A Christmas whimsy

The last bell jingled and he climbed off wearily wiping the sweat from his brow (in the North Pole!). He had no breath left even for one 'HoHoHo!'

Being stuck with distributing toys to children, and going 'HoHoHo' while doing so, had seemed so much fun when it all started. But, then, those had been times when children actually hung up socks at night and eagerly opened them in the morning; and were actually joyous to see a top or a wooden horse in the morning. Ever since they started saying, "Eeew! I wanted a clockwork train not this nasty old horse", the fun had started draining out of his life. What was the point in being Santa Claus if he could not make children happy?

If things had, at least, been easier to do, it would not pinch so much. Earlier, all he had to do was to squeeze himself through various sizes of chimneys. Now...with mortals having dispensed with all chimneys, except where they kept them on for ornamentation, he had had to squeeze himself to the tiniest of shapes in order to do his delivery job. Yes...it had just become a job now. It was no more fun.

How could it be fun, anyway? The time was when what he delivered were toys...bits and pieces of fancy and fantasy with which a wonder-struck child could create its own worlds; its own games and its own fun. Now, though, what he was handing out was cookie-cutter fantasies into which a child would lose itself, without ever knowing the multitude of unknown fancies that had died still-born. What he now gave were no longer toys for children. They were the sort of games that adults played, except that, when adults played, real people suffered and/or died.

He sighed again, his mood quite at odds with the festiveness of the season that he represented. He really should not be brooding like this. It was just the thought of all his artisans now lying idle. With the sort of toys that now spread happiness, it was no longer possible for him to be making any of it here. Bulk orders on Amazon and FlipKart had replaced the busy toy factories of Santa Claus. Learning to place these orders on what the mortals called the Internet had occupied all his time during the rest of the year.

He pulled out a toy from his pockets. The mortals called it a Smartphone. He looked at it gloomily. This year he would have to spend learning to use this toy. It seemed likely that, some time soon, he could not place orders without using what they called Apps on these Smartphones. It was hard, hard and so uncaring of the elderly, for these chaps to keep making changes that made him have to strain himself every year.

Then his face brightened. Anyway, the children of these times played with adult toys; did not really care much for bells or reindeer. So, why not just ask these Amazon/Flipkart blokes to directly deliver the toys, appropriately packed in socks? Santa smiled...that would make it worth having to learn all this App gobbledygook.

Now...to figure out what to do with the sled and the reindeer...

Before that...time for one last...

HOHOHO

Sweet and Sour

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 41; the forty-first edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The theme for the month is "SWEET AND SOUR"

Nita was smiling as she exited her boss' room along with her colleague Vinay.

"I don't understand you, Nita. Up to now he has been praising your work and you came out poker-faced. Today he rubbishes your work and you seem happy"

"Now I know that his praise all this while was real"

Vinay looked at her incredulously. Nita said nothing more. How could she explain that it was only the squeeze of lemon that made it possible to relish sugared water?

You get both sweet and sour in any relationship. It is the sour that makes it possible to enjoy the sweet.

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Make a wish

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 40; the fortieth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The theme for the month is "MAKE A WISH"

Why is it that I get so easily deceived? Anyone with a sob-story can lay claim on the contents of my wallet - so much so that I sometimes feel like an ATM machine where the con-men come to swipe their sob-stories and make away with my cash. Whenever I seek something from someone they find it so easy to lead me astray conversationally that I end up forgetting what I came to ask and leave wondering what I had come to them for in the first place. If only I could make a wish and rid myself of this problem..

A bottle with a milky-white gas inside materialized in front of me.

"Open it, let the genie out and ask it for your wish", whispered a voice in my ear. So engrossed was I in my own problem that a disembodied voice speaking in my ear seemed quite natural.

How clichéd!  The moment you start talking of wishes, you end up getting a genie in a bottle. They could have, at least, switched over to cans whoever they were.

Shit! The bottle was corked. The last time I tried to open a corked bottle - wine it was - without a cork-screw, which I anyway did not have, it was no fun at all. The screwdriver I tried on it chipped this end for a while and, when I tried to poke it through, it ended up pushing the cork into the bottle. Now, I do not know what the current fashion for genies in head-gear was but I had a suspicion that a chipped cork on the head would not be the latest attraction in any genie fashion show.

I picked the bottle up gingerly and laid a hand on the cork to test how tight it was. The cork slid out smooth as silk and the room started suddenly filling up with smoke.

"Hey! Enough with the special effects. Can you do something less corny?" I bleated.

"You dare complain of corny? For how long are you guys still going to be bottling us up - like some soft drink or beer? Can't you think of anything more inventive if you have to do it?"

"We did try lamps and rings."

"I was talking of something more spacious. Such cramped accommodation where we have no choice but to turn to smoke in order to feel a wee bit comfortable and you have the gall to complain? What did you expect - frothing champagne?"

By now the smoke had coalesced into a shape that filled most of the room. It was I, now, who was feeling distinctly cramped for space. The leering gargoyle of a face and the massive mass of the rest of the body made me want to recede as far as possible - but the wall got in the way.

"Listen!" I said weakly "I did not put you in the bottle. Anyway, I thought you were supposed to grant me a wish"

"And that is another thing. First you bottle us up and, then, in return for the generous favor of being released we have to grant you a wish in order to go free? Is that fair?"

"But..." I interjected weakly but the genie was not listening.

"Anybody would think that we were some sort of wish-vending machine. Species stereotyping is what I call it. And, unlawful incarceration. It is time that we djinns got together and started an agitation against this discriminatory behavior"

"Listen genie..." I tried to get some control of the situation. There was a dull throb north-northwest of my eyes.

"Huh? Genie, Genie! It is Djinn you idiot. You cannot even get our species name right. And what do you mean calling me genie? You even call your dogs by names and you do not have the common courtesy to seek the name of a sentient being?"

The dull throb in the head was sending out shooting pains.

"Ooh! Just go away. Get lost"

"Is that your Wish?"

"I am not just shooting off my mouth to hear my voice. Of course, it is my wish" I yelled.

"Your Wish is granted"

The genie vanished with a boom.

Uhoh! Cheated by a genie, too!

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An untold story

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 32; the thirty-second edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The theme for the month is 'An Untold Story'

“There is an untold story that I want to share with you”, I said eagerly.

My friend’s eyes glazed over.

“If it has remained untold for this long, it can remain untold for a shade longer. What is the hurry?” he said and hurried away.

