. If it works, it’s the ideal heart-mind combination.

It's funny how one goes through an entire phase of dating well researched, well-documented men, and finally, when you meet ‘the one’, all theory goes out of the window. Prior to the husband, most men I dated were Linda Goodman-proofed. So much so, that one dismissed the lack of enterprise of someone by attributing it to ‘being more attuned to things that were spiritual and mind-driven’, another’s phone clinginess was discounted to ‘excellent communicative skills’, a third’s self-obsession was camouflaged as ‘confidence and zest’, someone’s lack of commitment was merely ‘the-boy-who-never-grows-up’, and so on.

Life was all about making boyfriends look good on paper. Interestingly, some of these men were, according to Ms Goodman, perfect soul mates for me. I think she recommended Librans, Sagittarians and Ariens for me and asked me to stay away from Cancerian, Virgo and Scorpio men.

But here I am, with my so-called ‘moody crab’, enjoying every bit of my marriage. Especially the fact that we are as different as chalk and cheese. He likes order, I like flinging stuff around. I look at a cow and think of the mechanics of rumination. He looks at a cow and thinks of dinner. I am spontaneous, he likes planning. I dig paperwork, he runs a mile from it. I am a backpacker, he is an armchair traveller. I like fruit at room temperature, he likes it chilled. I like the corner shop, he likes malls. I am a yes and no person, he finds it hard to say no. I am organic, he is processed.

I guess what works is that we both love what we become when we are with each other. And we both love a good scrabble game. And we are still learning how to be good losers.

Picture-imperfect

I am single-screen and the husband is multiplex. Therein lies the biggest difference in our marriage. I am brazen, say-it-like-it-is, loud, with jagged edges; he is poised, politically correct and the epitome of well-mannered. We still work for each other, and are fairly self-deprecating, so the marriage works. But our differences come to the fore whenever a Dabangg happens.

So while I had to be me and watch Dabangg in a single-screen theatre, because the dabangg in me thinks that’s the only way to do it, the husband chooses to go the multiplex way, because there’s only so much of the real world he can take. Needless to say, I end up watching it twice, once for me and once for him.

I am shocked by the second viewing, to say the least. It is like watching a totally different film. Salman makes an entry. Nothing happens. Salman delivers his first line. No response. Salman takes off his shirt. Nothing. No one gets the brazenness of the writing, forget the nuances. Save one senior citizen who laughed at my favourite line (about the hero punching so many holes in the villain that he wouldn’t be able to tell his orifices apart), it could well be that everyone in the theatre was in a coma. Is this what happens when you pay as much for your popcorn as for your ticket? I wonder.

Coupling of today is a bit like watching a movie in a multiplex. Good on paper, perhaps good for the economy, but lacking in soul. On the other hand, people are coupling all the time, and I have seen several couples in the recent past— some cosmetic, some real, some transient — but rarely have I seen real passion, shared laughs, chemistry, repartee and a I-wish-that-could-be-us feeling. Where are the imperfections, where are the rough edges, where are the real people being their real selves?

Perhaps everything is camouflaged by the muted lighting and disinfectedness of the places people hang out in (have you noticed how few homes you have been into lately?) and no one ever asks anything, so nothing needs to be revealed. May be they are just reading too many self-help books and learning to be guarded, or maybe, like multiplexes, they have all lost their patina of the real stuff, the stuff that tells them apart.

May be I am just meeting the wrong people. Because I don’t get how marriages can be ended by deleting your spouse from your friend list and then announcing in your Facebook status that it is the end of the road? How can one fall out-of-love with someone you clearly married in your senses? How can relationships be terminated by sending a group sms (which also includes your near and dear) that you have, after all, chosen to remain friends?

But then, I am so single-screen, I will never get it.

Till knot do us part

So Shashi Tweet Tharoor has tied the knot for the third time. Good work there. After a weekend spent in post mortems of four marriages (thankfully, no funerals) that have fallen apart and a fifth that has been redefined as an open marriage, this comes as positive news, although Tharoor is no distant relative the last I checked my family tree.

The said marriages analysed have always been a little too dubious for me; one too volatile, one too aseptic, one too convenient and one too strategic, if you know what I mean. They have all called it quits and are in various stages of negotiation or paperwork, but my point is, do they know what it means to start all over again? Do they really think they will get it right the second time around? Do they believe the fault lies with the person and not marriage as a concept?

May be I am a tad old-fashioned, as was the girl-friend I was discussing this with, but we both agreed that at no point does a marriage ‘stop working’, unless you decide to stop working on it.

