Wives like that

Okay, so I have joined the official wives club, however disgusting that might sound. Membership is free, except all you need to qualify is one peeve about your man, and as a recent long Sunday night conversation seems to reflect, we are not running out of subjects any time soon.

The club got spontaneously incorporated on the aforementioned night, when we had come together for a surprise birthday party. As we were waiting for the action to start, it just so happened that wives of a feather flocked together. There were three of us ( married for varying periods from four years to three months), but being surprisingly linked by similarly afflicted partners.

From our conversation, and I won’t go into the details thereof to protect the interests of my sisterhood—it would appear that all our men were Neanderthals until they met us. Almost everything they did until that moment of divine intervention seemed to be wrong—they dressed wrong, they ate wrong, they hung out wrong, they partied wrong, they spent wrong, they shopped wrong, they even went to the wrong doctor—basically nine out of ten things they did seem to be wrong.

And since they took so easily to you and the makeover thereafter, you stopped to wonder.. did they know it all along? And what did that say about the prior influences in their life?

When I took a random check of the husband’s wardrobe, I found that he had about 200 extra-large t-shirts which all looked the same, five pairs of black jeans which looked the same, cargoes of varying lengths and textures, and one pair of blue 501s which thankfully, redeemed him.

I figured—this was an eighteen-till-I die wardrobe, and quickly bought him a few linen shirts and trousers—which got noticed and worked like magic. Trouble is, he wants to buy five sets of the same, so if a few go into the washing cycle, he can have stand-bys. Grrr!

But the biggest eyesore, co-member of the wives club pointed out was the surprise gift. Having been down that road once, I have a strict policy of choosing what I want or a cash-only policy for the lazy. And everyone who is someone in my life knows that.

Reason why I didn’t end up with a truckload of bad presents on my wedding (although I am still wondering what to do with a certain monstrous bar butler, a hideous tea set, and some remarkably ugly frames).

After a certain purple skirt episode, the husband knows better than to surprise me with gifts--this birthday, I took the husband shopping and bought myself a slinky black dresses. I shopped. He paid. Both were happy.

My fellow conspirator was not so lucky apparently, and was ‘surprised’ at her previous birthday by a yellow Manish Malhotra outfit, inspired by his Om Shanti Om retro collection—only that it had a hood, a zipper and sequins—a surefire no-brainer. Since she was convinced he meant really well, and couldn’t bear the thought of that much money down the drain, she even tried to get it exchanged, but didn’t succeed. The result? It had to be handed down to a sixteen year old with much pain and optimism.

Now he knows why there is never a good enough occasion to wear it.

Curiouser and curiouser

I wonder where the term “curiousity killed the cat” emerged from. Well, if I have to go by my years of experience with felines of various temperaments, habits and fetishes, I can say that curiousity never really killed the cat.

Okay, it nearly killed my cat Millie Kutty, as she was curious to find a short cut from bedroom no 1 to bedroom no 2 that didn’t involve doors or humans. It also unhinged my friend Rajashree's cat Taby’s hip as she jumped a fence chased a tomcat in the wilderness of Nagaon.

But there’s more curious cats in real life than in the feline family—the latter seem largely interested in ignoring you or finding their own answers.

**

An excerpt of a conversation I had on Saturday with a curious cat.

So I heard you went to Turkey?

Yes, that’s right

Direct flight or stopover?

Well, there is no direct flight.. so I flew via Delhi

Business class or economy?

It was a work trip. Yes, I flew business.

Did you also take Deepak with you?

No, I told you it was a work trip.

Oh! I thought you could combine work with pleasure

Whatever gave you that idea?

Where did you stay?

At the Swissotel, the Bosphorus.

Five star?

Ya, I think so.

How much was the ticket?

I don’t know. It was sponsored

I noticed that she never asked me whether I had fun, or what the weather was like, or what I loved about Turkey. Only useless trivia. I was being marked.

**

When my brother was visiting from America, the curious cats were again at play

How long is your H1 valid?

I’ve got my Green Card now

So soon? How come?

Well, things just worked out.

Are you applying for citizenship?

I will be, in a year..

So have you bought a house?

I am still looking.

**

When I bought my first car, after watching my mother struggle with public transport for her heart check-ups, they were at it..

New or second hand?

New.

Is it a company car?

No it’s mine. I paid for it.

You drive yourself or you have a driver?

I drive.

One year or three year EMI?

One year..