If you had a story that wants to burst out of you and you find that there is no one to tell it to, you can understand how I felt. I don’t know why it is this way but the very times I have the urgent need to tell something are the times when all my friends are too busy to listen. Has that happened with you, too?

“Listen! There is this untold story…”

“Ever heard of the man who said ‘I always lie’?” said my friend. That, also, happens to me. When I want to say something, my friends feel the pressing need to say something else. “That is logic that bites its own tail. If he always lied, he lied this time too. That means he always tells the truth. Which means that he was telling the truth when he said he always lied! Which means that he always lies! Which means…”

My patience was at an end. He seemed prepared to go on like this till the cows came home. “So? What do you want to say?”

“Once you start telling me the untold story, it ceases to be an untold story. So it can be an untold story only when you keep it untold”, he said and disappeared.

After he left, it struck me that his logic was fallacious. After all, if “I always lie” is false, the truth need not necessarily be “I always tell the truth”. It could well be “I sometimes lie”. That is another thing that keeps happening to me. I find the killer argument only after the time for arguing is long gone. Ever had that happen to you?

Having lost out with my friends, I had only my family to help me unburden myself.

“Hey Sis! I have this untold story that I want to tell you”

“It is always what you want with you. When have you ever bothered to understand what I want or what anyone else wants?”

Well! I assure you that this untold story that I have not told you is the greatest untold story that has not been told! Take my word for it!

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A Bungled Romance

Disclaimer : Way back in history, in 1988-89, I sent this story to Femina and they were kind enough to publish it.

Cupid moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. His idea of a romantic setting for me was a busy road. There was this lovely girl in white walking towards me and my heart started pole-vaulting.

I brushed my unruly hair back, pulled my shirt into shape and walked in as dashing a manner as possible thereby managing to fall flat on my face. It is rather difficult to appear dashing and debonair when you are tripping over your shoelaces and entering into tête-à-tête conversations with the pavement. It is true that I wanted to lay my heart at her feet but Providence seemed to have taken me too literally.

It was ever thus. My ability to enter into the most promising situations and come out with egg on my face is a byword among my acquaintances. China vases wait for me to come by before deciding to explode into smithereens. Doors have a mysterious appetite for my fingers and there has rarely been a projection on a road that has not had the pleasure of tripping me. It seems pretty likely that there was some kind of a mix-up in the assembly department in Heaven while they were making me. I seem to have ended up with two left feet and all thumbs instead of the normal quota of feet and fingers. They seemed to have decided to make an absolute bungler and did a thorough job of it with me as the resultant product.

My Guardian Angel has, ever since, been having a tough time getting me out of the various scrapes that I invariably got into. He was a thoroughly conscientious chap, possibly because of remorse. Even with his levels of performance it was a stupendous task to have got me to meet this girl again. A most commendable job!

It so happened that a friend of mine was a close friend of hers and, so, we met at his house by sheer happenstance. My friend introduced us to each other. Now was the time for some silver-tongued oratory. Unfortunately, my tongue was engaged in a private discussion with the roof of my mouth and could not be persuaded to indulge in verbal gymnastics.

It was obvious that my friend was perplexed. Having been used to my indulgence in verbal diarrhea, he was quite prepared to rescue Shalini (my dream girl!) from my monologue. My uncharacteristic silence caught him flat footed and it was obvious that he was confused.

Luckily for him, Shalini did not wait for him to set the conversational ball rolling. After some time, obviously tired of the roof-of-the-mouth’s company, my tongue condescended to fall in with my wishes. After uttering a few select spoonerisms and malapropisms and liberally tasting my foot, it fell silent only when the meeting was adjourned.

There is no accounting for tastes. One would have thought that, after the demonstration of gymnastics in the street and the subsequent exhibition of foot-in-the-mouth disease, any intelligent female would have decided that ducking out of my sight is the only courtesy to be displayed. Shalini did appear intelligent otherwise, but for her insane interest in moving with me. Well! If she was bent upon making a fool of herself who was I to complain? Besides, one cannot discount the idea of the conscientious Guardian Angel at work.

Then came a month of miracles! One month in which I did not trip a single time on the streets; one month in which no friend had reason to bemoan the untimely demise of his favorite china vase; one month in which doors had turned vegetarian and treated my fingers considerately; one month in which Nature held its breath and waited for the inevitable explosion.

And it came! Shalini and I were to dine at a restaurant. I had been postponing this outing, primarily because I had had nightmares of tripping over every table and breaking innumerable glasses that are invariably present in these restaurants with Shalini looking on in horrified wonder. Unfortunately, my scruples about ruining the Insurance company that handled the restaurant’s business was construed by Shalini to be sheer parsimoniousness and, as any knowledgeable person can tell you, more romances are nipped in the bud due to suspicions of parsimony than are ruined by suspected infidelity. So, I had to bow to the inevitable and take her out.

Having safely navigated my way through the horrific maze of tables and a forest of glasses inviting me to break them, I comfortably seated myself with a sigh of relief. I excused my Guardian Angel his oversight in allowing me to stub my toe while seating myself. Even an Angel is not perfect!

The Customer Service Executive (he was too grand to be a mere waiter) had taken our orders and departed. We were sure of no intrusions on our privacy for the next hour or so after which he would deign to reappear at out table. Much as it has caused irritation to many customers, this practice was well in favor with young lovers desirous of privacy.

I had reverted to my usual self after that one initial instance of tongue-tied ness and thus it was that I was expounding at length about the philosophy of life while Shalini warded off boredom by constantly defending herself against the salt and pepper containers that I kept knocking into her face with the extravagant gestures that characterized my conversation. Noticing the signs of irritation in her face despite my preoccupation with the sound of my voice I placed my hands in the safe sanctuary of my knees and wondered miserably about how to make a conversation without making it a monologue. Surely even a temporarily insane Shalini could not withstand the onslaught of words that I invariably unleashed in any company.

The haughty Customer Service Executive reappeared in the midst of my misery and deposited our orders on the table with the air of a king showering largesse on his deserving populace. He even went so far as to open the bottle of sauce and place it at Shalini’s disposal. The benevolent beam on his face looked like an avuncular blessing though it may merely have been the anticipation of a large tip that activated the muscles of his face.

Shalini was reaching for the pepper when my chivalrous instincts woke up. “Allow me”, I said and lifted my hands with the sure deftness of an experienced chevalier. At least that was how it was intended but, unless chevaliers make it a habit to get their hands entangled in the table-cloth, something had gone wrong in the works. Whatever it may be, the net result was that

1.      two steaming plates of noodles.

2.      the contents of a bottle of sauce

3.      two glasses of water

4.      two containers of pepper and salt

fell into Shalini’s lap.

