“What a day,” husband said to his wife as they happened to reach home at the same time from their respective battlegrounds that people usually refer to as offices. Wife had kind of guessed, that frown, you can’t mistake it for anything else. Their four year old child though seemed to have had a better day at day care than usual as he walked ahead chirping, “bhaiya, aal izz well”. Good, at least the family was doing a good average. As they walked up the two flight of stairs “I just can’t understand, how can people be so unreasonable?” Wife tried to listen carefully, she was pretty tired herself as she had a two hour class in the afternoon. Which was good in a way as she was more inclined to listen than speak, an absolute rarity of an event. The details poured in, the careful listening continued and the frown kept growing in stature.
The wife being the ranting kind of the two and completely challenged in the skill that most human beings seemed to be blessed with, that of empathetic listening, tried her best to keep quiet a little longer while her mind frantically searched for an appropriate response. Boom! Before she knew she had already launched into her usual response to any such situation, which is, how the husband could have handled it all so much better, what he could have said and what he shouldn’t have and all in all how it was he who is responsible for his present state of frustration. Points must be awarded to the husband though, in spite of all these good 15 years or so of togetherness and knowing each other he still manages to look completely taken aback by her responses. He regained his senses and muttered, “ can’t even tell anything without getting some expert advice.” And the frown, oh my! Wife knew her exit line “ time for me to run”. Off she went to the stadium and on her way urged herself to run a few extra rounds. Now here we use the term ‘running’ pretty loosely but then it is a free world and the wife has every right to choose the pace she wishes to and call it running if she wishes to. We will go by her word on that. If she had run x rounds last week then this week she completely outdid herself by running 2x rounds. And those of you who are the curious and suspecting variety, no x was not zero, nowhere near zero. By the end of all the running rounds, the two-hour class was ancient history, the blunder was modern history while the present looked like full of fresh possibilities as she headed home.
Taking off her shoes sitting next to the husband she peeked into the cryptic crossword the husband was trying, looking still quite cross. Aah the wife could spot one anagram. Phew! Frown relaxed a little and husband was glad to start all over again. Blah blah……he went and the wife listened, this time completely done with 2x rounds she managed to remain you know what. Then he ended it all with “……what is one supposed to do?” There was a pause. “Do you want me to answer that?” The husband stared in disbelief yet again!
1 comment:
first of all, on the running, stop being all do modest. people will believe you! i have seen you, its running, its nowhere close to zero.
second, about the whole conversation, you guys are SO DAMN CUTE you know. no wonder that little one is like that, edible!
Post a Comment