A cinema date with the husband

Chilling it out after the cinema fiasco... Dubai winter lifts your spirits

  

There is no new beginning, as I had mentioned in my previous post, yet there is that much to renew or start over again or anew.  It’s just in your mind’s eye.

So to begin with, I skimmed through last year's posts and discovered that a flimsy one on husband-wife relationship did the most numbers. [Click here to read] As much as I am thankful to the readers for visiting my page, I owe an apology to each one for dishing out such a half-baked stuff over the top of my keyboard for some sadistic pleasure.

Now, taking the pleasure forward sans the sad-ticks, here I am to say it the way I see it. No malice, no prejudice, intended. It’ll be only me ticking the wry thoughts off anyone and anything that eeks…

Well, one look around my workplace in the New Year and I see…

Pretenders still whiling their time ‘n’ workaholics still sweating their arse…

Drama queens continuing to squeal their presence ‘n’ self-proclaimed kings dicing cubes…

I continue to have loads of entertainers around!

That reminds me, I started the year at the cinema with my lovely girl, my loving man and my lol-of-a-friend.

We headed to one of the oldest cinema houses in Dubai, which is two-tiered, and located on the busiest streets of the city. A place I’ve frequented a dozen times over.

The show started at 7.30pm and we landed there sharp 7.40pm. We three pretty women hopped out at the entrance and dashed to the counter as the husband went parking.

With an ear on the dialogues booming inside, another replying to the incessant jabber of my girl, one eye at the closed door and another at the ticket issuer, I folded my thumb inside my palm and lifted four fingers of my right hand against the glass window, with the left placating my tummy that was rising and falling from the inadvertent exercise of rushing in.

Did he ask for cash? I can’t exactly remember, nevertheless I forwarded Dh100… not knowing any better.

The considerate security urged me to go in saying I’ve already missed more than 10 minutes of the movie. “What’s your husband’s name? Just leave one ticket with me, madam.” And he directed me into the dark hall.

Within minutes, my man arrived. I cozied up closer but found him unusually hot.

“Why the hell are you in here?” he hissed amid the blaring sound.

“You dropped me on the street for a stroll!” I teased

“Look at the crowd…and…the seats...this…our neck will pain…” he was visibly irritated attempting to position his long legs.

“What’s wrong with you. It’s you who wanted to watch this…”

“Yes. It’s me. But when have we sat down…”

Shucks!

Was it the sudden heat of realization, his anger or the pest, I started itching my elbow… “Yes, you can take home bugs as well for free from here…can’t use brains…”

I walked out and requested a transfer to the balcony. They would not comply.

I pulled out two notes and requested for new balcony seats and they said that the ticker was closed. It can’t be opened without permission and that their manager was not around. I stood three minutes tapping my scattered brains and checking my emotions before sneaking back… and I caught a restless husband.

“What took you so long. I was about to come out looking for you. Now relax. Enjoy the movie! ”

I did not.

Each time the unruly crowd booed and cheered louder, I sneaked a glance sideways. After a few times, he whispered, “Happens. Forget it.” Then he got closer, and taking my hands, said, “My fault. I should have reminded you…”

That moment I felt instantly better.

Taking responsibility is the key to a healthy relationship!!!

Sh…oo…sh! Dont analyse...it's just a saying!

You may want to read an earlier incident: When he lifted me off my feet...Click here 

Why is the doctor like this? Sridevi is to blame!

Ever since a bewildered Sridevi decoded ‘judgemental’ in English Vinglish, I’m wary of the word. My daughter tags all my compliments with it, prefixes all my remarks with it and even splutters them in my umms and aahs. 

So much so I scream, ‘Learn to respect another’s opinion,’ and I am reminded that I am opinionated. As Well. 

I could do with a basket to collect the rest as well!

Well, I love to be neither at all times, but since I love my individuality, I love to exercise a wee bit of both sometimes. But again because I’m conscious of my personality at all times, I love to be one of the two at times and, therefore, I love to be dumb and pretend to be numb when I cannot.

Now, the reason I’m writing this is because I can’t help being numb any more these days. How can I, when I’m lifted off my feet and laid on a slippery dhroni, chin down, my wobbly tummy squeezed like a jelly with two iron-strong palms that first pour hot concoctions [which I cannot pronounce nor know the spelling to express] over my naked back and then rub it into my skin to lubricate my spine.

[Does the spine stiffen standing upright against As Wells. Need to check with the doc!]

Anyways, here’s why I’m writing this post…“How can a doctor, a DOCTOR, of all people be so regressive!”

Okay, so getting to the point…. I still need to beat around one last bush. Ever since I gave a series of medical entrance exams two decades ago and flunked each one worse than the previous attempt, I’ve had this thing about doctors.

Years later, when I landed in Dubai and saw them in sparkling white coats and butter-like gloves gliding on shining-leather chairs inside more sparkling cubicles that smell at all times of air fresheners, my THING for the breed only awed stronger.