A bit of wisdom here to people on the verge or if you are courting someone: if it’s somewhat working, tie the knot before you really get to ‘know’ the other person. Because the more you know, the less you will like.

I’m always sceptical of couples who go out for too long, before they (usually one of them) decide to tie the knot. What will you know in four years that you won’t know in four months? (assuming, of course, that you are blessed with reasonable intelligence and an acute sense of extrapolation ). Longer the courtship, more the build-up, greater the expectations, higher the chances of disappointment (two of the four marriages discussed had very long courtships)

So other than a bereavement of the spouse in early years of a marriage, I see no reason why one would want to marry again. Once is gory enough. Imagine dealing with a life-long work in progress, OCDs, bizarre sleep cycles, another wardrobe, books you don’t care about, sharing a pot, your favourite food, quilt, shoe rack, suitcases, computer.. the works. Now imagine reaching an equilibrium (however skewed) with one person and then having to do it all over again with another. Which brings me to: how different can it be the second time around? So, unless the spouse is a psycho, abusive, a terrorist or a threat to society, why do the work again?

In the husband’s simplistic PS3 logic, why would you try to overwrite a perfectly saved game with something that could be er.. slightly dodgy or dubious?

Now, some women might be offended by that analogy, but I think I know the husband enough to know that if he has started equating me with a PS3 game, I must be highly indispensable.

Touché!

To write or not to write

I realise that being a gender columnist is more a disadvantage than I had imagined. Unlike, say, writing about B or C grade celebrities (who are always eager to tell you what their favourite fashion accessory is or where did they go for free booze on Independence day, or how busy they are not working), in my case, good material is not easy to come by and certainly not consistent.

The following has been happening far too often for me to ignore. It’s one of those weekends. There’s a bunch of friends – men and women –some married, some involved, some single, some of no specific relationship status. The alcohol is flowing, the music, catalytic, the food, capable of opening all your sensory pores and loosening your tongue. And then, something wise/witty/wicked is about to be said. Suddenly, the said person turns to look at me. “Oh, please don’t write about this..”

Woe upon me!

Earlier it was aunts who said, “Aiyyo Ramachandra, we better be careful. She might write about this.” One uncle recently told me, “I don’t understand your column these days. Please write only about your mother or your cats; that I like.” Or it was the mother’s voice, rather ominous, “Why did you have to write THAT? Now all my friends will know...”. Or it was the husband waking up on Tuesday morning with, “Am I going to get busted today?”

The fact that there are enough people out there who don’t know who I am or what I do helps. And thank god for them, else I would have never made it this far (this column will soon hit a double century).

Consider the odds. The husband has been bashed more than he can recover from, the brother is too far away from my radar, the father hasn’t been up to much lately, the son hasn’t really grown into his manhood, and male friends are always measured. Cat (female) is too alpha male and cat (male) is expectedly and consistently, a bumbling idiot. Where does that leave me?

Since we are now married with child, it so turns out that our repertoire of single friends is rapidly diminishing as they have probably found the first exit and run off. So we end up mostly with married (sometimes with child) couples and inevitably, marriage or husbands are always discussed.

But, in total breach of trust, I must share a great line a friend recently spewed at one of those orgasmic lunches (sorry, it was too good not to be reproduced). We were trying to define marriage and I said, “Marriage is about making lists of things that the other person (always the husband) is supposed to do but hasn’t.”

And she said, “Marriage is like joining the Amazing Race with one hand and one leg tied up.”

Now, someone please better that. Or give me a subject.

No telly no cry

The husband looked gloomy, as if hit by a thundercloud. I asked him if he was unwell and he pointed to the remote. “I can’t believe it. I know I forgot to recharge, but they can’t deprive me of my hard disk. My recorded stuff is mine. How can they deny me that?”

We were having a blank screen situation thanks to our satellite television subscription not being renewed on time. It was one of the few things I always mark as ‘his’ domain, so it’s no wonder it didn’t get done. What really hurt was he didn’t believe that all would be lost, but as it turned out, it was.

Inside, I was screaming with joy. So this is what life would be like if there was no telly. We finally had coffee on the table, breakfast on the table, lunch on the table. We were family! We were having real conversations, and not stolen bits when we paused the TV to warm our plates (me) or refill our beer (he).

