If I ask the cook for fried eggs for breakfast, my wife will insist on sausages instead, knowing how much I dislike starting the day with meat. If I suggest going out for a meal, she’ll point to the effort that went into preparing a special treat for dinner — even if what’s on the menu is kedgeree rather than biryani. We don’t endorse the same films, or music, or books, or at least that’s her explanation for when she chooses to be off on her own while I’m left to fend for myself, even though it irks her that I’m less than unhappy about the outcome.
It always mystifies me what she gets up to on these solo binges, for friends and acquaintances will ring up to say, “Your wife’s a scream,” or “How do you manage her at home — she’s wild.” “What do you think she does?” our son, on vacation from college, once asked. “You’re better off not knowing,” his sister advised sagely. I couldn’t agree more, especially when someone I’m not sure I even know called to say, “I suppose we ought to invite you both for cocktails, but really, your wife’s rather more fun when she’s by herself.”
It was hardly a surprise that I didn’t want to get anywhere close to the stadia for the Commonwealth Games — I don’t like crowds — and no surprise either that my wife did. But with neither tickets nor passes easily available and the city virtually under curfew, we found ourselves spending our evenings as sparring partners disagreeing about everything from her diet to my wardrobe, in the midst of which she thought to provide me with a list of instructions should the phone ring for her. “If my brother calls from the US, you’re to say I’ve gone to watch the tennis matches,” she said, “but if my other brother calls from Mumbai, then I’m at the hockey stadium. And for my sister, I’m out watching the divers. That,” she added with a note of triumph, “should really upset her.”
Her friend Sarla only got passes for lawn bowling, Padma thought the shooting was boring, and Lakshmi watched the squash champs in action on television at home but with the lights switched off because she didn’t want anyone to know she was too cheap to buy the tickets. And Shanti was shown up as a trickster when her family spilt the beans that far from sitting next to Sonia Gandhi at the stadium when India played Pakistan, she hadn’t even bothered to watch its telecast beyond checking to see what Soniaji wore to the match.
My wife, of course, upstaged them all by getting passes to the closing ceremony — for herself, naturally, “because you’re hardly the sporty type,” she told me, which was true even though it felt like an insult. Off she went in her jogging shoes, while Sarla, Padma and Lakshmi, along with their spouses, decided they’d come over to keep me company and the bar wet. “Poor thing,” sighed Sarla, fixing herself her third vodka-tonic before SMSing my wife on everyone’s behalf, “Hope you aren’t bored.” “Incredible energy,” my wife messaged instantly back, and then followed up with a barrage directed at each one of us: “Great sound”, “What harmony!”, “Amazing experience”, “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world”, and, for good measure and intended as a reprimand, “You don’t know what you’re missing”. Later, with everything over and everyone back home, I heard her phone her sister to say, “It wasn’t all that hot, I did it as my patriotic duty — but mostly because I couldn’t agree with Sarla, or my husband, that it was better to watch it on television even though, of course, they were right.”