She seemed to neither appreciate the chivalry nor her favorite dish. Apparently the fact that the noodles had gone on to her lap instead of into her mouth made a difference to her appreciation of the dish. Ah! Women are an unfathomable mystery!

Shalini rose in anger. Her eyes transfixed me to my chair while she stalked off to the washroom scattering noodles and tomato sauce with gay abandon. The restaurant was convulsed with mirth and the Customer Service Executive appeared in imminent danger of popping off with apoplexy while he walked circles holding his stomach and whooping with laughter. A good time was being had by all while the cause of all this fun writhed in misery. Shalini emerged from the washroom, flicked a contemptuous noodle at me and stalked out of the restaurant.

I rose precipitately from my chair, knocking the table down in the process, and ran after her only to be stopped by the iron hand of the Customer Service Executive. Once again in history, Commerce impeded the rash course of youth’s love.

Having settled the restaurant’s bill, after discovering that they were un-commercial enough not to have insured themselves against damages, I walked moodily out with a heavy heart and a light purse and slid down the stairs to the pavement. Thoughts of suicide were uppermost on my mind but I could not convince myself that I would succeed any better in this attempt. If I were to try to hang myself, I would only goof up the knot and fall flat on my face. Having done this often enough, while engaged in less dramatic activities, this exercise had lost its novelty. Poisoning would probably result in extensive nausea and an attempt at drowning would only find me trying to do so desperately in two feet of water. The life of a bungler is certainly hard because life is hardly worth living and dying was an act beyond his limited capabilities.

Thus walking dejectedly I raised my head to see Shalini coming back. Was that a smile on her face? I ran towards her, tripped over a sleeping dog, executed a perfect double somersault and fell flat on my face on the pavement.

ONCE AGAIN

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 27; the 27th Edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The topic for this month is 'Once Again'.

 * * * * * *

 Once again I have lost my girl-friend. I lament about this to my friend and he comes out with an Oscar Wilde quote, “Losing one may be termed a misfortune. Losing two can only be sheer carelessness” and laughs immoderately. Such is the sympathy of friends!

But, really! I cannot see why this happens to me. Thanks to an industrious dad, I go around in up-market cars, wear designer apparel and am a generous party animal. I look good enough to eat, as my current ex-girlfriend remarked very frequently when she was still my girlfriend. My expressive eyes have been the talk of all the girls. Though they seem to have expressed very little to men, the way they pop out when they see a beautiful girl must have been very eloquent to the women.

Above all, I have a great sense of humor. In fact, both my former girlfriends were drawn to me by my sense of humor …… or so they said.

* * * * *

“I really love your sense of humor”, said Nita looking meltingly at me. I melt very easily when it comes to beautiful women. Nita may not be the sort that draws wolf-whistles from street Romeos but if you get up close to her and look into her eyes, you would find it difficult to think of anything else.

From then on, Nita and I were practically inseparable. Friends used to joke that someone had stuck us together with Fevi-kwick and, when I say I actually regretted that such a thing had not happened, you can realize how far gone I was.

One day, Nita came over in a sari apparently gifted by an aunt, who seemed to have quaint ideas not only about the sort of apparel but also about the colors preferred by young women. The poor girl also had to parade in it in order to satisfy her aunt about how much she liked the gift.

“This sari makes me look real ugly”, lamented Nita. With a sort of dirty gray sprayed irregularly over a psychedelic green, that sari would have made Helen of Troy look like a gargoyle.

I could not resist it. I looked her up and down and said, “You look no different”.

All the friends erupted in laughter but, somehow, it seemed that Nita did not find the joke funny. Yeah! Well! Sometimes people are slow on the uptake and find it embarrassing to laugh when they do get it half an hour later.

Two days down the line, Nita came to me and said, ‘You don’t love me any more, do you?”

I was shocked. “Of course I love you.”

“No! Is it Sheetal? Or, maybe Mala?”

“No darling! There is nobody but you”

I proceeded to express my love for her with my lips – not by speaking of course! She seemed to shed her doubts and things reverted to the way it was before - except that, every now and then, she used to cast speculative glances at me particularly when Sheetal was around.

Nita was upset that day. Our entire group was congregated in the college canteen when she burst out, “This photographer is really an idiot. How can I give such awful photos to prospective employers?”

“Ah! Nita! The camera can only capture what is there” I said in my usual jovial tones. Once again, Nita did not seem to get the joke. For a person who loved me for my sense of humor she was pretty slow on the uptake.

For the next five days I did not see Nita. On the sixth day Anil and she were walking towards me and I called her. She came over to me and said, “Harish! You know you don’t love me. I don’t want to hang around your neck when you want to be rid of me. So let us just be good friends.” From the tone of her voice it seemed like she thought that the only good friend was a dead friend!

“But..but…” I stammered.

“It is OK, Harish! No need to make excuses for breaking off from me. I understand”, she said and walked away to join Anil in what looked like the start of another Fevi-kwick relationship.

Can someone tell me whether I dumped her or she dumped me? It seemed as though I had broken up with her but, for the life of me, I cannot remember having done so.

That was my first girlfriend.

* * * * *

“Your sense of humor is fabulous”

There must be something to feminine intuition. Sheetal meant nothing to me when Nita expressed her suspicions but, apparently, I meant something to her. If Nita’s was the sort of beauty that grew on you, Sheetal’s beauty thrust itself into your notice, if you know what I mean. This, then, was the girl who was saying that my sense of humor was of the stuff of fables!

Sheetal as a girlfriend was far different from Nita. With Nita we were stuck to each other but she preferred time apart from the crowd. Sheetal, however, could not do without a crowd of satellites and, thus, we were always at the center of a boisterous mob.

One day, Sheetal came over with her curly hair straightened out.

“How do I look?” she asked us in general.

“Of course your looks have improved. Any change could only have been an improvement”, I joked. Guffaws of laughter erupted from our crowd. Sheetal, strangely, had a frown on her face. I don’t know what it is with girls. They cannot understand the simplest jokes!

That very evening, Sheetal came over and said, “Harish! It is all off between us. You have no empathy, no consideration for my feelings. I don’t think I want to spend time with someone whose love is so shallow” and stormed away leaving me with the eternal question of the male species - “But what did I do?” - still hovering on my lips.

So, once again I had lost my girlfriend!

* * * * *

Can someone please tell me what is going wrong?

Because, you see….

Once again, a girl is absolutely in love with my sense of humor. I don’t want to lose her too!