In order to make things ‘normal’ for him, I volunteered my Seinfeld DVD collection. It worked, but not for very long. By the end of the evening, I could bear it no more, because his face had shrunk to the size of a pea and signs of self pity were writ large. I turned martyr. I offered to go to the hole in the wall despite the downpour and my nesting instincts to ‘recharge’. Aaaal was well.



***

Cut to Sunday brunch with (largely) singletons, which was a break, plus I got to meet the ex’s current and really liked her. Now, where I come from, this is more the exception than the rule (making the effort, not the liking bit) but it was a good feeling. But one thing I still don’t know how to react to is when someone tells me, “I’ve heard so much about you!”. I am at a loss and almost tempted to ask, “Like, what?”.But then, it’s tricky and one prefers to just bask in the thought that it might be good things and smile beatifically.

I realised singletondom was a bigger giveaway than being married was. Mr Adonis, parading his newly acquired Zara jacket in a near 80 % humidity situation was single. So was Ms Barbie parading her designer gumboots (there are three days in the entire monsoon when you can wear them, but this was not one of them). Or someone telling you when you leave early from a brunch to fetch a help who has been specially imported for you from the wilderness of Jharkhand, “Isn’t that really housewifely?”

If I had said, “Isn’t THAT rather singletonly?”, I would have been labelled a ‘smug married’, so I laughed breezily and mumbled something practical.

I guess the chief difference between being single and being married is that while the latter is not in a hurry to change their status, whether on Facebook or in real life, the former clicks the button the minute they so much as smell a relationship.

Sorry if that was smug, but part a) of this post is enough to burst the bubble.

Cook cook hota hai

I have a cook. She’s incredibly bad. She meets the brief though, as the only thing I asked her before hiring was, “Do you know how to cook?”

Now we all know that knowing ‘how to cook’ doth not a cook make. But she puts something edible-looking on the table and absolves me of the dirty work (peeling, chopping, stirring, frying, mixing, grinding...yawn).

The husband has his moments, but they seldom surface in the kitchen, apart from ordering more Bisleri or kitchen towels or knives or wine openers or pepper mills... you get the drift.As far as ‘what do we do for dinner?’ goes, he has just one solution. Cheese burst pizzas from Domino's. And though I frequently delegate a bit of chopping here and there to him, it takes so much supervising that I’d rather do it on my own.

The ‘cook’ has no issues with auto-piloting daal, roti, sabzi, salad/soup on a daily basis and has a pleasant demeanour (and we all know how much that is worth) so it works for me. At least that’s what I thought.

Now I am a good cook (okay, modesty doesn’t look good on me) and one might wonder why I would deploy the services of someone (and less than mediocre at that) for something that I do incredibly well. It’s simple. Cooking consumes a huge amount of creative energy, and when you are trying to write and raise an infant, it just gets in the way. Too much distraction. Too much passion. Too addictive.

So I decided for a while to lower my benchmarks and just eat what she put on the table. It worked for a few weeks, and then I found my way back to the place where I feel like a goddess.

I started with trying to salvage a section of what she made. Now the problem with food is, you can’t delete, you can only add. So, although ‘less is more’ is my culinary philosophy, I end up doing the exact opposite for the sake of palate sanity. Like adding lemon to balance fieriness, or jaggery to offset tartiness.

It struck me that salvaging someone’s cooking as opposed to cooking from scratch is the difference between marriage and motherhood. When you marry a man, there are all these ingredients that have been there before you. Mothers. Fathers. Sisters. Brothers. Good girlfriends. Weird girlfriends. Good friends. Weird friends. Randoms. More randoms. And they have done stuff to the man you married. Like stirred when he had to be left alone. Or left to char when required to stir. Or fried when he had to be sautéed. Or boiled when he had to be steamed. The result? A recipe that still needs to be worked upon.

With motherhood, it’s easy. You do what comes instinctively to you, you add the ingredients you think work, you mash some, steam some, sing some, hum some, and more often than not, the result is exactly what you want it to be.

I still have a good 18-20 years before another woman has issues with my work in progress.Bon Appetit!

Mind over map

Okay, we all know this. Men suck at directions. And if they do read maps, like Allan Pease would like to claim, it’s probably because it gives them a prop, something to clutch onto, look busy, so we don’t load them with more things to do. It’s never about getting us to a certain place in the most optimum way. Why, then, are we still reading the book Why men don’t listen and women can’t read maps?. It just doesn’t make sense. We are the map, we are the directions, we are everything.

Last week was a first of sorts. The first time, in my three years of working for this newspaper that four women got together to chat about their men. It surprised me no end how our stories were similar. We had the same peeves:

Our men had too much stuff they weren’t willing to give away.

