I strongly believe that getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. First you order what you want. And then your eyes wander from plate to plate of the other diners. Once you start eating your plate, you start thinking that you should have ordered the plate the other person is having on his table.
My personal life is a carriage that is full with marrital agonies. Once we were on railway platform of Banaras, during my first ever religious tour. We were travelling since a week. By that time my wife had been quite displeased for outward display of my beliefs about Gods and Goddesses. And by that time she had realised that she was not in a good company.
Though she holds her own concepts about her three decades plus long company with me. But at that moment her face showed clear disregard for the lack of religious flavour in my character. And as being an authentic person, she was showing the entire stock of that displeasure all over her face, mainly on her nose. I was moved. I could not see that. The element of displeasure did not match with her rosy face. So for making the atmosphere lighter, I asked her, “Why the train is so late today, Madame?”
“Why are you asking me? Am I serving in the railways?”* That was the bombshell. The rose was angry at every petal. (* This is real life experience of mine, ours. And when I had heard these gunshot words, there was tea in my mouth. And due to the shock, and a subsequent coughing, a better part of the tea had gone into my nose.)
Now a days my wife is undergoing a special care project that she has devised for me. And the reason is that our family doctor has hinted that I might suffer health hazards, if I do not care about my diet. The plus fifty-ness is a plate, full of hard nuts. The real blows are on dining table. My wife reminds me what the doctor has told me. I hate remembering a doctor, especially when I am in front of a delicious plate. In fact I compare the pool of doctors with the airline companies: we give them business and they take us for a ride.
Once I had asked my doctor about the food I should be careful about. He said, “Put anything on your tongue, and if it tastes good, spit it out.” But the recent diet restrictions make me crazy. It has virtually closed down all the shops selling sweets in the city. When such shop passes by the window of my car, I feel like what Majanoo would have been feeling while Laila’s Barrat might be going away.
