The homecoming

Men are such clueless desperate dimwits. Why else would we imagine every other thing we use in our lives as being feminine, like bikes, cars, our working tools… the list goes endless. Just a word for all my readers from Venus who, I’m sure must have got all charged up now, and are ready to pounce on me. Please! :) See, that’s how desperate it can get. And that latest in the long line of things that I consider with a hint of tenderness, akin to the one felt towards the opposite sex, is a house. Wait a minute, a house??? Well if you consider the biological (read endocrinal) reasons that would make a bike being referred to as female, a house would seem like a rather phantasmagoric, perverted choice. But that’s not how it works.

Here’s the boring background.

All of a sudden, last month, we realized that the number of people living in the house and the size of the house (read house-rent) isn’t really much of a match together. The place which witnessed enormous amounts of crazy, noisy, dirty bachelor-life fun has now become rather subdued, there are no more fistfights and wrestling bouts which had accounted for two chairs being dumped as firewood, there are no ear-splitting, sleep-stopper screams in the middle of the night to wake people sleeping in a 2 Km periphery, and the number of vehicles flagged off from the gates at exactly 9:15 am in the morning (Office starts at 9) has been reduced from five to three. Thus, we started the hunt for a new house, and after a disgusting ordeal (we even saw places where they used to keep cattle, now converted to a house by fitting of a ceiling fan) we zeroed in on one. So, on May 31st, 7:30 in the evening, after almost finalizing the deal with the new house-owner, we reach the gates of the old house. At the gate, I pause to make a phone call, and Ch and P goes in.

Finishing the call, I hang up, and turn to face the sight that broke my heart into pieces. There she stood, bathed in the moonlight, with no lights on, partially obscured by the leaves of coconut-tree falling by the terrace, like loose strands of hair on a girl’s brow, with a heavy, melancholy air about the whole thing, and I saw the silhouettes of P and Ch sitting on the verandah. All the good moments we had there come rushing towards me in a gush of cool breeze. I walk gently towards them.

“Da, we’re sort of thinking….”

“I’m thinking too”

Smiles.“So let’s call the whole thing off, dammit!”

* * * * * * * * *

The next day, Ch fwded a house-for-rent ad from the Ads@India. P replied. “Athellam marannekku!”
Then I asked him “What happens once you’re married, pinne ni vaay nottam nirthumo?”
The reply was, “Nirthilla, pakshe athellam marannalle pattuu!”