So then you must be paying a lot…. How do you manage?

Well..

How come you chose a Santro?

I liked it…


**

When I went to the United States for the first time..

Got your visa?

Yes..

Six months?

No. Ten years. Multiple entry.

Wow? How did you manage that?

I don’t know, they gave it to me..

I thought it was tough for single women..

May be it’s not that tough.

So are you flying to the east coast or west coast?

Both.

No more questions.

**

And not so long ago, when I was single..

So? When are you giving us the good news?

I have no idea. What is good news?

Don’t pretend. What about settling down?

But I am so settled..

**

When I finally announced that I had found someone I truly love and wanted to spend the rest of my life with… the questions continued..

Where is he from?

Where does he live? What does he do?

Own house or renting?

So when are you inviting us home?

Where did you go for your honeymoon?

How come you didn’t go abroad?

**

It never ends. Which is why I would be in a state of bliss if I had to spend the rest of my life with animals. They have better things to do than collect useless knowledge and make checklists. Sleep, for instance. Or just be.

New moon rising!

The aforementioned is not a metaphor for romance. It is a combat cry for Chloe, a team leader from Tales of Legendia—a PS2 game that the husband has spent 218 hours with (am feeling very competitive here)

It's all my fault. On his last birthday, I gifted the beau (now the husband) twenty Play Station games. Not that I am totally magnanimous about his obsessions—just that I wanted to get him something he really wanted. I figured he would have bought the games anyway, so I may as well gift them to him.

Strange things happened thereafter. His buddies began to openly adore me, and even feel slightly envious of him. The wives and girlfriends of the buddies began to hate me for setting a bad precedent. As for the husband, I have clearly earned unlimited brownie points, despite his (unsuccessful) attempts to entice me into gaming. He assures me that I will always remain his first love though Play Station comes a close second. But the glimmer in his eye when he unwraps a new game is something else..

Our relationship has survived Reservoir Dogs, Final Fantasy 12, Godfather, Tales of Legendia and Grand Theft Auto. That makes five. But compute an average of 200 plus hours of gaming time for each (a day can pack in 3-4 hours, and a weekend about 10-15) and do the math—you'll feel a soft spot for me.

In the initial stages of our relationship, I noticed that his effort to sound nonchalant and camouflage his obsession didn't cut much ice. For example:

"We can have a cozy dinner and watch some TV or play scrabble and then I can game for x hours"

"We can hang at Shiro for a bit, grab a bite, head home and I can game all night. Yay! Tomorrow is Saturday!"

"I can drop you at the airport and get some gaming in before I go to work…"

"I am working late today, so I will be in a bad mood, so have to game for a few hours."

"I had a great day today, so have to game a few hours…"

It gets more convoluted…

He: I really need to buy 20 games this Saturday

Me: But you still have 200 that you haven't played…

He: You don't understand. If they stop selling them one day, and then I want them, I can't even have them… so I may as well stock up now…

Me: So can we donate the ones you are not playing?

He: Noooooooo.. what if I want to play them next year?

When Tales of Legendia came to an end, it was a stoic moment. The beau was mellow, as if he had lost a part of him. Even I felt a bit sad, like you do at the end of a long TV series. I had gotten to like Senny, the protagonist and hate Norma, his irritating teammate who strutted around singing, "Norma's the best. Ever. Yeah!"

Recently in a bonding moment, a recently-married colleague lamented on her husband's newly acquired gaming console. She claims they now converse by crashing virtual cars, shooting random strangers and running people over.

I quickly count my blessings.



PS: I am soon starting "Wives of Gamers Anonymous." Those interested may write to me. At least we can compare stories and feel better.

Best before….

I don’t know what it is that men look for in labels. Have you ever read the fine print on a tub of cheese spread? Or a slab of butter? I haven’t. That’s because I buy things as I need them and usually consume them before they threaten to expire. Unlike the significant other, who buys things believing that we are going to be struck by a tsunami and have to stock up for a few months, at the very least.

So when I find him microscopically examining a cheese spread or a jar of gherkins, and preparing to reject it on grounds of “It is too close to the expiry date,” my antennae rise. I feel like saying, “Expiry date doesn’t mean you will expire if you eat it.” He grins, and prepares to light a cigarette. (I wonder if they have expiry dates on those)

One item that tops the ‘rejected on grounds of expiry’ list is bread. Since most loaves say “Best before three days” they somehow they never make it past his expiry muster.

