Sink down on the couch. Make yourself comfortable. You are staying put here for the next few hours (at the very least). Annoying doorbells or telephones will be answered by the wife. Ask your five-year old to fetch you the remote control(s). Enquire if there is anything to "munch" irrespective of whether it is just before or just after dinnertime. Sulk visibly in case you don't find anything "interesting" enough to eat; if you do find something to your liking, cradle the bowl of chips or popcorn and switch on the TV. Keep watching the same "breaking news" across TV channels. Cross-check this while simultaneously browsing the Internet on your Blackberry. Ads are evil. Scan as many channels as you can during a commercial break to see what else there is on TV. This way you can watch several movies and numerous news channels at the same time, and also rattle your poor wife's brain in case she still thinks she can watch TV with you. Tell your wife how she is missing out on important topical events. Emphasize the need to be aware of what is currently happening in Egypt, in the cricketing world, the 2G scam, etc., and how not knowing this vital information will permanently scar your life. Convince her that the next day's newspaper somehow will not give you the complete picture. In pursuit of this exclusive information, stay up all night -- day after day -- to catch the exact moment when Mubarak might announce that he will step down, for instance. The next day morning, sleep late and complain about not being able to sleep well ad nauseam. Start the whole process over again -- switch on the TV and work your thumb on the hapless remote !!
Every married woman knows about the switch that trips when she opens her mouth to talk to her spouse. The subject's ears cease to function at once; they are back to normal the moment the wife stops talking! Not once in eight years have I ever known my husband to really listen -- nondescript, vague grunts and fillers are his way of acknowledging the annoying sound waves that bounce off his ears. On the other hand, the converse does not apply. At least, my spouse expects me to hang upon his every word and sulks if he thinks he does not enjoy my full attention. Trying to feed your child simultaneously is not a good enough excuse to turn away when He talks ... The other switch -- you know, the one that shuts off your ears when the TV is switched on -- is known to exist from quite an early age. I can personally testify to this. To get my five-year-old's attention, I have to switch off the TV when I really need to get across to her; obviously this is accompanied by her shrill, vocal protest! This is also strongly manifested in the male species, particularly when watching a cricket match (even a replay of a Test match that took place years ago). By the way, every other person in the house will be required to breathe softly in such an event so as not to disturb Him while he is watching TV -- whether it is an ancient cricket match or "breaking news" while scanning several TV channels simultaneously. Even the darling-daughter-who-can-do-no-wrong needs to conform -- "You can talk to me only during the ads" -- initially said in a soft, even gentle, voice it gets progressively louder till there is absolute silence. Naturally, there is this obvious correlation between waxing and waning of dinner-table conversation in perfect synchronisation with commercial breaks on TV. Requests for water or second helpings notwithstanding, everyone needs to toe the line. The older generation enforce this more rigidly as their daily routine revolves around their favourite TV shows. Well, last but not the least -- as soon as the maid talks about not showing up for work for the next few days, my blood pressure shoots up. I become in turn cranky, annoyed and depressed. All these symptoms vanish the instant she returns -- the sun seems brighter, the grass greener, the sky bluer and all is right with my world once again !
Coffee -- this conjures up an image of a steaming cuppa with enticing aroma; you can almost feel the warmth of the cup in your palms ..... And, as you sip it, the life-giving fluid runs through tired veins -- reviving you, rejuvenating you, urging you to get on with the business of life .....
It was a weird quirk of Fate that the family I had married into was steeped in rivers of coffee. Coffee was the fuel that had the whole household going. Just-after-getting-up-in-the-morning coffee would be followed by coffee-made-with-today's-fresh-milk. A "second-round" of coffee was compulsory after breakfast. Evening, 4 pm, was ushered in with another round of coffee. This was besides any coffee made for guests happening to drop in. Of course, everyone reserved the right to call for coffee anytime during waking hours and to comment long and loudly on how it tasted.
Cribbing about my non-existent (in his opinion) coffee making skills is a mandatory part of each day for my husband. Let me attempt listing a few of my main coffee-making sins: (1) not volunteering to make coffee, (2) making coffee that tastes terrible, (3) not making hot enough coffee (more on that in a minute), (4) offering too little or too much ! In fact, anything that could conceivably go wrong in this process, did.
Giving him a cup of coffee would mean triggering a half-hour worth of critical commentary on its demerits! The first sip and the second would thus be separated in time by at least 15 minutes; enough for it to cool down significantly. In spite of this, if the temperature of the coffee during that first sip was not enough to scald and possibly permanently kill off cells on my spouse's palate, it was labelled "cold" and immediately poured into the kitchen sink. The verdict "bisi illa" (meaning "not hot enough" in Kannada) was supposed to make me wilt -- again, something I am not very good it. This would lead to more sulking in silence, alternating with tirades on the importance of making hot coffee.
More often than not, as soon as I put the cup into the hands of the spouse, he would pour off one or two millilitres in the kitchen sink -- "Now, the quantity is just fine" he would exclaim.
I never dreamt that former US President George Bush would become my Guru, so to speak, until I got married to this overly-fussy (according to me) person with refined tastebuds (according to him). Let me explain. I come from a Tamil Iyer family -- supposedly from a background that is traditionally known to excel in making "Filter Coffee". Keeping this in mind, I don't really blame my husband for expecting me to make coffee of a certain standard. But I was the non-conformer -- I had never liked the smell of coffee, let alone taste the brown liquid, it until it became a part of a twice-daily routine to fuel my Ph.D. days. I had never made filter coffee -- ever -- before I got married !! Well, I bought the necessary equipment (small coffee filter) and thought "How difficult can this be?" I realized how it was possible to get different things "wrong" and make varieties of "bad coffee" that was inferior to dishwater in my spouse's opinion. Advice poured in from all sides -- change the quantity of coffee powder, change to another brand of coffee, change the coffee/chicory ratio, and so on. I left my husband gasping for breath with each new attempt at coffee making. Occasionally, I would get it right (by sheer chance) -- this would be labelled as a totally unplanned, freak incident. I have finally made my peace with coffee issues by publicly announcing a lack of talent in making the same and lowering expectations all around (a la George Bush). Stray victories are attributed to chance or a fiendish underhand plot to get the husband in a good mental frame to get him to agree to something (his theory, not mine!).
After more than seven years of marriage, I am amazed that in spite of my being guilty as charged (with respect to coffee making), the husband has not even entertained the notion of making coffee himself. I suspect making his own coffee would deprive him of the basic pleasure of complaining about the old ball-and-chain !