* * * * *

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Desi Wild Hogs

Me and my big mouth! If I had only not allowed the beer in my veins to do the talking I would not be creeping around the dark outskirts of this dhaba like a juvenile playing at James Bond. If caught, however, the consequences would be more serious than for the juvenile. Those six husky thugs inside drinking beer looked quite capable of breaking every bone in my body and I did not dislike my skeleton so much that I wanted it disassembled. For a moment, I wanted to run back to the bike that I had ridden here and drive away with my tail firmly between my legs.

“You got yourself a good bike there!” 

“Do you think those oldies will create trouble?”

“Those pathetic excuses for bikers? They must be in the next state by now. And, no police station in this area will take their complaint against me. They all know that my dad is the MP here.”

Uproarious laughter wafted out of the dhaba.

Something fizzed in my blood other than the beer – Fury! Life had taught me to swallow a lot of insults without reacting but, somehow, this insult to my biking abilities ripped through the Teflon skin that I had developed.

In a sudden flurry of motion I crawled over to the bikes parked outside the dhaba. There was Sudhir’s bike – the no-frills one – looking like a house-wife in a parade of models. That was the one I had to take away before any of those toughs in there came out.

Three hours ago the four of us had stopped at this dhaba, full of aches and pains, and downed a few beers as accompaniment for a great dinner. The dhaba owner was well into his drinking session with his five friends when we landed up but, nonetheless, whipped up a very good meal and we were feeling expansive. Sudhir was feeling more expansive than most and was bemoaning the discomfort of his bike’s seat and lauding the more ergonomic design of the other bikes we had seen outside the dhaba.

‘Arre uncle! If you dislike your bike so much why don’t we exchange bikes”, said the dhaba owner.

Before any of us could even utter a protest Sudhir said eagerly, ‘Would you?” One beer had normally been enough for him to fall all over the neck of the nearest stranger and swear bosom friendship and, thanks to an aching back, he had downed three. Had we told anything about bewaring Greeks bearing gifts, he probably would have said, “But these are not Greeks, they are Jats” and laughed immoderately.

This sextet looked menacingly strong and, before any of us could find a way to tell Sudhir not to go ahead with the deal without insulting them, Sudhir had gone ahead and taken the key of the dhaba owner's bike. "Mine are in the bike", he said exuberantly. The sextet were solicitously ushering us out to the bikes by the time Reddy found his voice and started saying, “But..how do we know that your bike is good?”

“Are you doubting our honesty?” said one of them menacingly.

“No..No..but…” stuttered Reddy.

“What do you lot of has-beens know of bikes anyway? Get lost. The deal is done.”

Before we knew it we were riding off in a hurry. Within the first fifteen minutes it was amply clear that the only good thing about Sudhir’s new acquisition was the seat! The kick-starter kicked back, the accelerator either refused to move or rotated like a fan and the brakes squealed more than they braked. After erratic progress for a few kilometers with Sudhir’s bike either stalling like a mule or jumping ahead like a war-horse we came to a halt.

“You guys just ran!” I said angrily. “There is a law in this land. We could have threatened them with the police! They would not have dared to beat us up!”

“Why don’t you go and get Sudhir’s bike back instead of making out here like Sunny Deol?” said Rajiv contemptuously.

“All right! I will”

It is quite easy to be brave and believe in the law of the land when you are safely away and shooting off your mouth with friends. On the ride back, however, all my bravado leaked away. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I would never hear the end of it from my friends if I went back. How often is a display of fear avoided only because of a greater fear?

The sight of the dark outskirts of the dhaba and six husky guys sitting inside the partitioned kitchen gave me an alternative idea. Which was how I found myself on all fours in the middle of six bikes, trying to steal back Sudhir’s bike. Thank God the keys were still in it.

But wait! If I just took the bike away and these guys found out soon they would be after us in a jiffy. Try as I might I could not see the four of us coming off victorious, or even alive, in a melee with these guys. The only thing to do was to somehow incapacitate their bikes so that they could not follow us with any speed.

With my heart in my mouth and my pulse hammering in my ears, I cut off the fuel pipes of the other five bikes. Even while near panic I could not help feeling guilty about vandalizing bikes. I may have not ridden bikes for nearly a decade before now but I still had the heart of a biker. I could contemplate injuring any of these guys with indifference. Damaging their bikes, however, seemed like harming a child and only self-preservation could have egged me on to do it.

I silently pushed Sudhir’s bike out to the road and started it and rode off with a sense of accomplishment. The things that a man can feel proud of!!

x x x x x x x x x

When I first thought up the idea of a biking trip, the last thought that would have crossed my mind was that I would some day be sneaking around and stealing bikes. I had quit my job in my late thirties because I always knew that the one thing that I did not want to do with my time was work. A lucky investment in the stock markets and a even more luckily timed exit had made it possible for me to live without working. (Yes! Some people do make money in the stock markets. Where else do you think that all the money that you lose goes?).

Now that I had time on my hands the problem was what was I to do with it? Not even an instruction manual to help me out. Getting into the habit of allowing my office to decide what I do with my time had nullified my own inventiveness and now I was at loose ends - which is when I thought of the four bikes in my garage and the three friends to whom the other three bikes belonged. Sudhir, Reddy and Rajiv were coming over tonight to celebrate my new-found freedom and I intended broaching the idea of a bike trip to them.

“When she married me, I was 21 and a BA(Economics). If I had stayed as I was I would have spend a lifetime climbing to where I am now and she would have been happy. Now that I have done my PGDM from IIM-B, she wants me higher still. Seems like she wants me to keep climbing but there is no specific place where she wants me to arrive..just keep climbing and climbing and climbing…up the corporate ladder!” moaned Reddy. His wife was a perfect example of the contrariness of human nature. She cared for him deeply while busily chipping away at his self-respect with every word she said. Add to the mix a daughter who had outgrown the Papa-can-do-no-wrong stage and was firmly seated in the Papa-can-do-nothing-right stage, you can understand how he could give the impression of an out-of-breath, perspiring climber of an endless staircase while lolling on my bed and sucking at a can of beer.

Rajiv gave a snort. Reddy reddened and turned on him. “What do you know about it? You are MD of your own company. Bhabhi is a model and too busy with her career to bother you about yours!”

Only I was privy to Rajiv’s issues. The others knew he was not totally happy but did not really know why. Being a bachelor had made me a sort of father confessor to him. His wife was a lovely and popular model and he lived in perpetual fear of losing her. He loved her to distraction and, thanks to his fear of losing her, he was perpetually dancing to her tune. Of late, apparently, her tune had become Do-this-or-I leave-you which was causing him no end of distress.

