The Three Gulibles And A Sermon On Marriage

Public Notice

No scissors/ gum sticks were used during the writing of this blog either physically or virtually.

Statutory Warning

You may forget to laugh at a joke after reading this piece of writing

Disclaimer (for the benefit of fundamentalists/secularists/right and left wing sympathizers of the institution called Marriage)

The writer of this blog has a successful and happy married life. He does not have anything against marriage and cracks jokes on marriage because only he can crack jokes only on marriage. This conversation with his friends is imaginary but not fictitious. I believe in the Tamil saying ` Yaam petra inbam peruga ivvaiyagam’ - Let this world bequeath the pearls of my wisdom and keep spreading my knowledge among eligible bachelors about the fun in marriage but none seems to listen. It’s with the intention of making understand would-be-grooms, this concept; I have documented this sermon of mine.

 Anybody who has known me for any length of time (exceeding three months)  either in real life or through social media (not including bus conductors, traffic cops, ATM security guards and a certain Mark Zuckerberg) would readily acknowledge that most of my jokes are based on wives/wife’s (I have only one and no more). I hardly used to crack a joke BM (before marriage) on marriage but AM (now don’t ask what AM means? If you do so this blog will become invisible) jokes come at a steady pace. As rightly said by me in one of my status updates “Every man should get married because only marriage can bring the philosopher or the joker out of him” and in my case it has been the joker, because the only philosophical thought I can conjure is, the sun that rises must set.

 I have been part of a wonderful book club for the past 2 years and they like everybody else have been the victims of my crass jokes on wives/wife’s. As always there’s no dearth of gulibles in the crowd, so was the case with this book club and I found three viz., Aram, the intellectual; Karthik, the elegant and Sukhdeep, the subtle. These guys were highly impressed by my gyan on marriage and wanted to know in detail about it. Well, if somebody offers you free snacks and tea in a trendy coffee shop, who would not agree and why would I not agree?

On a Saturday evening, we met up at a café for a sermon by me on marriage, to the “The Three Gullibles”. The café is part of a collectibles showroom and the stairs leading to it seem to be straight out of the den of a 1970’s Bollywood don. Before I could reach the café, Aram was already there. I got to sit on a tall uncomfortable chair. The lounge table was so low that had it been any lower, I would have removed it and asked the waiter to serve us on the floor itself. Possibly cafes have such furniture to create patients for orthopedicians or chase customers within a reasonable period of time. However, the youngsters who frequent such cafes seem to be hell bent upon making the orthopedician rich. I had neither of the ideas and hence shifted to a more comfortable chair. After exchanging pleasantries, we tried calling Karthik and Sukhdeep. I was rather flummoxed since Karthik stays a few yards away, how could he get late? The problem with staying near a venue is you have the license to get late. Soon Karthik came up the stairs flashing his million dollar smile and I wondered in my mind `Why do men with great smiles get married? Is it to turn grumpy and bald? ’

Karthik after settling down and ordering his quota of fill began by asking `Bala, I have heard that marriage is a lifelong bond and you crack so many jokes about this divine relationship, what is the truth?’

I, sipping the elaichi tea and munching away the French fries, replied with a dead pan expression `True, Karthik, Marriage is a lifelong bond but the definition has changed with times. Marriage has become a perpetual EMI; if you try to terminate it, your EMI increases and if your love bears fruit, the EMI again increases. It all boils down to whether you want to start the EMI or not?’

Aram asked me like a quiz master `what about the much famed romance in marriage?’

I was expecting this question but did not expect it to come so early. Men will be men, always fall prey to licensed carnal pleasure seeking. I could not control but smile sarcastically at Aram and reply `Romance in marriage is like salary from a job. You will get enough to survive but what you get lasts  only for a few days and after that you have to keep swiping your credit card till the next one’, winked at him and ended by saying `hope you can read between the lines’

Soon we were joined by Sukhdeep who had travelled quite a distance to reach the meet. He apoIogised for his delay and I welcomed him by saying `It is ok now but remember after marriage, only your wife has the right to get late’.

Sukhdeep joined the conversation by firing at me the question `After marriage, your relation base increases. Is that not a positive development?’

 Another compulsive trapping for a man to get married but it is only after a decade he realises that his own friends and relation base has shrunk like a deflated balloon. However, being a harried and harassed husband, I have the underlying responsibility to increase my club membership and hence kept back this secret from the Three Gulibiles and gave a scientific reply `most of them are related-ions and a majority of them are negative’

Aram screeched into the conversation, like a two wheeler would do in busy traffic and asked `is it for nothing our elders say that being a bachelor is living life on the edge?’.

 I was taken aback by this question. It is such questions which make me realise how entrenched is the need to get married in our society. Society has equated this ritual with air, water and food or possibly even bigger than the three of them. I cannot bite the dust in front of three guys who looked up to me or looked down on me (whatever as long they pay the café bill). I laughed shrilly more out of fear than contempt for his question, turned aside to hide my emotions and bingo the local authorities misdeed came to my rescue, a pit dug up for some work and left unclosed. If you think I decided to jump into it, you are wrong. I turned to Aram and said in a funny tone `Living in the edge is ok but how about living in a deep gorge. Getting off the edge is physically and mentally an easier task than getting out of a deep gorge’. They say in misadventures, the most unplanned action saves the day. Aram fell for this missive and hereafter it was all about how I am going to dominate him?

It was now Karthik’s turn to have an emotional go at me ` I stay alone in the city away from my family and nobody is there to take care of me. My family wants me to get married so that I have an emotional company and also the house becomes a home’.

I remembered the same dialogue was said to me by my mother 13 years ago, when I said I was not ready to get married. Till date, I have not seen one application form that asks for home address, all of them ask only for house address or residential address. Maybe there is something that the guys’ who frame application forms know that parents don’t know when they decide to push their children into marriage.

The problem of being a guru is you can’t writhe too much in your emotional flashbacks and hence I came back to the present and with a sigh replied `Karthik, do you keep your wifi connection open because you are feeling lonely or do you stick to the same job for years because you like the tea that is made in the cafeteria, obviously you don’t. The same is with getting married. You can make home out of your house by arranging your things or just by drawing a rangoli in front of it. If required, you can learn to cook by yourself, understand the best cook in our mythology is Bheema not Sita or Draupadi. Gandhiji cut his hairs by himself, emulate him and be free’

Karthik was still not convinced and asked `what about the fact that homemade food is the healthiest?’

 I asked `do you know the reason why homemade food is the healthiest?’

As the three gestured at my in anticipation, I replied `because you can never have too much of it’

All of us burst out laughing and now each one of them opened up their fears of getting married, Aram started by asking `I heard most women dominate their husbands, is it true?’

Now that I was in a dominant position, there was no need to give a detailed answer, I replied `Even Hitler knew this, that’s why he got married only two days before his death’

Sukhdeep `is it really difficult to understand a woman’s mind?’

I replied him, while updating on Facebook the answer I gave Aram `They have more moods than colors in a paint chart; more fluctuations in moods than the stock market; more emotional baggage than coaches in a long distance train; more fine print in emotions than in a discount sale advertisement and most importantly more bags than you can carry after their shopping trysts’.

Aram `one last question, are you a hen pecked husband?’

As they were sharing the bill, I got up to leave and said `I am a hen kicked husband and better reach home early so that my weekend is not lost in getting kicks’.

I presume I convinced them that marriage is an adventure worth pursuing. Hope soon the weeding cards will roll out and also an opportunity for me to savor a dinner at their cost, literally  :p.