The dummy’s guide to handling -“You forgot our anniversary!”

N:
1. Dummy by default is equivalent to Hubby
2. The female partner might be a mummy and at times can be quite crummy, but never as a rule, is a dummy…that honor is exclusively for the male half of the marriage.
3. If my wife happens to read this -all loony characters in this story are completely fictious, any resemblance to actual human beings is because you are thinking too much.

Last month (I forget the date), I had a nightmare. What was special about the nightmare was that it was after I woke up. I was still in bed, leisurely completing my big quota of waking-up yawns and stretches, when my eyes fell on my wife’s not so pleasant looking face. Warning bells were ringing, but I really couldn’t remember what I had done wrong. The good thing about wives though is that they’re a bit like Amitabh Bachchan on KBC…. they’ll always give you a clue before you finally lose the plot.
“Do you know what today is?”
The warning bells were building to a crescendo now. Now if it was a little later in the day, with some caffeine in my blood, my brains might have actually worked and I might have at least figured out the date and then tried to analyze if the date had any significance. ….but obviously she had picked her timing carefully.
Now when you get a question like “Do you know what today is?” or any one of its variants, you are definitely looking at either YOUR anniversary or HER birthday (never your birthday…because that is something you have absolute liberty to forget). Once you get this kind of ominous question out of the blue, there are three things you should absolutely do…
1) Buy yourself some time…and think
2) Buy yourself some time…and think
3) Buy yourself some time…and think
And there are some things you should never ever do, irrespective of the level of your consciousness…even if you are in deep coma –
1) Take the bait and reply “No….what?”
2) Keep a puzzled expression (kind of difficult for most people to do that when you’re in coma)
3) Walk away without answering the question….even if you are in need of an emergency trip to the loo.
4) Answer to the point with something like “Today is Friday, the 7th of January, 2012”

“Of course sweetheart….you think I would forget?” I don’t act really well….especially not when my minimalist grey cell network is working hard, concurrently trying to figure out what exactly is happening.
It was January, my wife is an Arian, so it was not her Birthday….so that left our anniversary…now that was definitely somewhere around this time of the year I thought. I had to take the risk. No point in being afraid….. after all, like the wise men say “Darr ke age jeet hai” (No I did not have a can of ‘mountain dew’ with me to help….. the only thing similar I have at present actually are a ‘mountain of dues’……now that’s what I call taking puns to a new low!)
“Happy anniversary darling!” I ventured hesitantly.. I even managed a smile while mouthing out the greeting.
Now the Missus had an amused, but happy expression on her face…..did I make a mistake??. If it turned out to be her birthday I could always argue that a birthday is also kind of an anniversary.
The Missus leans over and gives me a sweet little peck on the cheek. I passed the exam. I breathe.
“Time flies…feels like yesterday…..do you know how many years it has been…..time really flies right?”
Uh oh… now I wanted to fly away. Trick question. I stop breathing again…..as a model husband you are supposed to not only know your exact anniversary date, but also remember the whole chronological details. It’s a bit like your 4th standard hindi exam – kisne kaha, kab kaha, kyon kaha, kahaan kaha, kis liye kaha………..
Now I ‘m sure I’ve not been married for more than ten years (though it inevitably feels longer)…..My daughter is 5 years old ….so 6-8 years would have been a good guess, but unfortunately I doubt if an answer in a range was acceptable.
“I know sweetheart…..but you still look just as young and pretty as on our wedding day”
N: Flattery always works…. even in the middle of an inquisition, especially if you don’t have the right answers.
“I love you darling” I get smothered with another half a dozen kisses. I breathe.
Nadia my 5 year old, wakes in the middle of this emotional drama …takes a curious glance through squinted, bleary eyes and then immediately plops back to sleep. …She must have thought she’s having a nightmare.
“So what did you get for me?” She asks sweetly.
I stop breathing again. My lungs must be thinking that I’ve gone nuts.
The inquisition I realize is still very much on.
“Just a second sweetheart” I ramble out of the bed .My wife watches my exit with an extremely puzzled look.
N: When in the middle of a spousal inquisition, be very liberal with yucky words like sweetheart, sugar, honey etc. At least helps you buy some time.
Five minutes later I present myself in front of my better half with a huge smile plastered on my mug and a small gift wrapped package in my hand…red ribbons……..the works.
The huge smile thing seems to be infectious, as now the missus can’t stop beaming….the beaming gets worse as she opens the wrapping to reveal a cute little bottle of a Calvin Klein ‘Eternity’ perfume…..the name seemed to go well with my present situation too.
Its kisses and hugs part 2.
I breathe.
End of inquisition (for now).
Now for all those curious hubbies who are wondering how I managed the ‘All’s well that ends well’ thing……its simple actually…all you have to do is always keep a little gift (properly wrapped and ribboned of course) hidden away in some luggage. Whenever you have an emergency “did you forget our anniversary” kind of thing…Voila! Pull out the magic present…..and get ready for free hugs and kisses. The most important thing is to replenish the emergency gift stock….and of course to keep it well hidden.