“Guys! Stop complaining! I can’t even find a woman to love me and you guys keep complaining about the women in your lives!” Our eternal romantic Sudhir! He had sold off his online business for a hefty sum and was now a consultant for e-businesses. Had the sum he realized been heftier, there would have been no dearth of women who found him romantic. He had enough to be attractive in the arranged marriage circles but he had this weird notion of marrying for love. If only his exterior had been as romantic as his heart! As it was, his pudgy frame and non-descript face created only one impulse in women – to urgently get elsewhere! I am over-stating the case here. There are men who make wedding bells ring in the minds of women. Sudhir, however, made women feel like reaching for his wrist with the nearest rakhi available.

Getting the minds of this lot off their respective woes was a chore so I did not attempt it. Instead, I pitched the bike tour as a panacea for their troubles. I waxed eloquent about how a break would give them a perspective on their issues. I talked glowingly of meeting women on the bike tour to Sudhir. I told Reddy how the tour could possibly make him take a fresh view of his life and even enthuse him into climbing the corporate ladder with gusto. I told Rajiv that the biker mystique would make him more attractive to his wife. All these marketing efforts were successful, as you well know and you also know the unexpected results that that success brought me.

x x x x x x x x x

Just as you think your problems are behind you, Fate creeps up on you and hits you with a sandbag. I had finished basking in the praise of my friends about successfully threatening the thugs into releasing Sudhir’s bike and we had proceeded further down the road for another half an hour only to find that it petered out into mud trails. In our hurry to exit the dhaba the first time we had taken the cut-off from the road. A local there told us that the only way to reach the main road was back the way we came. Past that dhaba!

We spent the night in the open. Needless to say, I was tossing and turning all night and it was not because of the cacophonous snoring of my friends. I had not had the courage to tell my friends about my thieving and vandalizing ways and I was stuck with my story. Reddy, Sudhir and Rajiv could not understand my apprehensions and were even talking airily of stopping at that dhaba for breakfast before proceeding onwards. It was the thought of these idiots deciding to stop there and the consequences of doing so that filled my night with waking nightmares. 

With great difficulty I persuaded them to not only skip breakfast at that dhaba but to put as much distance between them and us as possible. The three of them seemed to have suddenly developed indomitable courage and iron resolution and it took a lot of silver-tongued oratory to convince them of the dangers of allowing that sextet a chance to change their minds.

When in sight of the dhaba, I saw only one bike and heaved a sigh of relief. Do you know what this bunch of juvenile idiots did while we passed the dhaba. Hooted and gave the finger to those guys, that is what! The sextet came rushing out in anger. One of them tossed a half-burnt cigarette away and bent to pick up a stone. There was a whoosh and the dhaba went up in flames. The cigarette must have fallen into the pool of fuel that had drained out of the bikes. I was piling up a huge debt with these toughs and, if ever the payment fell due, I would be looking at the daisies from the roots up.

Onwards we proceeded for the next couple of hours till we reached a small town. There was a sort of motel at the outskirts and we were hungry enough to stop there for breakfast.

Ever believed in love at first sight? Neither did I, but one look at the girl at the reception and Sudhir was lost to the rest of us. Well, for Sudhir it was the norm and generally it lasted for about a fortnight or till the girl started puking at the sight of him, whichever came earlier. I said that and wanted to be on our way but, without confessing to the danger from the dhaba group, I could not budge them. "What's the harm in allowing Sudhir his fun?" was Rajiv's comment and that was that.

The girl, though, showed no marked signs of Cupid’s attentions. She seemed happy to see that we were bikers but there was no specific attraction for Sudhir visible. From the looks of the photographs in the reception counter she seemed to be of the owner’s family – the owner’s daughter, as it turned out - and the bike that figured prominently in all the photographs explained her preference for bikers. 

That was it! Nothing would do but to stop there for the day (and for the rest of his life the way Sudhir talked about it!). We settled in the only room that was available in the motel. As the day wore on with no sign of that sextet there was a sigh of relief for me. There were no visible signs of pursuit till we came here and I could assume that the six toughs must have given up on any thoughts of revenge. Fate must have had a hearty laugh about then.

The next day we woke up to signs of revelry in the motel. Yesterday’s matter-of-fact reception girl was all smiles when we went down and a shower of color and squirts of water along with the shout ‘Holi Hai’ explained the reason why. Being accustomed to city life, it was a novelty for your hotel owner and employees to want to take liberties with you just because it was Holi but we could not bring ourselves to object in the face of such unalloyed enthusiasm and enjoyment.

Breakfast was had in a festive mood. Sudhir’s heart-throb – Jasmit Kaur- had joined us at the table and Sudhir was giving her the full benefit of his ‘charm’ with a wary eye out for the sight of any rakhis in the neighbourhood. By the time we finished with breakfast and stepped out to stretch our legs, I was as relaxed and joyous as it is given me to be when the familiar figure of that dhaba owner on that excuse for a bike hove to on the horizon. Disaster!!

Before I could even conceive of any evasive action, he came rushing in at us and got a full squirt of colored water and a couple of handfuls of gulaal in his face. Sudhir had recognized him, of course, but the love sloshing around in him had washed away any vestiges of bad humor in him and, thus, he greeted that tough like a long-lost brother is greeted on Holi. Jasmit thought we had met another friend and joined the revelry with peals of laughter and more gulaal.

It is difficult to imagine the plight of that chap. He had thought to gain a good bike and lost a decent dhaba overnight. On top of it, the very chaps who had ‘cheated’ him of the bike and caused the loss of his dhaba were adding insult to injury by making a fool of him, with that girl laughing at him like he was some sort of a comedian.

“Just you wait”, he screamed in fury as he ascended his bike. “See if I do not get my friends along, trash this place and stamp you guys into the ground” With that he roared off. Well! With that bike it was more roar than off but he was moving away to bring disaster on all of us.

Explanation Time! I really do not want to recall the next half an hour or so. By the time I had done explaining what really happened on that night and why that sextet was bound to come hopping mad at us, the other four had heaped enough abuse on me to last the next several lifetimes. Yes! Four! Now that Jasmit had been dragged into our mess she was quite free with her abuses as well – and, if you really like hearing a virtuoso performance in abuse, you cannot beat Punjabi for it.

A distant roar of bikes heralded the arrival of disaster. As we learnt later, the other five bikes had been sent for repairs overnight. With the dhaba owner on our trail, the rest had hastened to get their bikes and started after us. What with his 'superb' bike and checking for us at every dhaba en route, it had taken him till evening to reach the village before this town where he had stayed overnight. When we were sighted and our nemesis informed them of our whereabouts they were just an hour away from where we were.

