My wife thinks I am a very unromantic person and that I am also cheap and never buy her a gift on Valentine’s Day.
She says there should be a premarital test for people like me, so women do not get trapped in a relationship with a boring person. “I am sure a blood test can show whether that person loves poetry or if he has a generous heart,” she said.
Imagine the heartbreaks such a test would bring. A week after the test, the receptionist calls from the clinic and says: “Hello, sir, the doctor would like to see you.” That would set off the panic buttons. “Why can’t you tell me the test results?”
“Sorry, sir. But please come tomorrow. The doctor is very busy seeing hundreds of heart-broken patients, but you can come as a walk-in patient.” I leave the rest to your imagination, but the advise would be: “Please don’t marry, you are amazingly unromantic.”
My wife also says that when we first met, I barely spoke and it was difficult for her to carry on with a one-sided conversation. Unfortunately, I did not tell her then that it was not as if I had nothing interesting to share, but that I was following my journalist’s instincts. I still remember the advice given by my journalism professors: “Ask that question and shut up and listen. You will usually hear interesting things only if you listen,” they had said. So, there I was, walking in to Lodhi Gardens and listening and I never thought I was being thought of as a bore.
The other thing my wife says is that after our first year of marriage, I never stopped talking and too loudly, even in public places. The mindless blather goes on endlessly, she complains, and now finds refuge in her ipod ear buds.
I suppose romance eventually dies and it becomes a sort of that dreary nine-to-five job that you have to put up with because it pays the grocery bills. The one thing my wife is wrong about is that I am cheap. But I am not sure how she finds out that I am re-gifting her stuff. “Why are you giving me a sandwich maker?” she asked one day, when I gave her that huge package. The new health fad has also put a dent in my romantic overtures. “Why are you giving me chocolates?,” she asked one day, when I brought her heart-shaped confectionery. “I’ll just have half,” she said, taking one tiny chocolate and breaking it in half and handing the box back to me, along with the other half of the chocolate. Since my children don’t love chocolate, it was left to me to finish off the box and that is how I got a sweet tooth and have bad teeth like a Swiss banker who loves chocolates.
The only thing both my wife and I like together are Bollywood movies. They are so romantic and mushy and whenever the song starts, I wonder why I am not such a person who openly sings out what the heart feels.
The first time my wife and I met was at a Chinese Restaurant in New Delhi. I am sure a Chinese guy from Beijing wouldn’t recognise the cuisine if he walked into a Chinese restaurant in India. The chili chicken is well, really chili chicken and you have to take that spoonful of whatever to reduce heartburn and indigestion. It was a busy place, the waiters were moving silently and fast with dishes that let out sizzling smoke. I know I should have got up then and burst into song like my favourite actor Aamir Khan does. Maybe that would have impressed my wife. But one never knows what women want.