I am sure one of the things he misses about being single is being able to buy all the things he didn’t need and feel happy. Just in case he woke up one morning and felt like eating a dal-mot sandwich topped with cheeslings (don’t ask me where he acquired a taste for that).

Moving to my dad and his label fetish. For the longest time, I thought my dad was secretly doing a research project on label technology. Right from my Ovaltine and Incremin days, I would watch him studying labels of every conceivable packaged product (toothbrushes, milk, oil, toiletries and more such). I would wonder what he was looking for. One day, he told me how a toothbrush cost just x paise to make and that Hindustan Lever was charging us y rupees, so we are being fleeced.

“But,” I would tell him, in my best wisdom-voice, “We don’t know how to make toothbrushes, so we have to buy it from them, don’t we? We really don’t have a choice…”

He would do the same thing for savouries, pickles, confectionery… almost everything we engaged with on a daily basis would be computed for its perceived and actual value.

One day, he had a brainwave while examining a packet of packaged milk. Producing a sheet of complex calculations, he claimed the ROI on a buffalo was just six months. And that a farmer friend of his was willing to sell him one for Rs 3000, and how that would give us x litres of milk everyday which we could sell at y price (even after diluting) and how, in six months, we could be rich.

The said buffalo sadly eloped and we never got rich.

But I was immensely relieved that I wouldn’t be stuck with “milkman’s daughter” as a label for the rest of my life.

Ironical that a few years later, I joined the world of advertising, trying to sell people things they didn’t need. My dad on the other hand began looking at labels even more fixatedly. He still does. And so does the husband.

Woman Friday

Happy times are here again! Smiley, our maid-cum-cook-cum-therapy-cum-positive energy potion-cum resident mummy is back! It has just been a week, but it assumed a proportion that even transcended to my status message on Facebook (yes, I am guilty), and for the millionth time, I thanked my stars that I live in India and not anywhere else in the world where I can be blessed with such divinity.

May be I just have good karma as far as domestic helps are concerned. There was Pushpa, who was a terrible cook, but excelled in all other departments. She was part decorator, part candle-maker and full enterprise—she had a little stall around the corner where she sold everything from beedis to beads. Then there was Lata, who got along fabulously with my felines Lupooh Singh and Millie Kutty, to the point that they began ignoring me. And Shankaran, from my childhood who taught me how to cook when mom and dad were away and sometimes absolved me of my task of combing and plaiting my baby sister’s hair to get her ready for school. Never mind if he had the habit of humming really bad tunes or combing his hair repeatedly or not bathing for days.

Back to Smiley. I tried very hard to make the house not look like it was struck by a tsunami upon her return, but after three days of washing clothes (me) and cleaning dishes (the husband)… we pretty much gave up, as whatever we did, it still didn’t add up to even 50% of what Smiley did. Also, every spoon, fork, plate or bowl I used was increasingly feeling guilt ridden as was every piece of paper or towel I flung (more about that disorder later)

She was our best housewarming gift from our neighbours Geetu and Namit, and the most generous ever. Her real name is Lakshmi but both me and the beau decided to ignore it and christened her Smiley. She is not just a help—she is the positive energy you so badly need when you are sucked into the world of jobs that sometimes leave very little of you at the end of the day. She is what makes coming home fun. What’s Smiley cooked today? What twist has she added to the décor? Will she reprimand us for not finishing her palak parathas?

Not that she is a terribly happy person with no worries—she has the usual—a husband who is a wastrel, a daughter who won’t study, a son who spends more time falling off bikes than staying on them, a municipality who is threatening to mow her house down that she has to routinely bribe, relatives who descend in droves and add to her ‘mouths to be fed’… the works. But she leaves it all at home and always comes to us 100% frown-proofed. Unlike her predecessor Sulky, who was surrounded by an all-pervasive gloom, and caused much grievance to the beau with her chronic absenteeism and skulking-away-when-door-not-opened-on-one-ring-syndrome.

Smiley, I hereupon salute theee!

Mr and Mrs. Remote Control

I am almost a month-old bride and I already have a mistress. She goes by the name of Remote Control. Correction. That would be mistress no.2. Mistress no.1 would be Play Station Controller. But that merits a separate piece.

Note that I use the term remote control in a collective form. There’s one for the TV, cable, DVD player, Ipod docking station, airconditioner, home theatre, music system, car stereo..phew! The beau (just turned husband) wonders why they didn’t make one that allows you to activate your home airconditioner while you are still driving, or one that gets your heater started, so the shower is ready when you get home (he is one of those who takes a hot shower in this blistering heat, but don’t get me started on his quirks).