“Come! Let us run!” I said in a frenzy of fear. Rajiv and Reddy turned towards their bikes.

“No way! I am not letting Jasmit face trouble all by herself. You run if you want to” said Sudhir. However hard I looked at him I could not see a hero in him but the look in Jasmit’s eyes said, ‘My Hero!” as plainly as though he were a sixty foot cutout of Sunny Deol! Sudhir seemed to have found love at last…but that ‘at last’ seemed more likely to be ‘at the end of his life’ in a few minutes.

We could not abandon Sudhir. Reddy, Rajiv and I reluctantly turned from our bikes and faced the incoming army with resignation. Reddy’s phone rang.

“Where the hell are you? Did I not ask you to call me every day? What are you doing?” said the shrill penetrating voice of Mrs. Reddy.

“Committing suicide!” said Reddy bitterly.

“What?”

I hurriedly took the phone from her. “Bhabhi!” I started…”Shit! The phone is dead!”

Mine was dead, too, when I checked. There was no time to settle Mrs. Reddy’s apprehensions with the incoming sextet descending from their bikes and advancing menacingly upon us.

I would never have believed it of Sudhir. One moment he was standing next to me and the next he had streaked forward and planted a fist in the midriff of the first opponent. Rajiv’s phone rang.

“What is this I hear about Reddy committing suicide?” It was a day for penetrating feminine voices.

Sudhir had just managed to bounce once off the ground and, with a streak of blood on his forehead, he was back into the attack.

“Later, dear! I am kind of busy now!” I advanced into a superbly executed uppercut and did a graceful reverse somersault.

“Busy? Talk to me now or I will leave you”

Reddy was clinging like a limpet to one of them when another guy plucked him effortlessly off and flung him into the trash can.

“Get off the phone or I will leave you..” a fist knocked off the phone, “for the next world!”

After that the melee was a kaleidoscope of movement. Sudhir was getting dribbled like a basket-ball; Reddy was figuring centrally in a vigorous foot-ball match while Rajiv and I were alternatively featuring as the ball and ninepins – sometimes I was the ball that knocked Rajiv down, sometimes he was! In the midst of all this vigorous athletic activity roared in a magnificent sardar astride a magnificent bike and a stentorian voice called out, ‘Stop this right now!”

Such was the command in the voice that all activity ceased on the instant. Believe it or not, Sudhir and I froze midway through falling to the ground and continued the action only after a second!

“Karnail Singh Sahib!” said the sextet in one over-awed voice! From the cacophony of adulatory voices I gleaned that the Sardar was not only the father of Jasmit but also the founder of the biking club to which our sextet of toughs belonged.

Karnail Singh had also managed somehow to get the gist of all the happenings.

“Boys! What is the first rule of our biking club?” he asked censoriously.

The sextet of toughs looked like shame-faced schoolboys and one muttered, “All bikers are my brethren”.

“You are bikers only if you can take joy in biking and spread it around. Behaving like hooligans only makes you a rowdy riding a bike and not a biker. I am ashamed to think of you as belonging to my club!”

“But…they damaged our bikes.”

“Your bikes seem quite all right now! Come, shake hands and be friends!”

If someone had ever told me that I would do something as corny as shaking hands with the guy who was using me for a punching bag, I would have called him a fool to end all fools. But here I was, holding my hand out sheepishly and wincing with the strength of the grip of the other guy!

Believe me or not, in the three days that it took for Mrs. Reddy and Mrs. Rajiv to land up here we were thick friends with the sextet. The dhaba owner had his reservations, of course, since his was the major loss but the others were quite decent lads.

Mrs. Reddy came all tears and contrition. “I never thought you would do this. I knew you were hurting but I couldn’t help myself. I won’t talk down to you again. You, too, promise me that you will never contemplate suicide again!”

“But I never..” started Reddy and gulped down the rest of his words in the face of the 10000 KW glare from the rest of us! Here was his chance at a peaceful home life and he was well on his way to fluffing it by saying that he never contemplated suicide.

Mrs.Rajiv had her own litany. ‘At last! For once you treated me as a person. Up to now it seemed to me that I was an object of desire, which should not be lost at any cost. When you said you would leave me…that was the first time you ever said anything that meant that you considered me as a person to be liked or disliked”

‘But, darling! You don’t understand exactly how..”

Another 10000 KW glare! Electricity was certainly in the air that day. I know it seems traitorous to my sex but men can really be such fools!

“You love me, darling?”, said Rajiv, recovering from his folly.

“Of course, you idiot! Why do you think I stayed with you…for lack of choice?”

There was an interregnum of inchoate noises that need no explanation.

“Rajiv! There are other ways than anger to show that you consider me as a person”. There was a hint of steel in her voice. “I am not exchanging the position of trophy wife for that of a door-mat”.

Looked like it was not going to be entirely a bed of roses for Rajiv!

The biker crowd was happily planning Sudhir and Jasmit’s wedding. It seemed to me that Karnail Singh was not entirely happy with the idea – going by the disbelieving look in his face every time he looked at Sudhir – but Jasmit proved to have a will of steel, especially when it came to her father.

One unhappy voice intruded in all this festivity. “What will I do? My dhaba is gone and I have nothing to live on.”

That is when I had my brightest idea. Here I was, wondering about what to do with my time and here was this guy situated off a main road and a grand cook too. Sitting on the road, watching traffic, meeting the odd customer, going on bike rides and visiting the city every now and then seemed like a very attractive proposition.

“Listen! I will go partners with you. I will finance a small motel at your location!” I said. My erstwhile nemesis was so grateful to me that he almost drowned me in his tears of joy.

Having arranged happy endings for every one I leant back satisfied. The only fly in the ointment for me was that, when I proposed living so far from Delhi, there was a noise suspiciously like a sigh of relief from three sets of feminine nostrils! Women! I will never understand them!

Disclaimer: A fellow-blogger challenged me to write a desi version of the movie 'Wild Hogs' for the Castrol contest. I hope there are enough similarities in story-line to satisfy him, enough differences and enough biking to satisfy the contest requirement of an original biking story!

Romance on a diet

It was not surprising that Vivek fell in love with Latha. She was such a lovely girl that anyone would have fallen in love with her and almost everyone did. Why Latha fell in love with Vivek was less apparent but all of Vivek’s friends found it easy to understand considering his charm of manner and unfailing good humor.