Our men were lousy at directions. Mine knew the way to things from Phoenix mills, or at best, Zenzi and another colleague’s, from Basilico.

Our men loved drivers, because it absolved them from the task of finding anything. Anywhere.

Our men had to get to somewhere familiar to head to somewhere unfamiliar. Never mind if it was a geographical absurdity. Like say, going to Croma to go to Del Italia.

Our men hadn’t read a map in years.

The husband has a deep inertia towards relocation, and I know by now that it has nothing to do with getting adjusted to a new place, the fact that he is Cancerian, or is it about moving from South Bombay (or wherever Lower Parel fits) to North Bombay. Yes, it is partly about finding a shop that can deliver beer, bread, and cigarettes, without batting an eyelid or pointing out that he was asking for too much. But it’s more about how he would have to find new nuclei to cling to.

He finally has. He can find his way to Croma and Landmark, and everything else stems from there. But every once in a while, I throw him a googly and take a road quiz. “Okay, we have to go to Four bungalows market and straight down from there.”

Blank face.

“Remember Indigo Cafe?”

Happy face.

Last weekend, we were invited to a dinner at Yari Road, a place that, for some reason intimidates the husband, almost giving him the feeling of being extradited. To top it all, I said I wanted to head on my own with the infant, since I didn’t want to wait indefinitely for him till he returned from work.

“I can draw you a map,” I said.

He winced.

There we go again, I thought. I waited. He swung by home with amazing precision of timing, simply because he was petrified of doing the trudge on his own.

But then, nothing has changed for me, really.Visions of my dad leaving us stranded at a railway station while he went to buy smokes and the train was ready for departure at another platform flash by. So do that of my brother driving us into the Canadian border, while showing me the Niagara falls, just as I landed in the United States, 10 years ago. During the ensuing one-hour interrogation by customs authorities as to how I could lose my way into another country, I stayed mum.

Allan Pease should be sued, I thought to myself.

Sex, Lies and Videotape

It takes an incredibly stupid woman for a husband to have an affair outside of marriage. It takes an even more stupid woman for a husband to have nine of them. But it takes an ‘other woman’ of outstanding stupidity to think that such an affair is about love.

As Tiger Woods’ mistresses emerge from the woodworks (nine and counting), it makes me wonder, “What was the wife thinking?”

The only multi-tasking men can manage with some panache is watching television while eating their dinners. That too, because they don’t necessarily think the two tasks are inseparable. So for a woman not to know what her husband is up to when he is not with her, it takes an amazing lack of talent and intelligence, to say the least.

Woods’ recent car crash has inadvertently opened a can of mistresses, text messages, photos, video footage, voicemails, the works! How he managed his affairs, that too, with nine different women while being married, is a page many men are dying to rip off from his book — the way it’s been discussed, it’s keeping him more in the news than his golf ever did.

One married male friend turned a Facebook fan of Woods post his recent expose, and states in his status message, “All married men should be fans of Tiger Woods. The alleged mistress is super hot.”

“Come on Tiger!” said another status message.

A third one said, “Three down. How many more mistresses to go?”

It’s like the men are living vicariously through Woods and making mental notes about, “I should ask him how he did it..”

Apparently what kept the mistresses quiet was confessions of love, the media reports. Duh?

When Bollywood was abuzz with Hrithik Roshan’s alleged affair with Barbara Mori, it evoked similar reactions from men in my universe. “Hmm… she is hot…” (The statement was accompanied by a faraway look on their faces)

Yes, but you are not, moron.

We all know women who are at the giving or receiving end of such affairs. Someone I know had an affair with a married sugar daddy for eight years, and at the end of it was left with the realization that ‘he wasn’t really into marriage and kids’ and ‘we wanted different things’. Of course, you dodo!

Her professional life, on the other hand, was catapulted by the sugar-daddy connection, which is perhaps what will happen to the Woods line-up.

But there are enough gorgeous women out there entangled with talent-less, spineless, charisma-less men in so-called ‘love-less’ marriages, only hoping that they would leave their wives. Unfortunately there is no reward for ratting them out, like the waitress who was offered $ one million to stay mum. Or the wife who was offered $18 million to the wife to stay.

Methinks Woods’ wife would have the millions in her account, whatever happened with her marriage. So it’s not about ‘rolling in the dough,’ as some men would point out as her reason for staying in the marriage.

But it made me realise one thing. Marriage, even to tigers, is a big deal.