PS: Now if any of you guys are thinking “Oh what a brave guy this is to write and put this stuff in public domain”, thing is that my wife is back home in India for now, and it’s kind of difficult to actually get subjected to physical abuse through Skype.

Today’s match : Me vs My Wife, Venue: our living room

There’s something about the world cup atmosphere that substantially promotes inter-spousal animosity.
Luckily for me the world cup matches were at a very convenient timing as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned.Unfortunately the timings also coincided with those of some of my wife’s favourite TV soaps.So now most days we had our own little matches going on in the TV room, with the TV remote being kicked around instead of the glorious jabulani.We have no vuvuzelas as yet , but Nadia (our 4 year old monster) more than makes up for the sound effects!

So while Higuain was busy with his hat-trick ,striking the jabulani into the Korean goal,I was forced to see heavily decked up gujju mothers and mothers-in-law stuffing dheplas and dollops of omnipresent ‘gajar-ka-halwa’ into the wide mouths of their ever eager mentally retarded sons or daughters-in-law or both.

I think it’s about time somebody did some serious genetic engineering to clone wives who have an interest in sports!After all the basic aim of science is to improve things for ‘man’kind right?!

Marriages are made in the registrar’s office!

The argument of whether or not there is a happy here-after for the goody – goody types will continue till Armageddon…maybe even after that.However ,as far as holy matrimony is concerned ,the ‘Made in heaven’ tag is slowly going to ease out of fashion.Apparently the Indian government is planning to make official registration of marriages compulsory.Great !!…That would have been my response a couple of years ago (some time before I got hitched to my bitter half )…but now I wonder.You see I’m one of the few people around who actually got married two times( And before you guys get crazy ideas of polygamy ,both the marriages in question were to my one and only wife ).The first one was a dour affair in the presence of 500 odd guests ,everything going according to script,both of our posteriors being taught an exercise in patience ,and believe me our fixed grins would have put all those wannabe Ms Worlds to shame.The other affair at the registrar’s office was something else!!I mean things were really exciting .We had to do the round of the registrar’s office so many times and we still weren’t really certain when / if he would allow us to marry right till the very end.

Day 1:

This was the scouting trip. I bunked work to get a firsthand view of the battlefield.I reached the registrar’s office around 2:00 in the afternoon. Wasn’t much in terms of the glamour quotient …routine governmental setup. Dilapidated brick walls passionately clinging on to a decade old coating of paint with minimal success. The whole area seemed deserted. It wasn’t any kind of state holiday as far as I knew. I stuttered into the office space …a 5 X 5 feet room with 4 desks ,4 chairs ,a few dozen cobwebs ,many dozen dust coated files and one forlorn looking gentleman sitting in one corner.Couldn’t see much of this guy too ,his entire face was enshrouded in cigarette smoke.

“Excuse me Chetta” You know we mallus are really going places with manglish these days

“Huh???” I wasn’t sure if this was an acknowledgement of my presence or just another exaggerated puff of his fast disappearing bidi.

“I want to register a marriage”

“Huh???”.Much the same tone…a bit gruffier maybeThe smoke was clouding his brains too I assumed.

“Marriage …I want to marry”Now I know that came out something like salman khan talking to Bhagyasree’s daddy in ‘Maine pyar kiya’.I hoped that this joker didn’t have a marriageable daughter of any kind.

