About a hat

The husband wears a hat. He is not bald or balding, neither does he have an ugly skull or dandruff or a wig he is trying to hide.  He is not trying to talk his face away (which is also interesting, if I may). He wears the hat because he likes it, and because it makes him who he is. The hat was sheer happenstance – a dancing night at a nightclub a few summers ago when a few chosen heads were rewarded with hats by the hostesses and his happened to be one. But what was a happy one-night stand for most men in the room turned out to be a long-term relationship for the husband. The hat and he were made for each other. The hat was here to stay.

It has its uses. He is of lean frame and looks much younger than his age. The hat offers many things. Age. Attitude. Insouciance. Mystery. Rank. Sometimes, a point of conversation. At other times, sheer prop powers.

Wherein all the trouble begins. I have done enough theatre to know the power of a hat on stage. In his case, the dance floor. The husband is a fabulous dancer, and the hat just takes him to another level. Things happen.  People are mesmerised. They stop and watch. Then the evil one in them thinks, “Why can’t I have what he has?” The problem begins when one of them believes that the hat can actually transform their gauche self into something fluid, fun and fabulous. Men cannot stand the fact that a married guy gives them a run for their money, so they often try to ask him for the hat, hoping it will turn them into less of insects than they actually are. Sometimes, in a suicidal move, they try to take it off his head.  Women do it too, sometimes they want it for themselves, at other times, for their men.

So every time we go out, there is a hat incident. Everyone wants a piece of the hat. Some guy walks up to him and says he wants it. Another takes it off his head in a deft move, placing it on his own. A woman sends her boyfriend to ask for the hat. A man sends his girl-friend (or boyfriend) to ask for the hat. The husband refuses. They make eye contact. Then follows a verbal duel.  The husband promises dire consequences. Some retreat, some try harder. Some get beaten.

I have no problem with the hat. It helps me play out my fantasy of being married to Johnny Depp, and I must say I know few men who can carry off a hat and the husband certainly is one of them. But what I didn’t bargain for, is that sometimes, I live more on the edge than Vanessa Paradis.

You fat? Me happy

So, you have put on, said she of immodest waist and fat arms.

Yes, I  must have. I went on a holiday, ate a lot, slept well, and didn't exercise.

She looked pleased, almost approving. The rest of the misshapen estrogen population in my yoga class also nodded in unison and displayed their collective delight at my newly acquired 'healthy body'. I call it my Rani Mukherji avatar. I am now mostly square, neck downwards. It's somewhat of a relief not to worry about body contours any more. My friends still think I am thin, although I know that I am not. I can't get into my 26 inch jeans anymore and I find myself looking at M rather than S sections during shopping. Not that I shop much. I hate it. But I have become a little conservative in deciding what fits and what doesn't, and no, I don't keep aspirational clothes that I could get into someday. I just give them away. Currently, I have less clothes than the husband, but that makes it easier to decide what to wear.

But I always wonder why women are always so delighted when someone else puts on weight and not them. Is  it because you have just lowered the bar for them? Is it because it gives them someone else to point a finger at, to deem a work in progress? I also find the same delight on women's faces when a hot girl ends up with a not-so-hot boyfriend.  Perhaps it makes them feel better for the apology-of-a-man they are stuck with.

Perhaps for my yoga class women, I was the epitome of thin and it ired them even more that I was so post-baby. I noticed that they also cringed when I got back to my pre-pregnancy size in less than five months, but never bothered to compliment me about it. That's what women do. When they have something nice to say, they never say it. Unless they are friends. Men on the other hand are far more generous in this area.

Take my hair for example. I had luscious long locks for the longest time. Yes, I got tired of it, and yes, I wanted a new look and yes, I needed a spot of adventure in my life. So I went ahead and surrendered myself to Amanda, my hair-goddess. And she gave me a new look, that perhaps is the cause for my added bounce these days. But forget telling me how good it looks, the women are busy expressing shock at how I let my locks go. Or how good my hair 'used to be'. I beg your pardon? You had a decade to tell me that! And you do now, when it's gone. Strange!

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.

Expiry date

My domestic life is falling apart. The fridge is refusing to cool, and so is the air-conditioning. Not that I have much use for either, but when you have to deal with a whiny husband whose sense of calm hugely comes from electronic devices or remotes thereof, it matters. More so when the said husband threatens to buy a new one at the drop of a hat when you are trying so hard to be the domestic financial goddess.

When I summoned the repairman for the fixing up job for the air-conditioner, he told me it was easily fixable. When probed further on whether we should consider buying a new one, since technically, it was the third repair, he told me something interesting. "What you have is an old model. They don't make things like this anymore. The new ones are not built to last more than two years, so never let go of the old one. It's always better to get it fixed."

