JUST MARRIED, PLEASE EXCUSE

by Yashodhara Lal

There was a moment of tense silence as we stood there. I registered the sound of running water and noticed that I had left the tap running and the sink was on the brink of overflowing. I sullenly turned the water off and then walked out of the kitchen, back into the living room.

  ‘Come on, it’s just a Sharma family thing,’ said Vijay as he followed me out.

  ‘Well, fine, but you should just know the Lals do it a bit differently.’ I flopped down on the sofa and looked at him.

  There was another moment of tense silence.

  ‘Honey,’ he said, ‘this may not be the best time to ask you this, but you do intend to change your surname from Lal to Sharma, right?’

  I thought about it and said, ‘No, not really.’

  We both looked at each other for a while. Then he gently murmured, ‘Perhaps we should have talked a bit more about some of this stuff before marriage.’

  I glared at him and said, ‘You think?’

  There were other contentious issues too, like food.

  Vijay didn’t like the thought of meat being cooked in the house. Initially I agreed to this, but after braving it out for the first few weeks, I started to crave home-cooked non-veg food and needled him about it occasionally.

  ‘But why can’t we cook chicken at home?’

  ‘Because … I am a vegetarian.’

  ‘Vijay, you eat chicken nuggets every time you have beer.’

  ‘That’s different,’ he protested. ‘Chicken nuggets aren’t like … chicken,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘You also eat egg!’

  ‘But that’s also not like chicken – and vegetarians can eat egg!’

  ‘There’s a term for this, Vijay …’

  ‘I know! I think it’s called ovo-vegetarianism.’

  ‘Well, I was going for “hypocrisy” but sure, whatever works for you.’

  After a moment of hurt silence, he said, ‘You know, you can be too sarcastic at times.’

  ‘Me, sarcastic? Yeah right.’ ‘See?’

  Then there was also the little matter of his smoking. It was something that drove me up the wall. He was still smoking at least eight to ten cigarettes every day, despite the promise he had made to me before marriage about quitting. I disliked the smell and the smoke intensely but of course, my biggest worry was what it was doing to his health.

  I watched him light up yet again after dinner as we sat in the balcony. ‘But why, why do you have to smoke? It’s such a filthy habit.’

  He took a long drag and his words came out with a slow, satisfied puff. ‘I know. It’s terrible.’

  ‘So why don’t you keep your promise to quit? You told me you’d quit after marriage.’

  ‘Yes,’ he conceded. ‘But I didn’t specify when after marriage! Ha ha!’

  I glared at him. ‘Actually you said you would quit within the first two months.’

  ‘Oh, did I?’ He considered this seriously and then said in a brighter tone, ‘In that case, I didn’t specify within two months of marrying you!’

  I gave him one of my most malevolent, withering looks.

  He glanced at me, took a quick drag and muttered, ‘That look is one of the reasons I may just need to continue.’

  I tried to look less withering, and cried in despair, ‘But what do you get out of smoking? What is so important that you would sacrifice your health for it?’

  He thought seriously for a minute. ‘It helps me focus. And relax.’ He gave me a sidelong look which contained a hint of accusation. ‘At least it used to. Until you started hassling me everytime.’

  I leaned back in my chair and tried another tack. ‘Well, suit yourself. But do you know research shows that every cigarette makes you lose five minutes of your life?’

  He took a long drag, looked at the sky and remarked, ‘Is that all? Man … it is so worth it!’

  That did it. I could contain myself no longer. I started sniffing. To his surprise, two fat tears rolled down my cheeks and I declared pitieously, ‘You’re going to die young and leave me all alone and penniless.’

  ‘Hey, hey … no, no … don’t cry.’ He dragged his chair closer to mine and put his arm around me, trying to console me. ‘Do you know every time you cry, you lose ten minutes of your life?’ I only snorted through my sobs and he continued, ‘Seriously … that’s how long on average it takes for you to stop.’

  My crying got louder as I realized he still hadn’t put out his cigarette.

  ‘And I am not going to die young and leave you alone and penniless.’

