Big deal

A dear friend has declared she is out in the market. She is attractive, successful, well-travelled, articulate, funny, reads poetry, has great taste, has a great cook, and is a great human being.
Now, why would anyone want to ruin a perfectly good life like that, I wonder. She reasons that she doesn’t want to feel like she didn’t try. So she is on a dotcom hunt for a suitable man. She reasons she deserves a good shot at finding Mr Big, after having been with a few not-so-good insignificants. She recently met a Not-so-big in this scenario, but something’s telling her to hang on. There just might be a Mr Big lurking around somewhere, she thinks. As for the candidate in question, she was his Big, a scenario though flattering, isn’t exactly the optimum one.

We all want to be with men who will sweep us off our feet, know jazz and wine, fill a room, cook us a great meal occasionally, have out-of-the-box travel ideas, are capable of being angry and sad, kill us with their voice, and be just the right level of romantic (more about levels in another column). And of course be successful, suave and desirable. In short, we are looking for the great Indian oxymoron.

I don’t know anyone who has found their Big. Yes, they might have been in trying relationships with him, or they are yet to meet him, but most of the women I know have ended up with Not-so-big, and are still in a good place. This is not to say that my friend should settle for less, but may be just continue with the greatest love affair of her life — the one with herself. When that happens (and it often takes a while), the Bigs get drawn to you like magnets.

But if I take a quick roll call of the singletons in my life, the number of interesting women far outweighs the number of interesting men. And yes, men might feel that’s unfair, but take a piece of paper and list five interesting single men and women you know, and write to me. We’ll do the math.

My paradigm for an interesting woman is—if I were a man, would I date her? If the answer is yes, she goes into the list.

The basic difference between men and women, or at least the men and women I know, is that women make the most of waiting for Big. They get makeovers, they work on their look, they straighten or curl their hair (depending on what they have), they travel, they trek, they go on spiritual journeys or look for inner peace, they change careers, go wine tasting, they learn salsa and belly dance and capoeira.

Men whine. They whine that they have no interesting women to take spiritual journeys or salsa or capoeira with. They whine that there are no muses to dress up for. Basically what they want is to be rehabilitated, and they hope that they can be their slouchy selves and someone will just come and whisk them away.

In the meanwhile, they can continue their torrid affairs with their large-screen televisions.

Pause and effect

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a married man in possession of a smart wife must be in want of a pause button.

While ‘pausing’ the wife seems empowering, especially if she’s the kind who speaks her mind (and has too much of it), menfolk haven’t got that lucky yet. It’s right now limited to pausing live TV. The point is, the suckers think it’s a big deal and will do for now.

So ever since we’ve been privy to Aamir Khan and Gul Panag’s tele-banter on prime time, courtesy the onslaught of Tata Sky commercials, the husband has been cherishing dreams of Tata Sky Plus and sure enough, this birthday, he demanded his pound of flesh. I was too zonked out in post partum euphoria to realise what I had walked in to, but once the team arrived with the apparatus, and their tariff plans, it was too late. The damage was done. Another remote had been added to his array. We now had the power to pause live TV, and Sky was the limit (and unlike Khan and Panag, I am delivering this line absolutely free of cost)

Of course, realizing that it would be vulgar to make it seem all about him, the husband was smart enough to centre the proceedings around me. He said, and I kid you not, that since I was now preoccupied with baby duty, I might want to pause programming if I have to attend to the infant, and then go back to where I had left it, just by touch of a button. Also, I might want to record my favourite programmes (which on last count were three) in case I was too busy, tired or sleepy to sit through them, and then watch at leisure. And imagine what fun it would be to have an entire series of Nigella Lawson! Smartly done, mister!

“But why record when you can watch live?” was my point..

"Because it allows you to!” is his.

So while pausing or recording Chew, ITAS, and Hotel Babylon (my new find on BBC Entertainment) are joys that have been added to my kitty, the husband has several. Most of them of course are under the guise of “I thought you might enjoy it.”

It’s been barely three weeks, but our 160 GB hard disk is already full with programmes and movies we might never see. Just like the clothes and shoes he hoards, but never wears, or the freezer he stocks, but never raids, or the games he buys, but never plays.

Meanwhile, the football season returns with the 9th August Community Shield match and the Premier and Champions Leagues thereafter, and with them, a huge potential to record or pause and return. And of course, fast-forward the blessed ads that made us buy this contraption in the first place!

My life has changed just a wee bit. Earlier, he spent sleepless nights viewing movies across channels. Now he watches one and records the other.

Satellite woes

Husband-to-be stopped mid sentence while he was talking to me. As he was staring open mouthed at the television set, I noticed that his Dish TV had gone on the blink. “Why didn’t they phone me, or just send me an sms?” he whined. “They should give me advance notice before doing something so drastic.” He continued whining for the next half hour about how he has been so prompt about recharging, and how technically, he was all sorted till Jan 14, and how they must have made a mistake…..blah..blah..blah… There was a veil of annoyance, anger, depression and deprivation on his face all at once.
 I said, “But all you have to do is text or call them or buy a recharge card or whatever it is you do with these things.”
“You don’t understand. There is a Man U match tonight. What will I do now? They will never reactivate it in less than three days. My weekend is doomed.”
“What is wrong with not watching TV for a few days?”…I blurted..
Stunned silence.
I realised as soon as I said it that it was so not the right thing to say. It’s like someone telling me, “What’s wrong with not eating vegetables for a few days?”
Three days later, he is still whining.
Okay, so I am marrying a TV junkie. He loves his TV so much that he never has the heart to turn it off. He could leave it on even when he went out, as it saves the trouble of turning it off and on every time. If he had his way, he would have a television in every room, including the bathroom, lest he missed something when he went into his reluctant showers.
I remember, one of the first romantic things he ever said to me was… “Hey, you want to pick your favourite program so we can watch it together?”
My choices were Travel and Living and Animal Planet.
He never asked me that question again.
I still have to get back to him on whether I would like a TV in the kitchen, so I could watch TV while I am “stirring something,” or “reaching out for the spice rack” or “cleaning broccoli”.
Ahem. I see domestic tension already.
Which is why a psychologist once said that the television is like the third person in the relationship. But then they say, you never marry someone with the intention of changing them.

***
The father is the master and commander of Tata Sky (and he does go jhinga-la-la over it). However, it irks him that he still hasn’t been able to eliminate the yellow envelope thingee from the top of the screen. It’s like being punished despite doing your homework or wearing your uniform ironed. The mother is of little help in the scheme of things as she has just learnt how to use the mobile phone, and it will be a while before she graduates to interactive TV guides.

As for me, life goes on, channel or no channel. Give me a book, some music or a free wall to do my asanas any day.