Verse case scenario

The husband said to me recently, in appreciation of my wifely and motherly excellence, “I feel like writing a poem about you. I would if I could, but since I can’t, I will stick to naming my weapons after you..”

Before you roll your eyes any further, let me explain. The husband is a gamer (for those of you who came in late) and no, nothing has changed post infant, except perhaps, the fact that he uses headphones while he goes on about massacring people and escaping with the loot, so that the infant is not permanently marked by violence at the tender age of (almost) five months.

The weapon he is referring to is ‘Lalli’s bane’, something that has the power to inflict instant fatigue leading to immobilization and eventual death (just like I do with my sharp tongue, he says) with just a few whacks in a combat with soldiers, orcs, minatores, evil henchmen, or generally anyone he wants to kill in the game, Elder Scrolls Oblivion.

The infant has also joined the ranks in his gaming world and currently, Rehaan is the name of the main character in Fallout 3 (his current PS3 craze), a boy who is trying to save the world in a post apocalyptic Washington DC, and searching for his father to solve a mystery. Earlier, I was Lee, the warrior princess in a first person fantasy shooter game. “See, I think of you even when you are not around,” he says, almost in his defence.

Coming back to poetry, there was a time when I used to judge men by how well they wrote. Or least how well they wrote letters and notes and poems to me. It was an unstated pre-qualification for any man in my life, and many not-so-nice-men were given the benefit of doubt just because they wrote poetry, or what seemed like it then. Like a friend of mine who judges men by whether they recognize that her bag is, indeed, a Louis Vuitton. But I realized pretty late that the cadaverous poets also came with other baggage that I didn’t necessarily want to deal with, and besides, in the email era, it didn’t seem to matter any more. If you want something interesting to say to someone, just find it on Google.

The husband doesn’t write poetry, or cook or talk about rainforests, eco-friendliness or recycling, or approves of my desire to settle in a village or enjoys getting wet in the rain, or likes rearranging furniture every now and then, or is a backpacker or has been chased by a cow while going to school. But then that would have made two of us. And what could be more boring than marrying your clone? So I am just happy to be the ‘bane’ of his existence.

About a boy

The husband and I went on a lunch and movie date this Sunday, infant duly in care of the mother and the newly acquired baby maid. It felt like courtship again, both of us all dressed up, chatting nineteen to the dozen as we drove into down. The out-of-turn October rain added the right touch of romance. But what made it really significant was that the movie chosen was Wake up Sid.

Two minutes into the film and we turned around to look at each other in shock. The movie was about us! He is my Sid, the silver spooned diplo-brat of 100 dollar-a-month (or some such obscene amount) pocket money, driving a BMW at age 18, partying for a living, downing shots like there’s no tomorrow, master of the after-party who once thought credit cards were actually assets one earned, and the kind of person who, if there ever was a fire, would save his games first.

Me, I spent my entire youth in labs I didn’t want to be, doing research I didn’t want to do, hanging out with people I didn’t really care for, and, in general, doing things that were not really me. To top it all, I was negotiating down payments and housing loans at age 25, worshipping my PPF account, learning the power of compound interest, understanding mutual funds and plotting to run away from home and live my own life, spend my own money, drive my own car, cook my own food and buy my own furniture.

And then, somewhere along, we met. And fell in love. And got married. And had a child. And are still as different as chalk and cheese. Or Sid and Aisha.

“Thank god I didn’t meet you when you were 24. You’d have been too immature for me,” I said.

“At 24, I was too immature for me,” he admitted.

I realised why I married him. It’s because the Aisha in me totally digs the Sid in him.

And more importantly, he helps me find the Sid in me, and celebrate it! What keeps the romance alive is that the Sid in him will never die — age, job, infant notwithstanding.

Post the movie, I saw him prancing down the aisle, breaking into dance as the credits rolled down. He was no longer the responsible daddy that he has become, but transposed into his Sid avatar, wanting to be a mall rat, go clubbing, buy more gadgets, the works. (His response to ‘unpleasant’ things like taxes, accountant fees, brokerages and other expenses is still to spend an equivalent amount of money on games and gadgets). I gently reminded him that we had a three month old and this was not the time to buy a 50 inch TV.

“Well, what can I say? My moron days are over, but my child days are not….,” was his reply.

Weekend woes

The husband is currently a shade of beetroot. After having had a perfectly good weekend ruined by recurrent invasions from aliens, he is trying to regain his composure by punching as hard as he can on his PS3 controller and stuffing his body with an equivalent amount of junk. By the time you read this, a new working week would have begun and life will not be beautiful again.