More gory details. He likes his remotes neatly aligned, almost art-directed and I bet it’s the first sign of reassurance as he walks into the house—“Ah all my remotes are exactly as I left them, so life’s good”—those would be his thoughts, I am quite sure.

Last week, he freaked me out when he demanded an exclusive ‘do not disturb’ corner for the remotes, so they can all ‘hang together’. I consented, and they are now masquerading as art deco items.

The best part of our honeymoon was that most mistresses were absent. But mistress no. 2 made her presence felt every single day— I was shocked to note that cable TV was the first thing he checked for when we moved into our resort.

Since there was no office to go to, he had his fill of meaningless movies, Japanese water sports, History Channel, and of course the Champion’s League and the Premier League and the god-knows-what-else –league football where basically, every match is the ‘match of the season’ and “we-just-can’t afford-to-miss-this-game.”

“What else did you expect?” said Pooja, my friend of infinite wisdom. “Men are already married to their remotes. You will always be number two. Deal with it..”

Since you are no.2, you try harder. Which means you pray that what’s on TV is a little less exciting than you. Upon which he will try and suggest that you pick a show to watch together.

If you can’t beat them, join them, you think. But I hate watching TV, unless it has anything to do with animals, travel diaries, Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson, so it doesn’t leave much choice.

One fine evening, I mustered the courage to tell the mister about my allergy to remote fixatedness. “But you never mentioned that you find it annoying when were dating…,” he retorted, almost plaintive.

True. May be as a wife, I felt the need to raise the bar.

I proposed plan B. For every football match we watch together (and I patiently watch him screaming or puffing his lungs out), he owes me a play, an art exhibition, a walk on the promenade, a poetry reading or a documentary screening.

He nods excitedly, but I know he has absolutely no intention of keeping his word.

Marriage!

So far, so good!

Okay, I agree, enough has been written about my wedding and elements thereof, but before I  take the plunge, here is a last batch of words that at least some of you could still find use for.

Wedding planning—A crash course

Disclaimer: Contents inflammable. References to people dead/alive/yet to be born is not absolutely unintentional.

It is actually difficult to figure out where to begin, assuming you have figured out who you want to marry. For me what always works is beginning by elimination. Which means making a list of all the things you don’t want.

Here were mine:

1) No asking for advice unless you absolutely value the other person’s opinion and are likely to listen to what they have to say (parent’s, in-laws, out-laws included)

2) No losing control of the wedding invite. It not only ensures you can smile at the people who show up (because you know them), but is a keepsake you want to feel happy about and not embarrassed by. Note: Littering the recipient’s doorway with glitter should not be your single minded objective.

3) No succumbing to sitting on father’s lap and being given away (pundit, are you listening?)

4) No sitting on throne and asking people to queue up to wish you. I know this is the norm, but first, I find the thrones hideous (however elegant the decorator may claim them to be) and two, I hate queues—they feel like punishment, and there definitely wont be one at my wedding

5) No inviting pesky relatives, worse, relatives’ relatives just because they can stake claim to the family tree (I know I am repeating myself, but you must say this aloud to yourself a thousand times, if you want to have fun at your wedding)

6) No inviting ‘maybes’. If you are not sure whether a person is a well-wisher, may be he/she is not.

7) No straightening of hair for the big day. A friend who is a self-imposed advice giver told me, “Deepak has never seen you with straight hair. Get it done, believe me!” Yes, but he has never seen me 6 feet tall or with a 36 D” bust either.

8) No feeling sheepish when people ask you if you’d like cash or gifts. Say ‘cash’ with all abandon, unless you are absolutely sure you trust their taste in gifts. Else you will be stuck with hideous jewellery, sarees, tea sets, wall-pieces, crockery, cake-mixers, and worse, clocks!

9) No forgetting that it is ‘your’ wedding.

10) No wearing clothes/makeup that make you wonder ‘who’s that girl?’ when you see your photos ten years later. No judging clothes/jewellery by how much they weigh, even if others do.

11) No fearing that you will be under-dressed than your guests. It’s your wedding, they will have to look at you, they have no choice.

12) No stopping being yourself and acquiring coyness. If it comes naturally, keep it— might be cute. If it doesn’t, who cares? I am like this only.