So, when my doc heard me speak to the husband, and asked me astonished forgetting to pull up his jaw in place, “You call yourhusband by his name!” I had to look away and fiddle with my phone to construct a modest reply and control my nerves.

“Won’t I forget who the world is referring to when they address me, if I stop calling him by his name, doc?” I cracked.

“Are you always like this only?” asked the simpleton doc unable to hide his shock now.

“Nothing absolutely like this, but something similar.” I replied leaving the doc to decipher the rest. He didn’t get too far analyzing the statement, I learnt, when he commented: “You are a happy woman.”

Well, the reason I’m sharing this here is because the THING I had about doctors was they were a progressive lot. You know, like their science and knowledge and reason and patience and status and even those chips on their shoulders…

It’s only recently, while lying on that slippery dhroni, swearing through my sticky nostrils unable to find anyone to blame for my THING about doctors that I thought of Sridevi.

What the heck! [This is not me saying. It's my girl's fav line these days] 

Read similar posts:
When my husband lifted me off my feet!

When will Indian women learn to respect their husbands

An embarrassing moment

A lanky girl walked towards the bulletin board of her school reception, towing her sturdy dad. Though she was confident of making it to Grade 8, there was one other hurdle she had to cross. As per the convent rules then, parents were required to meet the previous year's class teacher and collect the detailed progress card before their wards could begin the next academic year.

Her Grade 7 class teacher, looked at her dad and said, "For all the trouble she gave me in Social Studies, she's managed to pass with a distinction."

Except for the Himalayas, which she was eager to spot at the top of the India map, she dreaded marking anything else. Kaveri, Godavari and Brahmaputra flowed adjacently, states trespassed into one another, too. "When will you get it right?" her teacher sighed each time. Now that same teacher was smiling. "I'm surprised. How did you do it?" she asked.

And the girl was relieved that her customised recipe of taking photographic images of lessons were yielding results at last.

Her tryst with geography had begun then! [She refuses to share the date.]

She simply learnt by rote and vomited on demand, imbibing images of letters, without understanding. At times it back-fired. For instance, she lost marks in Grade 10 public examination because she mistook Green Revolution for Glorious Revolution! So what if one was Geography and the other History; both were Social Studies for her! 

********

Two years later, she no more had the comfort of dedicated and secured transportation. On her first day to college, her over-protective dad accompanied her explaining to her bus numbers, names of stops, alternative routes, etc.

As they got off the at the college stop her dad stood her and said, "Look around. See there's that bridge that goes down there. Take left just before that, and keep walking until you see the gifts shop from where you'll turn left again and you'll see your college. Simple."

"All the stops in the city look the same," she said, to which her dad replied, "It's just a matter of few days, you'll master it. Look out for this huge Raymond hoarding."

She looked up hard and long at the hoarding. Clicked in her mind the size, shape and even the height at which it was placed. The Raymond's model became her knight in shining armour.

Almost eight months later, one morning she noted the bus was unusually less crowded. When the bus got on to an unfamiliar street, she asked the woman beside her, "Isn't this Bus No. 47." 

After a few moments of  awkward conversation, she was convinced that she had missed her college stop.

The Raymond model was replaced with a guy sporting a cowboy hat and cigarette between his lips.

She got to class two hours late.

That was the last she took photographic images.

********

 

A few years later, she enrolled for a professional course called journalism, to the utter dismay of her parents and bewilderment of her close friends.

 

Her first field assignment was to cover an Alliance Française event.

 

The following day, her professor announced in class, "In my 20 years of teaching experience, you are the only student I've seen who can score an A+ and a C- with equal ease."

[By the time, she managed to find the venue, the press conference was over. Her report had absolutely no facts.]

After that she always made arrangements to ride pillion with anyone who claimed to know the route.

********

That habit stayed with her. Married to a man with tremendous patience, she now  euphemised his virtue as her "love to be driven around".

"In a place like Dubai it is very easy to go about. Just follow signboards and remember landmarks," he instructed.

Returning from her first job interview, she told the cab driver, "Bur Dubai." He waited for more details and she remembered, yep landmark! "Near the mosque," she recited triumphantly.

He looked at her as if she were insane. "So many mosques here, madam," he said.

Thank God for small mercies. Mobile phones were invented by then.

So, thereafter, madam got her husband instruct cabbies!

********

Years passed by, when one day her daughter's friend wanted to visit. Her chirpy and cheerful little girl handed over the phone to her enthusiastically and whispered, "Shruti wants to come home to play. Her mother wants our location."

After the initial pleasantries with the other woman, she politely told her that she would be given a call to detail the route map in a minute.

Her little girl was grumpy and sullen suddenly.

"Your dad will call her right now. You will not waste even a minute of your playtime," she assured her child.

"It's not that. What will Shruti's mother think? That my mom is so dumb, she doesn't even know where she stays. It's so embarrassing..."

This time it was EMBARASSING!

PS: I wish not to know her. But if I deny knowing her then I'm not me!