But what’s gotta be done, gotta be done. So I make no big deal of the events that unfold over the weekend: a bunch of nincompoops masquerading as building society biggies armed with a troupe of workmen take over the apartment for alleged pipe-work, the cat tries to run away with the plumber, politics burgeon between the new hired help for the infant and the old housemaid, our financial planners and accountant pay us a visit, and in the midst of all this, I try to clear the clutter, collecting things for a garage sale for animal welfare, the husband trying to hoard (as usual), and me trying to convince him not to (as usual).

It comes naturally to me, as I am the queen of multi-tasking. To the husband, sitting in front of the television screen is also a task (which I reckon was all that he had planned for the glorious three-day weekend)

Anyway, the proceedings begin at 9 am on Saturday, me trying to wear a mask of stoic and the husband scowls, focusing on ‘keeping the airconditioning from running away’ from his room. Midway, I peek into the bathroom to check the proceedings and find a gaping hole in the ceiling, its nakedness replete with the iron skeleton and brick and all. “What if it rains tomorrow? The monsoon will come straight into the bathroom!,” I bark at the workmen (visions of me standing under a waterfall ala Zeenat Aman flash by)

“No madam, monsoon is over,” said one pipsqueak.

“What the.. (suddenly remember that the infant is in my arms)….What about rats, and other creatures?”

“Okay, we will put some maal then,” he mumbles.

The maal, as it turns out, is flung from ground level onto the ceiling, adding a splatter-painted look to the walls, but I can’t be bothered anymore. The husband, meanwhile is wondering aloud why I am prolonging the agony and not letting them go.

The gory is not over. Our financial planners are next. The husband winces when I tell him the meeting cannot be cancelled.

“Now they will come and take all our money away…What a torrid day!”

“They are not taking our money away. They are creating wealth,” says me of perennial wisdom. I have been speaking the right language ever since I read Rich Dad Poor Dad.

More bad news follows. The husband is told he has to part with another princely sum for auditing and accounts. The meeting is tomorrow. Creating wealth is something he cannot visualize by now.

He is distraught, wondering how his weekend got robbed right under his nose and how he can salvage whatever few hours are left. The infant, meanwhile has no clue of the goings on, and gurgles with laughter, shaking his fists with glee.

Touché!

Advance booking

The husband is a ‘let’s reserve a table’ kind of person while I am a ‘let’s go out for lunch’ kind. I find it absurd walking into a restaurant, having reserved a table and then discovering that most of the tables around me are empty. Because, in my mind, I have done the extra work of making that phone call, listening to a syrupy voice at the other end, talking to it for a good three minutes, and then not being rewarded for it. Ideally my reward would be the visual of other people begging for a table, while I breeze in with supreme confidence, just dropping my name.

On the other hand, I find it equally absurd cold-calling an eatery, noticing that most tables are empty and then being asked, “Do you have a reservation?”

The husband of course takes reservation to another level. He reserves an appointment for his routine haircuts at the salon-around-the-corner called Miracle, where, I reckon, he is the sole customer. Or at least the only customer who gives a fifty-rupee tip. Given that Miracle salon has more staff than clients any given day, the husband’s franticness about having to make that appointment seems a bit misplaced. But it’s still been hard for me to convince him that he can just show up.

It’s evident that I am a creature of spontaneity, while the husband likes planning (never mind that half the plans are never meant to be executed). I like just showing up. If the restaurant/movie/salon doesn’t have room for me, I’ll find another restaurant/movie/salon that does, or just find something else to do. So unless it’s a Rehaan Engineer play (which, if you miss once, you never get to see again) or a good stand-up gig, I never book in advance for anything.

In my single-screen childhood, going for a movie was a high-adrenaline expedition. First of all, we never knew if we’d get tickets, then we never knew what was plan B if we didn’t. Could we afford them ‘in black’? Would it be another movie in another theatre? Would we go out for dinner? Ice-cream? Or would we just go home? But the option of booking tickets in advance for another day was never considered by my get-up-and-go family.

Booking is also a bit impersonal according to me.. where is the thumpety thump of the heart when you walk into a theatre not knowing whether you will actually get to see the film? Where is that feeling of “OMG! There are 17 people in front of me, so will I make it?”.

Unfortunately, multiplexes and their multiple choices have taken the adrenaline out of movie watching. Life, strangely, has become a series of plan Bs.