  I paused to look up hopefully.

  ‘… I’m already paying premiums on this insurance policy from LIC …’

  My bawls rent the stillness of the night.

  ‘Ohhhh no … Look, look … I’ll show you something … See? … Smoke rings!’

  And of course, there was the subject of children.

  ‘Honey, my friend Raghu has invited us to his younger son’s birthday party,’ Vijay said enthusiastically after getting off the phone.

  ‘Okay, have fun then!’

  ‘What? He’s invited you too – he couldn’t make it to the wedding, so he hasn’t even seen you.’

  ‘There’s a nice picture of me on the dressing table, take it for him.’

  There was a small pause.

  ‘I am getting the feeling,’ Vijay said thoughtfully, ‘that maybe you don’t want to come to the party.’

  ‘I am NOT going to a kiddie birthday party. I can’t stand kids.’

  Silence filled the space between us.

  ‘You don’t? I really like kids – they’re so cute.’

  ‘They are monsters.’

  ‘You do realize you were one yourself, right?’

  ‘I was a monster.’

  ‘Was? ’

  I made a face at him and said, ‘I just think kids are icky, runny-nosed, loud pests.’

  He smiled indulgently. ‘I’m sure you’re not going to feel that way after we have our first child.’

  ‘Our what what?’

  ‘Well, we are going to have children someday soon, right?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Vijay? I’m just twenty-three! I have my whole life ahead of me. I’m not even sure I’ll ever want a kid.’

  ‘But it would be so nice to have our children running about. Think about it … our own little Pappu and Munni …’

  ‘And that’s the other thing – you seem already convinced we’re going to have multiple children. Do you think childbirth is easy or something? If it’s so easy, you do it, na?’

  ‘If I could, I would.’ Vijay sighed. ‘But nature has planned it this way. Anyway, there’s no hurry. Just keep in mind that my biological clock is ticking.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Vijay. You can father children till the age of seventy or something.’

  ‘But all my friends already have children now. Raghu has two … There is such a thing as … as…’ He struggled for the right words. ‘Peer pressure, you know.’

  ‘Well, I’m not having a baby’ – I spat out the last word – ‘just because you feel some strange urge to prove your virility and keep up with the Raghus of this world.’

  There was a tense silence for a few seconds. Finally Vijay said in an appeasing tone, ‘Okay, okay, calm down, I didn’t mean to get you so worked up. Let me take you out for a special evening to make it up to you – we’ll have a good time and forget all about this silly argument.’

  For a moment, I was quite taken with this plan. We had been so busy lately that we hadn’t made any time for romantic evenings together and it would be really nice to …

  But then a thought struck me and I looked at him carefully and replied, ‘Vijay, I’m not going to the kiddie birthday party.’

  ‘Oh, all right, forget it then – sit at home only!’

  10

  The Proud Landowners

  ‘You know what? We should look at putting some money in some land.’

  Vijay had been reading the property supplement of the paper while I applied
my mind to the cryptic crossword. He folded up his paper with a businesslike rustle and waited for my reaction.

  ‘Really?’ I said. I had no idea about these things, but it definitely sounded like the kind of responsible and vaguely boring thing that a married couple would do. ‘Cool! What kind of land? How do we go about it?’

  For a moment, Vijay looked like he didn’t have a clue either. But then he said with determination, ‘I’ll find out about the options.’

  As I had already learnt, nothing made Vijay happier than finding out about the options. This obsessive behaviour applied not just to new purchases or investment decisions – even when he had to choose which socks to wear, he would first check out the options. Basically, he liked having a choice in every matter. Perhaps it made him feel in control. Privately, I put the matter of land completely out of my mind. After all, I reasoned, it had taken us four weeks to buy a sofa. Land would probably take four years.

  To my surprise, when we got home in the evening, it turned out he had already done some research during the day. ‘I got the number of this broker fellow called Dilip and spoke to him – he’s showing us a plot of land on Saturday.’