One look at Latha and the words ‘Slim’ and ‘Graceful’ sprung to your lips. Vivek, however, boasts of having hit up a hundred without lingering too long in the nervous nineties and was well on his way to scoring a big hundred, as the cricket commentators would say. Considering that this was in kilograms and all that weight was slung over a sixty-seven inch frame, ‘Slim’ and ‘Graceful’ were unlikely to be among the descriptive words that sprung to your lips for Vivek. Heaven, where matches are supposed to be made, could have managed a better pairing but it was not to be. One could certainly have wished for a more substantial beloved for Vivek.

With the pairing as it was, however, something had to give sooner or later. It was a wonder that nothing went wrong when the couple sat together to eat. Vivek, as he freely confesses, comes by his weight honestly. There is nothing of the I-hardly-eat-but-keep-putting-on-weight syndrome about him. When he comes to dine, the host’s kitchen definitely knows that he has been and gone. Latha, on the other hand, nibbles daintily at small portions that a mouse would have disdained to notice. Yet, not once did Latha raise a well-manicured eyebrow about Vivek’s devastating ways at the dining table.

The bolt fell while Vivek was dancing with Latha at a party. Strange though it may seem, Vivek loved dancing though the same cannot be said of the other people in his vicinity. It was while he was swinging Latha around in wild abandon that someone said, “Ah! He has a girl with him. I thought he was dancing by himself till he turned and was wondering why he was holding himself so peculiarly.” Cruel as the gibe was, Vivek was laughing heartily at it. If he had noticed the thoughtful expression that clouded Latha’s face, he might not have found it as funny.

Marriage, as someone said, is the process of finding out what sort of a person your wife would have preferred to marry. A woman with a thoughtful expression on her face is a woman who has decided to mould her beloved to suit her preferences. It was time for Vivek to be quivering, all right, but with fear instead of laughter.

The fact that the first clouds had started marring the sun of Vivek’s temperament was made apparent one morning when I woke up in Vivek’s flat after a night of drunken revelry. A monotonous litany of “Day by day in every way I am getting thinner and thinner” woke me up to the dubious wonders of a new day. Lurching out of bed to identify this incredible melting man I encountered Vivek standing in front of a mirror, gazing soulfully at his image and intoning this mindless litany.

I was naturally taken aback. Finding no diminution in the generous contours of mine host, I was puzzled by this statement of misplaced optimism. A further puzzle was that Vivek was suddenly aspiring to a size zero figure. It was then that I was informed of the fateful party and, as we all had long awaited with trepidation, the axe had fallen on Vivek. Latha wanted him cut to size – her size for preference!

Why is it that when men balk at the demands made upon them by their lady loves they are quelled by “If you loved me, you would do this”? When men made the demands, however, they are muzzled by “If you loved me, you would not ask me to do this.” Is it that men are too proud to emotionally blackmail their loves or is it because women have nimbler brains than men and get in their blows first? 

Setting aside this eternal mystery, I asked “But why are you suddenly so sure that you are getting thinner by the day?” The debauchery of the previous day had shown a Vivek in the prime of his powers with the knife and fork as well as with the bottle and, thus, why he should be expecting to diminish by the day was still mystifying.

“You do not know the psychology of the matter”, said Vivek. “If you state confidently that you are getting thinner by the day the subconscious acts upon it and makes you thinner.”

I was taken aback. It would take a subconscious of the character of a Hercules to touch the bare fringes of the task at hand even under normal circumstances. Considering that Vivek would be helping it along by starting every day with half a dozen masala dosas and carrying on from there, one could hardly conceive of any power on earth that was equal to the task.

Running an eye over his sumptuous contours, I said diffidently, “Don’t you think that you are...er…sort of over-burdening your subconscious?”

“All that matters is self confidence”, said Vivek smugly and I retreated abashed.

A few days down the line it was clear that Vivek’s subconscious mind was yet to buckle down and start on reducing his ample proportions. In fact, it appeared as though he had actually continued his march towards his big hundred. This, naturally, begged the question and it was an unnaturally morose Vivek who answered, “I think it is not working because I am not saying it confidently enough.”

“Why?”

“Well! It is a bit difficult to confidently assert that you are getting thinner and thinner while simultaneously planning to go out to purchase the next higher size in jeans.”

What Latha had to say about Vivek’s scientific attempt at reducing weight will always be a mystery primarily because Vivek could only turn beet red and gargle whenever he was asked about it. Anyway, the psychological method was summarily abandoned as was evidenced in a few days.

“Has Vivek taken up a course in nutrition or something?” asked Rohit of the Systems department.

“Why do you ask that? Vivek has always been saying that fooling one university into giving him a degree was sufficient achievement for his lifetime.”

“He has had me program an elaborate chart of various food items and the calories that they contain.”

It dawned on me then that this was Vivek’s new attempt at reducing weight. This also explained his sudden devotion to work at lunchtime causing no end of hardship to the rest of us of the home food brigade who shared lunch with him. Hitherto he had made such inroads into our lunch boxes that we had taken to bringing extra food for him. His sudden disappearance had caused us to over-eat since none of us cared to get back to our spouses with wasted food thereby causing no end of marital strife.

Vivek was dieting! Earthshaking though the revelation was to me it seemed a much better approach than the psychological approach that he had attempted earlier. The only issue was that I would have preferred that he would be less obsessive about it. Ever since I let him know that his attempts were no secret, we could hardly have a conversation in which the calorie content of various edibles would not play a prominent part. It is difficult to enjoy a parantha, say, with someone droning in your ears about how many calories it contained and how much more it would be if it were cooked in ghee instead of refined oil. From being the life and soul of the party, Vivek was well on his way to becoming the office bore.

A visit to his home was a further revelation of the extent of his obsession. His kitchen had turned into a veritable laboratory with measuring jars, weighing scales, pipettes and what not. Up to now his culinary skills were justly praised but this Vivek who sucked in the oil through his pipette to a precisely measured volume, carefully weighed his cereals and pulses, used measured quantities of other condiments and carefully calculated the calories before proceeding with the cooking was a sight for sore eyes. Surely such diligence should have its impact on his weight even if it did make his dishes as insipid as his current conversation.

Surprisingly, with all this attention to controlling calories, Vivek continued to become more spherical by the day. The puzzle would have been totally unsolved but for Rohit seeing Vivek coming furtively out of the local Darshini with that indescribable look of satiety on his face that can only come out of solidly gorging on deep fried goodies. It looked like all the mathematical jugglery with edibles during meal times was being set at naught with clandestine visits to the local eateries for snacks! Vivek, however, stoutly denied that his dieting was being negated by his snacking and even insisted that he had lost a couple of inches around his waist. That, unfortunately, was the moment when his waist button, unable to stand the pressure any further, shot off into the wild blue yonder causing us all to laugh immoderately. He departed in a huff.

