cheer up bro

Going back home from office with the realization there's no one at home is becoming increasingly tough for me. I wonder how I managed it for the past one and a half month. And I don't even want to think about the fact that I have 4 more months (minimum ... that is ...) to spend this way.

In India, it's a norm that the pregnant wife will spend her last 3,4 months of pregnancy and the first 3,4 months of motherhood at her parent's place. And it's a widely agreed school of thought, that the husband's feelings during that period must be like .... wow .... !! yuuuhuuuu .... !!! But, no ... not me. I got too habituated to the comfort of having some one to speak to (back home) to bear with the thought of having to spend about 12 hours all by myself everyday.

Here are some interesting techniques and skills I have painstakingly developed over months after marriage:
1) I can code for fixing an intricately involved bug even as I listen to home news bulletin from my wife.
2) I can actually repeat the news bulletin - word to word - in case my wife tends to think I'm not paying attention. (Later I also remember giving her a choice of listening to a short summary - 2 marks or a detailed discourse - 10 Marks)
(Actually I'm mid-way - developing a technique where I can repeat what she said - word-word in the reverse order, not that it interests her .... just very amusing ..)
3) With a single look (I needn't even have to hold them), I can differentiate between capsicum and a badly grown brinjal.
4) I can prepare these items (ordered in ascending order of expertise) - coffee, horlicks, maggie noodles.
5) I can carry about 7 kg of grocery on each of my hands and walk slowly (to match my wife's pace) with an unfading smile on my face in a heavily crowded market area. (Normal people will have to do specialized yoga to achieve this feat.)
6) It's only after marriage that I couped up enough courage to watch a full telugu movie. (A piece of cake for my wife :( )

Don't want to boast about it in the list of points above, but I'd want to mention here - in passing - that at one instance, I bravely argued with an auto-guy for a rupee (only once though).

And it all seems such a waste, that I have no one to whom I can show-off these skills.

But, just as things were turning worse from bad, a ray of hope entered my life this evening, in the form of a dog. Okay, don't get confused. I can explain.

This evening, as I had a few things to purchase from Nilgiris, I had been there and was coming back with a fairly big carry-bag in my hand. Here I was walking, and at about 25 meters from me, due north east, I happened to glimpse at a dog on the other side of the road. Even though some people will be skeptical on this, I happened to easily observe that the dog's eyes were on my bag. I wanted to avoid a scene. So I started walking faster and realized that the dog was doing same on the other side. The road was fairly well occupied with zooming vehicles, so everything is fine for the present. My razor sharp brain could immediately come up with 2 plans, as they show in the movies - plan A and plan B. At this point, the road became silent because of a signal further down, and as anticipated, the dog crossed the road to my side at about 43 kmph. I don't understand dogs, especially this one. I guess it thought that I was a pie-faced nincompoop or something. It was about to know that it misjudged me. We were separated by about 15 meters and it starting walkin towards me, it's eyes hawk-like on the bag. Distance between us slowly started reducing. (slowly - owing to the facts that i) I wasn't too keen to get near the dog and ii) the dog was stalking it's prey.). We are about 7 meters apart, when I stopped on my tracks. The dog stopped as well. I had plan A on the cards. So, I lifted my bag up over my shoulders. Our eyes briefly met. I mustered up as much malice into my eyes as possible. But the dog looked away indifferently, back at the carry-bag. I delivered plan B. I took out the umbrella that I had hidden in the carry-bag and walked towards it (the dog, I mean) in quick steps with it (the umbrella) uplifted in a threatening manner. I think it understood the general message I wanted to convey - about how superior I was. It immediately backed out and ran away to it's evening chores (which I'm sure involves - conversing with it's friends about the incident, picking at humbler targets etc).

I came back home thinking that life isn't that bad after all.