Confessions of an unfaithful spouse

Advertising was my childhood sweetheart.

I’ve known her since I was a kid. She would always be around, either singing “Tandurusti ki raksha karta hai Lifebuoy” and “Happy days are here again, Thums Up, Thums Up”, or saying things like “Bhala uski kameez meri kameez se safed kaise” and “Coldarin li?”, or cracking puns with the Air India maharajah and the Amul girl.

I was quite fond of her then. But I only began to grow close to her when I hit my teens and discovered her again in the pages of magazines. She would look very pretty, sitting coyly in between pages full of words, beckoning me to get to know her more.  I started noticing the little things about her, that tiny key number just below the hemline of her skirt, those exotic Indian words she used to spout like Ulka and Chaitra and Trikaya.

I tried to resist her charms. She was flirty, quirky, alluring. Not the kind of girl you introduced to your parents. And my parents were keen I pair up with this other chick called Engineering. (To please them, I even went out with her for a few years. We were very stiff, very awkward with each other. Despite the years we spent together, I never got to know her well. When I finally decided to break up with her, I felt a surge of relief.)

Meanwhile, Advertising and I continued to meet behind Engineering’s back. Her songs were more seductive now. “How are things with you? Do I see a welcome in your smile?” “Mile sur mera tumhara.” “Hamara kal, hamara aaj.” She was persistent in her pursuit. And so, much against my parents’ wishes, who after my break-up with Engineering wanted me to get into a match with MBA, I got married to Advertising.

Seven years later, I fell out of love with Advertising.

Around the time I fell in love with Advertising, there was this other girl at the periphery of my vision – FTII. There was something attractive about her, but also something forbidding. She was artistic, creative, philosophical – and way out of my league. I felt inadequate and never approached her, though I desperately wanted to. I feared being rebuffed. Her rejection would be devastating.

But the years I had spent with Advertising emboldened me to seek her out. I asked, and she accepted. An intense, all-consuming relationship ensued. It was fraught with long periods of self-doubt, introspection and self-discovery. And short bursts of exhilaration and ecstasy.

She made me a better man.

But all good things have to come to an end, and so it was with me and FTII. We parted, but it was amicable. We still remain good friends.

The affair left me drained, and for succour, I returned to Advertising, like a philandering husband who keeps coming back to a forgiving wife.

But the rapprochement was short-lived.

Right after my affair with FTII was over, I had wanted to move in with her cousin, Documentary. FTII had introduced me to Documentary in the early days of our affair, but Documentary and I really began to hit it off only when I was in the final throes of my relationship with FTII. But Documentary was idealistic, principled and demanding. And after an exhausting relationship, I wasn’t ready for another just like it.

A few months into my restarted relationship with Advertising, I realised it was not working out.

I was missing Documentary.

I called it quits with Advertising. Again.

Documentary and I moved in together. We lived on little, just love and fresh air. We were living a dream. Hanging out with her friends – Cinema and Art and Literature. Meeting new interesting people like Anthropology and Philosophy.

And then, I met someone else. A human, this time. And the three of us couldn’t co-exist.

I reneged on my commitment to Documentary. 

I needed someone who was supportive of me and at the same time, blind to my indiscretions. And so I went back to Advertising.

But Advertising had changed. Or I had.

Her songs no longer sang to me. “Har ek friend zaroori hota hai” and “Dhak Dhak” did nothing to reawaken our romance. Her lines now sounded trite and banal: “What an idea, Sirji!”

But I did what she asked me to do. My needs were more important than my desires. At times, I felt like a gigolo, fulfilling her demands in return for her money.

I’ve spent another 7 years with Advertising. But this time in a loveless marriage.

I feel ripe for a fling. Perhaps with that homely girl I’ve been ignoring for far too long – Television. Or with Films, that desirable siren who’s ruined the life of many a man. Or with Teaching, even though I don't think I have the patience for her.

Or maybe, I should just go back to the comforting arms of my Documentary.

Happy Teacher's Day, Miss Lumena

If I can credit someone with changing the course of my life, it’s Miss Lumena, my 10^th Standard English teacher.

I think she barely noticed me in class during the first term, and I too didn’t do much to attract her attention.

At the beginning of the second term, we were given our corrected exam sheets of the previous term to inspect. We were supposed to go through them, point out errors by the teachers like an answer marked incorrectly, or a totalling mistake, or an answer left unmarked, and get them rectified.

As I went through my English exam sheet, I noticed a note in the margins of the essay I had written: “This deserves to be published in the school magazine.”

My instinctive reaction was to leave it at that; I didn’t think it was such a great essay.

But something in me made me go up to her and ask her about that note in the margins.

She began to notice me after that. Invariably, I would be made to read out what I’d written in class – compositions, essays, even answers to the questions at the end of the text.

Eventually, the term was up. The preliminary exams ended, and before we took a month’s study leave to prepare for the Board exams, we had an Open Day for parents and students to meet teachers and discuss our strengths and weaknesses in their subjects.

When I went to meet Miss Lumena, our conversation turned to what I planned to do after school. “Engineering,” was my pat reply.  Till then, if you asked me what I wanted to do in life, the reply was always engineering. I loved Maths, and my role models – my maternal uncle and an older cousin – were both engineers.

“But you should do journalism,” she said. “You write so well.”

The idea appealed to me. I broached it to my parents. “Nothing doing,” said my mother, “journalists get killed.” I was given a choice of four streams to make a career in – Medicine, Engineering, Chartered Accountancy and Law. I chose Engineering.

But the thought that I could make writing a career had been planted in my head.

Happy Teacher’s Day, Miss Lumena, wherever you are.

(Illustration of Miss Lumena by a fellow student of hers – Anil Damodaran)