“Time….2:00 clock” Mr.Smoker continued with his smoking after this enigmatic statement.

I instinctively looked at my watch .He got that right alright….zigacly 2:00 ( as Obelix would say to Asterix during peaks of inebriation ).

“So?”

“lunch break…..officer not here”At least he was speaking longer sentences.I was getting through to him!!
“When will he come?”

“4:00 clock”He was slipping back to his laconic best.

“4:00????” I mean was he having lunch or an elephant?

“4:00”

I left for the day ,without having the pleasure of meeting the great man himself




Day 2 :
Not much to write about coz it was only after I landed there that I knew that the office was closed for the day for repairs. I wondered whether they’d repair the guys working there too…..

Day 3 :
This time I came armed with my bitter half, just in case the registrar guy wasn’t convinced that anybody would actually marry me. We made it a point to reach ground zero much before the registrar’s sacrosanct elephant -eating break. This time ground- zero did show perceptible signs of normal human life. I’d like to stress on the word ‘normal’ coz of the Neanderthal nincompoop I met the other day .To cut a long story short, I finally managed to get a ‘darshan’ of the great man himself…the marriage registrar. Didn’t look very imposing …hardly 5 feet ,steel rimmed glasses partially obscuring shifty slit –eyes, scrawny facial features with a prominent dyed moustache,ever so slightly curved upward at the edges …..a miserable failed attempt at a handlebar variety I think .The guy was quite amicable though…..

“So you want to get married to this lady” His eye darting from my face to the ‘lady’s’
“That’s right sir”
“You are running?”
huh?Maybe I did look really fit. “No sir…I go for a walk in the morning ,once in a while,when I ‘m not lazy ,which is not often …no jogging or running”

The scrawny face screwed up in disgust “ No ..are you running away from home?”
Oh that!
“ No Sir..we have our parent’s whole hearted blessings sir”
He sarcastically looked at my nervous hands which were hiding in my pant pockets ,as though he expected me to pull documentary evidence of the aforementioned ‘blessing’ from my pockets.

“Hmmm….OK ,OK…you need three witnesses ….and of course both of you. hee hee!” I assumed that this was his attempt at humor ,so I joined in with a damp giggle.The honorable registrar went on to explain the boring complexities of the Indian Marriage Act in detail. At the end of which, me and my bitter half were exchanging tired glances wondering whether all this trouble was really was worth it.


Day 4:

(The witnesses)
Now we had more idiots joining our bandwagon, one male friend of mine,a surgeon and two female colleagues of my wife .This registered marriage thing was a first for all of us, so while me and my wife were in a slightly apprehensive mood (This being our first marriage and all ),I witnessed my dear friend enjoying the novelty of the occasion ,flirting around with the other witnesses.
After a short while I and my wife had just signed the magna carta and our esteemed witnesses were about to follow suit ,when the scrawny registrar’s scrawnier assistant sweeps into the room and whispers something ominous into his boss’s ears.
His honour ponders gravely for a moment and pronounces his judgment.

‘I am sorry, I cannot allow this marriage”
Now what??!
“Your place of residence…”His honor paused for effect, before announcing grandly “….does not come under the purview of this office”
Huh?
“You may have to try the office nearest to your place of residence”
That did it .I put my brand new ‘hero’ pen, specially bought for the occasion , back into my pocket ,caught hold of my bitter half ,gave one of my most threatening ‘I’ll show you’ looks to Messieurs Scrawny and Scrawnier and got out of the registrar’s room much faster than you could say “I do”

It was when we reached the car that we realized that we had left our dear witnesses behind. Even after a few minutes there was no sign of the trio. I was starting to wonder if my good friend hadn’t decided to register a marriage or two with one of the witnesses, when out he came of the office flashing a piece of white paper and some not so white teeth. It turned out to be the receipt of our marriage registration. I was officially married!!


None of our witnesses really disclosed how in a matter of minutes my place of residence shifted under the purview of the holy registrar…however one of the witnesses in question did later comment cryptically that “ Love maybe blind…. but money can be quite an eye-opener!”