  ‘That was quick,’ I said with admiration. ‘So what kind of land is it? Will we build a house on it or are we just buying it for investment’s sake?’

  Vijay could not contain his excitement as he announced, ‘It’s an agricultural plot in Devanahalli. We’re going to farm on it!’

  Devanahalli was about thirty-five kilometers from the heart of Bangalore, basically in the middle of nowhere. I waited a moment to see if he was joking, but it didn’t look like it. His smile turned dreamy as he continued, ‘I’ve always wanted to own a piece of land on which I could grow my own stuff. Maybe even eventually make a living out of it by growing some medicinal crops, there’s a lot of money to be made in those. And the fresh air and the feeling of being close to nature – wah!’

  He was saying something about vanilla, amla and something that sounded like Jethro Tull to me, but turned out to be jatropha. My mind was wandering a bit. I liked nature as much as the next girl, but had never seen myself as a farmer’s wife. Out loud, I said, ‘Achha, that’s all very nice. But don’t you think we should perhaps first look at something more practical? As in, maybe buy some land and sell it for a profit so that we can get our own flat or something?’

  Then I noticed Vijay’s expression. He looked like somebody had punctured all his tyres, including the spare, and so I continued quickly, ‘But there’s no harm in checking it out, right? Just as an option.’

  Vijay was happy again, and I thought maybe it actually wouldn’t be such a bad idea to own some land near Bangalore. The busy corporate couple that we were, it could be our weekend sanctuary. A place where we could perhaps even entertain good friends. Get away from the madness of the city for a couple of days of rustic rest and relaxation.

  Saturday rolled around, and the two of us got ready bright and early. We were meeting the broker Dilip in the city and then driving together to the land.

  It was a beautiful morning. The weather was pleasant and mild, and there was a cool breeze. We drove with the windows down, enjoying the fact that we were putting some distance between us and the pollution and chaos of the city. The drive was long but the view was scenic, and Dilip was a quiet, honest-looking sort of chap who struck me as the antithesis of the loud, obnoxious type that I had thought a broker should ideally be.

  He spoke only a little, to tell us a bit more about the land. It seemed that it was owned by a family in Bangalore, who had been unable to spend time and money in cultivating it and now wanted to buy some land closer to the city. According to Dilip, they wanted to get rid of it at a throwaway price of five and a half lakh rupees. This still sounded like quite a bit of money to me, and I firmly resolved that there would be negotiations – if we liked the land at all, of course.

  With Dilip’s directions, we finally got to the land. It was quite far from the main road and we had to travel on a dirt track for about a kilometre, which Vijay noted with a muttered ‘Bad approach road’ as he struggled with the wheel to stay on the track. Finally, in a cloud of dust, we pulled up to the gate of the plot.

  We got out, stretched and looked around appraisingly. The plot was fenced off, and in the middle of a fairly barren stretch of land. As we walked through the gate, we were greeted by an old Kannadiga couple who served as the caretakers.

  The place itself was beautiful. It was running a bit wild here and there but it seemed to be teeming with all sorts of vegetation. It was segregated into different parts and to my delight, one portion had mango trees. Vijay walked around with Dilip and the caretaker, and carefully checked the various crops. There was a vegetable patch with potatoes, cauliflower, tomatoes and so on. I had a feeling Vijay was already imagining the taste of his all-time favourite dish – alu gobi – cultivated from scratch.

  The land was also much larger than I had imagined. I asked Dilip about the size and he said it was ten acres. It was so large that I stopped following Vijay around after a while and just sat down on a tree stump.

  It was quiet and peaceful. The cool breeze brought with it scents of the different plants and trees. The only constant sound was the buzzing of insects. There were also a cow and a few goats owned by the caretakers which, I thought approvingly, gave the place just the right sort of rustic touch. It was intoxicating.