It made me look at relationships of today and why they are so fragile, so fractured, so volatile. Why it takes so little to call it quits and move on. Why we can never have the marriages our parents had, however imperfect they might have been. And why the over-communication has actually led to a communication breakdown.

Moral of the story: If you have something old, never let it go. 

Mix and match

 Two nights ago, when I decided to put in an appearance at someone’s bringing-in-a-birthday thing, I saw something that got my relationship goddess antennae pop up.

So. There was this boy and there was this girl. And there was great chemistry. At least it appeared so, when they moved on the dance floor. Their bodies swayed in unison, they looked great together, they were the same body type (trust me, it is a big deal). They were both pleasant, poised and charming, or least that’s what I could gather upon employing full lung power to make conversation amid the din of the night club (or whatever they are called these days).

I nudged the husband. These two should be together. They will be good.

I think these thoughts all the time. About how X would work so well with Y. Or how certain couples would work better if they swapped their partners. Or why A cannot see that B is not the girl for him. And how B would be so much better off with C.

The husband hollered back. But he is dating Ms Jumpsuit. And what chemistry are you talking about? They are only dancing.

Oh nnnnoooooooo, I said, in the manner of my two-year old when he is trying to express disapproval at an object, an action or a sound. Ms Jumpsuit and he looked so wrong. Not that it was about aesthetics or anything—all people that feature in this story were equals in the looks department—but I have a theory about people who work and people who don’t. My relationship barometer is pretty much the same as my food barometer. Anything that looks right is usually right, and anything that does not look right usually is not. I tried explaining this to a roommate more than a decade ago when she was blinded by love to a certain young man. It does not look right, I said. But I am in love. I can feel the ache, she said.

They went ahead and got married. They were divorced before their second anniversary.  I guess sometimes it takes less than a rock or a marriage to figure that out. Others are just unlucky. In any case, there are no wrong guys and wrong girls. Only wrong relationships.

So I started probing about Ms Jumpsuit, and as usual, people were free with their opinions, only the strain of hearing them made me absolutely certain that I needed new ear drums. But I was bent on doing my research and I am very diligent in matters of the heart. Or the libido. So, one birdie told me that yes,  jumpsuit and the bloke were dating, on and off, but that he was really messed up and that jumpsuit only made matters worse.  Jumpsuit also sulked royally throughout the evening, much before her date was moving with the said ‘other girl’ and apparently, doesn’t like to be seen as an item with said bloke, and doesn’t like to be tagged in pictures with him around (people talk a lot more when they think they cannot be heard).

It was a complete no-brainer according to me. I wondered why Mr Floor wasn’t moving on.

But I am still foxed how the husband could not see the chemistry between the aforementioned that I was talking about. Men are usually daft about these things, sometimes more so when they are married.  I wondered, in this age of deafening music and totally non-conducive to conversation hangouts, what else is there to go by?  

Should do a Dr Hitch and tell the bloke that he was wasting his time with jumpsuit and that he should make a play for Ms Moves? I also wanted to tell Ms Moves (although I just met her) that she should do lunch with Mr Floor just to figure out if the chemistry works just as well in daylight, when the bodies are across the table and not in a simulated spooning position. But I didn’t. If I see them again, perhaps I will. If I meet them in a scenario where I could have a conversation that didn’t involve exploding lungs.

I feel like a fixer all over again. May be I should start a relationship portal. I have the initiative for both, but not the continuity of purpose to see it through, the quintessential Gemini that I am. Not that I am using my birthday as an excuse for not posting. It’s just too hot to write.

A few good men/women

A single-again friend of mine recently remarked that it was easier to spot a good tiger than a good man these days. She was just back from her tiger-reserve holiday and basking in its after-glow, having spotted a few tigers.

Never mind the fact that her chances of spotting a tiger were far higher in a tiger reserve than in the city.  Or the fact that she had actually travelled a few thousand miles and spent more than just a  few thousand rupees in order to be able to spot them. (Something you wouldn’t do to spot a good man).  But good for her, I thought. What could be more exhilarating than spotting a tiger on a holiday, never mind that they were just home, and you just happened to pass by?

 When I thought about it, I figured this whole ‘good-man’ vs ‘good tiger’ analogy didn’t really work and is a bit of a no-brainer. Here’s why. Imagine if the contrary had happened. Let’s say she hadn’t spotted any tigers. The argument would have still worked. “It’s as hard to spot a good tiger as it is a good man,” she would have said, and all her girl-friends would have nodded in unison.

