Being Faazil

Expectedly, the most common teaser from my friends these days is how's my life post Marriage, assuming I would repeat those overtly secret oneliners. But I love to react the way it is, "Married Bachelors". That's the way we live today.

I get up at 8.30 and leaves for office by 8.45 in the morning. I take bath if I feel like, and rarely conmsumes breakfast. But a tight hug and some quick passionate kisses, ensuring that I would be back in a few hours, between me and my lovely wife have become a creative addition to my morning menu. Yes, I have started loving formal wears in place of my ususal zeans, T-shirt. It is rather a thoughtful exercise to give an equal opportunity to the long kept formal wears see some light of the day before vanishing into oblivion, no matter if some people in the surrounding act to not have recognised me with formal attire.

Even as I join my job she slips into her leftover dream on the bed. She lies there till she loves to be there. But she would be all ready by 1 pm when I reach home for lunch.

I would always be there with all necessary non-sense ("faazil", that's the word she uses for my sweet non-sense) and she with her many untiring special skills including posing before the mirror at regular intervals, talking at length about face care and singing and dancing to every possibility.

We eat together, cook together, dance together, and still love to be together when nobody is around. We see our love, smell our love and eat our love while walking, driving, cutting vegetable or watching TV. As the clock ticks 3 pm I jump onto the bath room. I want to leave soon and she tries to experiment some new outfit on me. Both of us play with the Deodorant and I leave for office much like in the morning.

I believe during the second half of the day she does some reading apart from other stuff. Our evening starts with two glasses of glucose-water, then driving, gym, juice centre, gupchupwala and many more only to return home by 9.30 pm. Then she would be on to the Tv and I onto my lappy. After a while, I too join her on the same sofa. It would be 11.30 and we head for the kitchen. Suddenly, I get reenergised to try out some new dish and she does the final touch. By 12 we are again at our love bed. She grabs her Olive bottle and I love watching her as always.

For her, we both have become more "faazil" at this hour of the day.

For Those Who Can't Sing

Then I was probably in Class V and we had a song competition in our school. Those days, I used to top in debate, recitation, GK etc. The frequency of success in curricular activities was so regular that I thought why not have a try in singing...it could only be a matter of making an attempt. The competition had already begun. In stead of seating idle like an audience I drove into my classroom, opened my Oriya book and started practising one of the poems having lyrical component to qualify in the competition. After a 15-minute rehearsal, I went back to the common hall where the event was on its way. Mid-way I got my name entered and soon came my number. I started like an ever-confident school boy, aspiring to add another feather in his cap. There was huge appalause and I was on cloud nine. With more appalause, I accelerated my tempo, the tone and tenor got a push which was a little beyond accuracy. Adding one more feather was reverberating in my mind. I am a school-teacher's son and the son can't be defeated in presence of his father, no matter how cruel the gathering might be. There was more appalause and I had raised my tone to such an extent that it was sounding more of a debate than a song. But I was committed to finish. Every school-teacher's son bears that huge responsibility in that phase of life that you have to win despite everything. As good luck would have it, I had finally finished the poem and returned to sit amid huge huge appalause. Then, I had taken a vow not to participate in any song competition ever.


Today, after so many years, I was watching karaoke singing competition. With me was my beautiful wife. It was rather she dragged me to be part of that occasion. We were there till the end, even to hear who was taking the trophy home. But during the competition, I found someone singing much like my fifth class experience. Backbenchers were shouting once more, once more. But I could sympathise with the engineer singer for the fact that he made an attempt. He was at his ease for the sake of being ease with himself. There is a pleasure of being not perfect at all. There is a pleasure of throwing out that "what others will think" complexity from ourself once and for all. There is a pleasure in doing small small things that you used to think undoable and take excuse for time's sake.

If I can learn swimming at the age of 30 why can't I sing, dance and do all such stuff that I could not do at the true stage of life because of either my past context or complexity I used to have.