Diplomatic relations had not yet been normalized when we assembled for a meeting at the office called by the CEO. Things were pretty grim at the office what with the economy slowing down and the company’s new products failing to strike a chord with the customers. The CEO had called together the marketing team and was seeking suggestions to improve the product profile. Vivek, normally a vivacious and innovative contributor in these feasts of reason, sat silently sunk in deep thought for so long that the CEO felt the need to comment “Vivek! Are you thinking of some serious problem?”

Vivek replied, “Yes! Do you think that if I ate a couple of these biscuits, I would have to skip a roti at lunch in order to make up for it?”

The icy silence that descended on the room probably hinted to Vivek that these were not exactly the pearls of wisdom that the CEO was eagerly looking forward to get from him.

“If Vivek can take his mind off the snacks tray and listen to what is being said, we may continue the discussion”, said the CEO, sarcastically. Vivek had his past record to thank for the fact that the dreaded pink slip did not land on his desk the same afternoon.

“Vivek is too much the happy-go-lucky type to have the discipline to reduce his weight by his own efforts”, said a worried Rohit. “And if he does not reduce his weight soon, he is going to do himself some serious injury. As it is, it is difficult to see him moping around all day when he used to be the sunniest fellow around.”

“True! I can’t see a gym being any help to him, either! All said and done, it is he who will have to go to it regularly and adhere to any dietary restrictions imposed on him”, said I.

Rohit’s face brightened. “Say! Why don’t we pack him off to a spa? Heard of a good ayurvedic spa a few days back from my aunt. Once there, he will have no choice but to eat what they give him and do what they ask him to do.”

That seemed like a very good idea indeed and, the plan having passed the acid test of Latha’s approval, Vivek was indeed packed off. It was with a sigh of relief that Rohit and I returned from the airport expecting to see the hitherto unseen spectacle of a slim Vivek in a fortnight’s time.

The third day from then Vivek was spotted slinking back into his home. Unless the spa had shunned ayurveda and taken up tantrik methods, Vivek could not be any slimmer than he was when he left and it would take really powerful tantra to have wrought any noticeable change in three days. Rohit and I rushed to Vivek’s home in the evening for a progress report.

“Believe me, guys! I was prepared for a Spartan lifestyle when I went there. I did not expect a sumptuous buffet for breakfast. Just a few idlis and, maybe, a couple of vadas – that is all I anticipated. But, a leaf of cabbage and a carrot!” Vivek exclaimed in such horrified tones that we were moved to tears.

It further transpired that lunch and dinner also fell drastically short of Vivek’s ‘modest’ expectations. Apparently, the people in the spa had never heard of cereals and pulses and they did not even know that meat was edible. Food for them consisted, exclusively, of fruits and vegetables. What Vivek had to say on the subject of fruits and vegetables – raw or semi-cooked – is better written on asbestos for any other material would be scorched. It was a novel experience for us to hear Vivek speak in disparaging terms about any edible thing. The humble cabbage faced so much ire that it appeared that Vivek’s wrath would render it extinct as a species.

“The food is but the tip of the iceberg! God! They marinade you in oils, knead you like dough, broil you in steam and bake you in mud. I tell you guys, I had to run away because I felt in imminent danger of being carved for dinner”, said Vivek to our stunned disbelief. When pressed about the point he had to admit that it did seem unlikely that a bunch of cabbage eaters could have indulged in such a gargantuan cannibalistic orgy as Vivek would have provided. Yet, whether it was because of a malfunctioning sense of humor or because he was partially unhinged by his privations, he stubbornly insisted that he ran away only to save his life. Rohit and I exchanged looks that clearly said that Vivek must have been more worried about dying of starvation than by being digested.

“What do you think Latha is going to say about this?” I asked.

Vivek blanched and looked so thoroughly miserable that I did not have the heart to pursue the question. Rohit had clearly given up on Vivek and I, too, felt that he was beyond hope.

We were walking moodily out of Vivek’s flat when we spied Latha steaming in with fire shooting out of her nostrils. If ever anyone looked capable of carving up Vivek for dinner it was Latha at that moment. Rohit, the bloody coward, disappeared so fast that one could almost hear Spock say “Energize”.

The sight of the normally ebullient Vivek looking miserable must have turned my head. It is a fact that the last two months had seen Vivek, who made everyone around him happy, turn into a nervous wreck all because this girl wanted to edit his silhouette. I did not realize how much Vivek’s misery had affected me till I found myself accosting Latha instead of following the eminently sound method adopted by Rohit of avoiding female hurricanes.

“Latha! Listen! Your persistent badgering of Vivek is doing no good. It is time you decided on whether you want him slim and unhappy or fat and happy”, I said.

“Slim and happy”, said Latha.

That is the problem with women. Any man would know when he was being offered a choice of mutually exclusive options whereas a woman refuses to understand it. This, they then boast, is lateral thinking!

“If you are going to swell up and burst, please do it elsewhere”, said this imp from hell. “This is my best dress and bloodstains are so hard to get rid of”, she added pathetically.

“I am just Vivek’s friend and I am unable to stand his misery. You claim to love him and you seem to have no compunction over causing him more misery than he has ever had to face. Don’t you realize that he is the sort of person who lives in the moment and finds it impossible to give up today’s pleasures for a possible future benefit? All that he can manage is to feel guilty every time he gives in to temptation and that is making him miserable” I said angrily. And, then, a happy inspiration struck me. “You want him slim and happy and you will only have him fat and miserable if you persist in your course”, I said, glad that at least this once I had avoided adding to my I-should-have-said-this-then list.

It is also said that women always have the last word in any argument and anything you say thereafter is merely the start of the next argument. Before Latha could get her second wind and burn me to a crisp, I unceremoniously took to my heels. Discretion is the only part of valor as far as I am concerned and the fact that I had been foolish already did not mean that I had to persist in my folly.

Whether my words had a salutary effect or whether the sight of Vivek’s misery melted Latha’s heart will never be known. What did transpire is that they got married within the month with Vivek looking very much his old self in both his contours as well as his temperament.

Latha and Vivek are married now for a year and, wonder of wonders, Vivek appears slimmer than before without any marked diminution in his joy. Looks like women have ways of having their cake and eating it too and, that, without adding to the weight of the one who eats the cake!