Which brings me to the cliched ‘Where are the good men?’ and how sick I was of hearing this phrase when I was single.  Now, I don’t know what a good man is, but for that matter, I don’t know what a good woman is either. And don’t tell me I am a smug- married talking,  because I find that the dating scenario hasn’t really changed much since I was single. The women are still hanging out in their comfort zones, with their single girl-friends, gay best friends (GBFs), asexual work buddies,  married friends and their over-protective  (sometimes philandering) husbands. And then they whine that there are no good men.  How many times have you invited a single girlfriend to a brunch or a random-clubbing night and she has showed up alone?  How many of your single girl-friends have done stuff out of character to spot the ‘good men’ that they never seem to spot in their daily lives? How many of them, for instance have travelled alone, joined a zumba class, a Wodehouse club, a film-appreciation workshop, tai-chi or gone speed dating, just for a lark?

Not that too many men do it, but they don’t whine as much about the lack of women.  Okay, I am not taking sides here, but you know what I mean. Men on the contrary are flabbergasted. They are constantly told that there are more good women than men out there, so the few ‘good ones’ are at least hopeful of finding one, but are usually disappointed. But instead of whining, men do what they know best.  Watch television. Drink. Watch football. Drink. Watch cricket. Drink some more.  Hang out with their buddies in the hope of ‘spotting a few good women’. Drink. Because it’s been ten minutes and no one is making eye contact at them. And when they can’t drink anymore, go home or to the nearest couch and pass out. Sometimes, they don’t even remember that meeting a ‘good woman’ or at the very least, spotting her was on the agenda when they set out for the night.

It’s no wonder that seldom do the twain meet.

Relationships and fiscal bottomlines

My buddy R was over a few days ago, and he has never looked so ‘in the pink of health’, despite the fact that he had broken a leg not so long ago and was still recuperating. I asked him what the secret was, adding the cliched, "Is it love?"

"Mad or what!" he said.  "I haven’t stepped out much in the last few months and I am not dating either. I just realised how much being single helps your bank balance. I have never had so much money in my account!"

He had a point. The thing is, when you are on the pull, you have to be seen at the right places, doing the right thing, hoping the right people from the opposite sex will notice you. Plus, you have to eat the right thing, drink the right thing (eating vada-pav and drinking nariyal paani  and going for a walk on the beach doth not a date make, although it looks good in films like Chhoti si baat). Sometimes you have to offer to buy a round of drinks, (or worse, shots!) to impress a certain someone. Not to mention having spent enough on self-grooming—a good haircut at the very least, some cool, yet not over-the top clothes. Having done all that, you have to be able to spot a suitable someone you might want to chat up, and then that suitable someone will have to want to chat you up too.  By the time you call it a night, you are a few thousand rupees poorer (at the very least) and may or may not have scored. So over to the next outing, and it all starts all over again.

Even something as low-involvement as a movie date sets you back by a couple of  thousands. Think weekend. Think gold class. Think nachos and popcorn that cost as much as a starter in a decent eatery. Think water that could well buy you a pint of beer. Think transport to and from the multiplex and drinks pre and post movie. So much for holding hands or at best, a snog.

Single (though not by intent) women, on the other hand, are constantly shopping. Being seen in the right clothes, bags and shoes takes their mind off their sexual bankruptcy to a large extent. In fact, too much retail therapy is a dead giveaway for dubious-state-in-relationship for a woman. And more often than not, she ends up being disappointed with the men she is on the verge of dating, because they still haven’t recovered from their fiscally viable singledom, in fact have begun to enjoy it.

Marriage on the other hand, is good economics. You save on rent, petrol, random socialising (having to score is no longer a priority) you spend less on takeways, you share domestic helps, drivers, etc, and you start SIPs. Of course, the minute the marriage is on the rocks, your credit card bills shoot up again. A friend of mine who is going through a separation seems to be spending absurdly on makeovers, clothes and shoes while her other half is spending it all on alcohol. Clearly a no-win moneywise.

Dating is an equally unviable stage, and the shorter it is, the better. People in relationships for several years are a perennially broke lot. They shop way too much, drink way too much (how else do you hang out all night long), buy too much stuff, and then borrow to pay their credit card bills, get too many manicures, go on too many getaways. Plus  there is the added pressure of having to buy expensive gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, valentines and whatnots (who was the twerp who came up with expensive gift = true love). If they ever get to the point of getting married, they are in debt again, because by then, their finances have cleaned out doing random shallow things.

Which is why I increasingly notice people of undefinable status hanging out in groups of total randoms, pretending to have a great time. It insulates them from having to flash a date or spend (they could well be nursing a beer all night), it increases the probability of scoring, it gives them an easy exit option, should the night not work out to their favour. Plus, there is no pressure on making serious conversation, and the whole night could go by with just a few words like “No way!” or “What are you saying?” or “How cool is that?” while shaking your head and totally escaping eye contact.

I guess times are a-changing. When you have more Facebook friends than real ones, you also pay a price for it. The price of make-believe.