I yawned a massive yawn and continued to pore over the map. The temperatures in the city have already begun dipping at night, and with the glass screens left ajar, my house could easily have passed off as a family suite perched atop some ‘Tiger Point’ at any of the hill stations. I pulled over the duvet further up my legs and strained to locate the goddamned place on the map.
‘Do you remember where Kigali is?’ I asked him, absentmindedly, without lifting my eyes off the by-now badly creased map. The Son has left ugly circles all over it to cover all the test cricket playing nations of the world. The Dott has painted squatting aliens over places she thought they would find ‘Indian’ toilets. It’s a miracle The Hubby has left it untouched.
‘You’ll never listen, will you?’ he whined an annoying whine, some of which drifted into my ears. They had been pretty passive for a while anyway, with the eyes doing most of the dog-work with the map.
‘Hmmm? You saying something to me?’ I asked, surprised.
‘See? This is why I need a new girlfriend. You just don’t listen!’ There was that hence-proven-I’m-vindicated look in his eyes, laced with ample annoyance.
‘What do you mean a new girlfriend? When did you have an old one in the first place!’ My chortle must have sounded too dismissive because he snapped back gnarling.
‘Laugh your gut out now madam. I too will have my day, then we’ll see!’
‘Found it! It’s right here! To think that I was looking everywhere but here for the place!’ I said, looking at the map. One part of my mission accomplished, I turned to the next: locating Ouagadougou.
‘Hmmmph. Will you or will you not find me a girlfriend?’ This time he sort-of charged on, so I decided to tackle his problem before getting back to mine.
‘I don’t understand this,’ I said, folding the map any which way and tossing it aside. ‘Don’t you think I’m the wrong – I mean totally completely absolutely wrong – person to be asking for help in this matter? I may be the old wife, but your wife all the same! What interest would I possibly have in locating a girlfriend for you?!’ I said, struggling to keep my laughter from erupting at that inappropriate moment!
‘You stand to gain every which way, if you only used your mind to think and see how,’ said The Hubby, his tone softening a bit. In his typical 360 degree-analysis mode, he quickly grabbed a paper and pen from the side table and began the crash-course for me.
A few doodles, lines, scribbles, arrows (by now the page resembled an year-old’s artwork) later, he pointed to something looking like a toad and said, ‘Let’s assume this is you, the wife. The old wife.’
‘Aaahhhhhhmmm,’ I nodded.
‘And this,’ pointing to an amoebaesque (sorry, Kafka) puddle, ‘is me, the harried Hubby.’
‘Aaaaahhhhhmmm?’ I raised my brows.
‘Now you see how this one is always harried because of this, and as a result this is, in turn, hassled because the harried one gets more harried by the day?’ He added some sharp spear-like contraptions emerging from the toad and leading upto the amoeba rather ominously.
‘Okay, good drawing. But that’s it. Let’s cut this crap and let me get back to looking up the second place.’ I said and picked up the map again.
‘NO. We must decide NOW. It’s either a new girlfriend or you chuck out the cook,’ the Hubby growled again.
This looked serious indeed!
‘Excuse me?’ I said. ‘Did I hear it right? What connection could there possibly be between a girlfriend and a cook! You surely don’t expect her to rustle up cosy dinners for you every evening, eh?! And as if I would let her stay in this house!’ I could have died laughing.
‘This is no joke. You cannot have everything YOUR way. So we’ll have one of my way and one of yours. Get it? Decide fast and decide now.’
I placed the map back on the side table and got into the act of thinking! My life without a cook was out of question. A life with some girlfriend floating around looked okay enough. Maybe she could prove to be a useful baby-sitter too, if the bacchhas decided to take a fancy to her! The decision was easy enough.
‘Okay. You may find yourself a girlfriend. Now that that is settled, may I get back to the map please? Am dying to locate that place!’ I said.
‘No. YOU need to find me a girlfriend. And that’s final,’ the Hubby said with a steely determination.
Hell! Now this new tamasha!
‘Why on earth…’ I began protesting, but he cut me short.
‘Because you’ve lived with me all these years and you will know who’s perfect for me.’
So, there.
I’ve been thinking about it, and I guess I know the right place to look for the girl.
The golfing sites and online forums! (am too lazy to drive up to the golf courses, of course)
With a bit of good luck, if I do hit the jackpot, my life will turn into an enviable one, m’friends. Look at the many benefits: my weekends will be free because they’ll be out on the greens together. I’ll have undisturbed weekday mornings without having to force out laughs at his forwarded golf jokes and golf mails. The evenings will be peaceful without having to sit through the ball-by-ball analysis (the hundredth, thousandth, millionth time) of the last terrible game (never mind if it was played a millennium ago). I assume several dinners-out for them, which means I get ample time in bed to read books.
And I get by comfortably with whatever the maid decides to cook, her mood permitting, that is.
Not a bad win-win situation, don't you think?
Interested lady golfers, please get in touch with me at the earliest.
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