Life with Wife

Having read, said and seen all, it appears that life with wife is the best. There are no anxieties, no tensions, no high blood pressure and no guilty feelings. There is never a search for privacy, for secret telephonic conversations, secluded restaurants for clandestine meetings or places where no one would recognize you.

There are no more of those lame duck procrastinations like ‘hair has been just oiled’, or a ‘splitting headache’ or that it is one of those ‘sticky feminine days’. Life is calm, calculated and in the open. No surprises, no apprehensions, no long waits and no confusions. As you put the newspaper away, look tenderly towards you wife and just say, "Let’s eat out today." You’d have made her day as she comes alive with excitement and exuberance. She gets all worked up at the thought and swiftly gets going into working out the administrative details – tidying up the little one, pressing her favorite dress and giving last minute instruction to the cook, the ayah and the sweeper. Some things will have to be stashed away, some almirahs have to be closed, some lockers to be locked, a call to be returned and school books to be replaced into the bags. The entire environment has become electrifying since your earth-shattering ‘announcement’.

Meanwhile, You can shower leisurely and look forward to a quiet, sedate evening, a change from your routine. A simple dress would do. You think and maybe you could save on cologne as well. The wife, when dressed up, whirls around the tall mirror scrutinizing herself from every angle, plays around with pins, lipsticks, and brushes. She carefully takes out the wedding ring kept in a little box hidden below clothes in one corner. She finally emerges radiating charm and inquiring seductively with a smile, "How do I look? Keeping your eyes glued to the local commercial, and your mind thousands of miles away, you reply "Wonderful." She’s not satisfied and wants you to look up which you do and again say, "Wonderful," putting in a little more enthusiasm. She is now completely satisfied and gives herself the finishing touches. As you leave, the cook, standing in the doorway, beams with happiness at the prospect of a free evening in an empty house.

The caravan finally leaves after a minor skirmish in the backseat, as to who would sit next to the window, has been resolved.

And now is the time when we normally make that momentous decision of ‘What’ and ‘Where’ to eat. She comes up with a few proposal all worked out with a simple criterion of maximum-food-at-minimum-price. The children express enthusiasm only for the final item – ice-cream. Otherwise, the drive is uneventful. What all else had to be said, has already been said. She places the order with a unique mix of excitement and restraint. She knows exactly who consumes how much and who will clear the leftovers.

After this intricate exercise of conning the restaurant owner of the maximum food value, a strange quiet again settles at our table. The only activity is that of the little one who wants to collect all the forks and spoons in front of him while the older one wants to play drums on the plates. The other hot topics at the table are the shirt that the dhobi has damaged, the mess that the cook makes in the fridge and the massive quantities of food that the idle driver eats. Another spell binding issue is the loose tummy of the little one.

As the food arrives, the table comes to life as if everyone is a escaped convict. The kids fill up their plates first, then go for a Coke on the rocks; and then, after dabbling a little, leave the plates as they were. It is now that the strong maternal instinct comes in handy; your wife lends a helping hand at cleaning every plate. And while you nibble on your tikka, she digs deeper into the biryani and kababs having the time of her life. Those hypocritical days of calorie counts and lengthy elaborations of diet plans have long since been over.

Kids begin to get edgy for a quick move towards the ice cream joint. They get a bit of their mind from Mom who feels that these little devils seem to have sucked out all romance out of the evening. But neither is flustered as nothing of consequence can be at stake. They cannot snatch away the final magic moments of the night – the same thought in both minds.

And so the evening gradually rolls towards end with everyone having feasted well. The wife now has the old fire rekindled in her eyes and is already oozing out a charm of dalliance. For kids, it is a different story. Little one is asleep, the older one tired and overfed has become lazy and drowsy. As he trudges into his room, he falls on to the bed.

And both of you are daisy fresh with the adrenaline running awry and working its effects. No elaborate seduction process is required as society, though belatedly, has bestowed upon us a blank cheque of freedom of action. All moves are well known and all fantasies familiar. The silent body language has been perfected to the extent that every eye signal and hand gesture is clearly understood and can be reciprocated. The only mysteries left in each other’s anatomy are perhaps the lungs and the liver.

It has been a satisfying evening and a cigarette can be lit almost immediately after. As you turn over and fall into deep slumber, you realize that life with wife is truly hassle-free, comfortable and economical. It has been, all along, light on effort as well as on the wallet. Tomorrow is yet another peaceful day.