  The clincher for us, especially as far as Vijay was concerned, was the borewell. It was not very well maintained, as Dilip admitted, but with some work on it, it could supply almost all the water required for the irrigation of the land. Vijay was fascinated by the borewell, and he even insisted on drinking the water from it because the caretaker told him that it was very sweet. I protested, afraid that he might keel over clutching his throat and die on the spot, or perhaps less dramatically, develop a stomach bug – but he simply cupped his hands and downed a mouthful of the water, leaned back to savour it, and pronounced it as indeed the sweetest water that he had ever tasted. His exact words were, ‘Wah!’

  I observed him as he sat crosslegged next to the borewell. The white kurta that he had donned for the visit made him look like some sort of benign, mild-mannered young thakur. He asked the caretaker all sorts of questions about the different types of soils on the land, discussed with him and Dilip the merits and demerits of the various crops, which had thrived and which had not, and even held forth on what in his opinion, the owners could have done differently. They had an extended conversation, and the caretaker’s wife then served us steaming tea in steel glasses that were so hot that they were a challenge to hold. ‘Made with goat’s milk,’ she said in Kannada and Dilip translated for us. We were a bit sceptical about how it would taste, but after a sip or two, we were pleasantly surprised.

  Dilip asked us what we thought, and Vijay and I looked at each other. I gave him a smooth, almost imperceptible nod. He missed it and continued to look blankly at my face for my reaction. I pulled him aside and hissed, ‘It’s nice. But negotiate.’

  Vijay nodded and we went back to Dilip. Vijay said that we were prepared to look at the land, but only for five lakh rupees. Dilip said that five and a half lakh was already a very low price, and that we could ask anyone about it. But he would try and convince the landowners to consider this price for us because he thought we were a very nice couple, and he hadn’t seen any of the other prospective buyers take such an interest in the different aspects of the land as Vijay had. We seemed to also have the blessings of the caretaker and his wife, as they stood around eavesdropping blatantly, with ingratiating toothless grins. We shook hands with Dilip solemnly and left, thanking the caretakers for their hospitality.

  We were now very excited about the prospect of owning the land. It was a fair amount of money for us, because I had just started work and Vijay had not felt the need to save a single paisa of his earnings till now. But we were certain we would be able to arrange it through some means – maybe a loan.

&nb
sp; When we got home that evening, we talked about the various things that we would do with the land, maybe over time construct a little farmhouse on it or even a small guest house, eventually developing it into a resort. Vijay started off on his agricultural plan, but I tuned out again somewhere around jatropha and instead closed my eyes and imagined myself indulging in the jacuzzi of my very own spa-resort, while he rambled on happily about the various crop options.

  By the time Monday rolled around, we were convinced that Dilip would have swung the deal for us and that we now fell in the category of landed gentry. In fact, as we discussed it on the way to work, we recklessly said we would be prepared to pay fifty thousand rupees more for the land, if it came to that. In the office, we talked about it with a few people and they seemed quite impressed, saying that five lakh rupees did sound like a throwaway price for ten acres – in fact, they warned us to be very careful because the price appeared to be so low that perhaps there was something wrong with the ownership of the land. We scoffed at them, saying that of course we would ensure we checked everything out carefully, with the help of a lawyer. After all, it wasn’t like we were stupid.

  That evening, Vijay got a breathless call from Dilip. ‘Sir, they are close to getting an offer for five point five lakh. I am telling them that if you pay even five point two, you are the people they should sell to – is five point two lakh okay?’

  Vijay was very capable of making quick decisions on the spot. ‘Dilip, I’m not even discussing this with my wife. Just go ahead and tell them that five point two is fine for us.’

  ‘Great, sir. I will call you back in one hour.’ Dilip hung up.

  Vijay looked over at me and nodded. He held out his hand and I high-fived it.

  When Dilip called back, Vijay put him on speaker phone.

  ‘Sir, they’ve agreed. Can we set up a meeting tomorrow evening, five p.m., at their residence at Koramangla?’

  ‘That sounds fine,’ said Vijay. ‘Thanks a lot, Dilip.’

  ‘It’s okay, sir,’ said Dilip modestly. ‘It’s a good deal, sir. Getting an all-white deal for fifty-two lakh rupees is not easy nowadays.’