Dear Ambarish (& Hemangi),
You would wonder why I have mentioned Hemangi’s name
in bracket. But there is a definite reason-which you would come to know by the
end of this letter…
When I came to know that you were going to get
married on 30th May.. I wondered-Why on earth on 30th May? These
days it is an in thing to get married on some fancy dates.. For example-
10/10/10 or 12/12/12 etc.So you could have easily chosen 11/12/13 as a date for
your marriage. Or people prefer Valentine’s Day or any national holiday so
that the marriage date is remembered not just by all others but by the couple
as well ! But why 30/05/2013 ? Apparently, there is nothing unusual about this
date… Then it struck to me that it happens to be the date of your grandparents-Tatyamama
& Mami’s wedding… So you would want your marriage to be on that day..30th
May is special also because it’s birthday of Manisha (your maushi) …
Oh..
& then it suddenly clicked.! It is also the day on which I got married to
Vrinda ! So in one masterly stroke, you have put the ball in my court.. So now
it becomes obligatory for me to share some of the lesser known secrets of my
marriage..With 15 years of experience at my hand, here I am giving you some
useful tips…You can call this a self-help guide.. Or this could be like Chetan
Bhagat’s articles in TOI-which can fix any problem in the world so easily. Very
soon I too intend to write a best-selling
book on this topic.
First & foremost- the shopping ! Wherever you
decide to stay- whether in Mumbai, Coimbatore or any other place, there is
always going to be some place like what we have in Pune- Tulshibag! Going to
such places, I tell you from my experience, is nothing short of a punishment.(Except
of course for the eye-catching beauties!) But you have job at your hand- you
have to carry the shopping bags & that too in a crowd which is so busy in
shopping that it doesn’t care if you are able to walk properly or not ! If you
take my advice, try & find excuses to avoid going to such places- say that
there is not enough place for parking, the police vans pounce upon your vehicle
or something like that! This will not work for quite some time… You will have
to go..But don’t lose patience! Avoid any stand-off but still persist with your stand ! Once your
resistance gets registered, a time will come ( der hai par andher nahi!) when
either she will go herself for shopping all those womanly things or she will
ask you to park your vehicle outside such shopping area & she will come
back (hopefully) fast..
While we are still on shopping, let me tell you - set an example..How? Whenever you have to shop for yourself, take her along
with you, go to a specific shop, ask for a specific colored shirt, make payment
& leave.. All this in just 5 minutes ! You know what will this make? In
words of famous Hindi cricket commentator, Sushil Doshi- it will build a mano-
vaigyanik dabaav on her.. Now the onus
will be on her to shop with such a precision of a surgeon & also finish it
fast ! This will also raise the bar- she will find it difficult but she will have to
learn to speed up the things when it comes to shopping. You will save one topic
of argument as your actions have already spoken louder than words !
And when
you go with her in a mall for shopping (like D Mart), then I wish you all the very best ! I
bet she will be lured & tempted not by exorbitantly priced branded apparels or foot wear (thank God!) but by discounts on Liberty oils, Bombino
Sevai & Surf Excel! So you would end up buying 10 items which you had not
thought of buying at the outset. Shopping in a mall could be a boring exercise.
But while your wife is busy shopping, you could create your own image ( for other wives to see, little bit
enviously) of a very choosy, responsible & duty bound husband by scanning
aimlessly the gehu or dal or picking randomly the biscuits which you are not
going to buy.. After all, what matters is perception !
Now for some other important things in life than
shopping (are there any?)…
Keep in mind one thing- there cannot be any argument
when it comes to Pani-puri, Sugarcane juice, Vada-pav & Kanda Bhaji…. The
most unhygienic roadside vendor will easily beat the choicest hotel in your
city. Which simply means she will not have any problem after having eaten in such
chaupatis & small food joints. But she might have GI upset after a dinner
in a posh hotel! Why ? You cannot reason out ! In fact, the next tip is try
& find out such points & issues which you can’t reason out &
argue.. As the time goes on, you will find out that this list will keep on growing !
Now sample this-
1 1) Favorite
director- Yester years- Gurudutt Padukone. Current- Mahesh Manjrekar/ Madhur
Bhandarkar.
2 2) Favorite
actress- Yester years- Urmila Matondkar. Current- Deepika Padukone/ Amrita Rao
F 3) Favorite
Cricket player- Yester years- Sunil Gavaskar. Current- (obviously) Sachin
Tendulkar
4 4) Favorite
Author- P L Deshpande, Ravindra Pinge
5 5) Favorite
Poet- B.B. Borkar, Mangesh Padgaonkar
6 6) Favorite
Hotel- Any Kamat
No… this is not some kind of a couples’ game where I
am telling you how I know what my wife likes.. Take a closer look.. What do you
find? There are many ‘kars’ in the list..( I suspect the reason why Vrinda said
yes to me was probably because we are Pusal’kar’!) But that’s not the main point..The point is
all the people from the list are GSBs (Gaud Saraswat Brahmins) –the community
that Vrinda belongs to ! So there is this natural tendency to have a bias
towards them..So any new movie of Mahesh
Manjrekar is fit to be sent for Oscars…Sachin Tendulkar can do no wrong..
Madhur Bhandarkar’s films are the best thing to have happened to Bollywood… The
bigger point is find out if your wife too has similar list.. You can score few
brownie points by talking positive about the people in her list. In any case,
avoid talking negative about them.Tread cautiously ! If there any negative
markings in relationships, you would end up getting many such points !
Then there are some universal truths which can also
be termed as cliches.. They hold true always.. One of them is that whenever
there is an argument between you & your wife, there are only 2
possibilities- either she wins or you lose ! But even in this, I can give you
some useful tip.. Always have some evidence with you.. This is an era of
evidence based practice.. So keep the evidence handy.. It could be – On this
& this day when we were discussing this… you had worn a black dress.. we
were returning from a movie... it was raining… you had said that & now you
are saying exactly the opposite! There is no guarantee that this will help you
win, but what this could do is create some kind of confusion in her mind..She
will be forced to look in to all the evidences rather than continue with her
point ! That would help deflect the subject for a while. This is nothing short
of a moral victory!
Well, I could go on & on.. but if I spill all
the beans here, who will buy my book & read? How will it then be a best seller? I have
given you some useful tips.. Now it is up to you to show the letter to Hemangi
& share the secrets!That is why I have addressed her name in brackets.
Anyway, Congratulations to both of you & I am
sure that both of you (with some help of my tips) are going to have a Happy
Married life.
With love & best wishes,
-Rajesh Mama
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