Husband of my wife!
By:Rajbir Deswal

It was my wife’s observing her Karwa Chauth last year. Days ,months and years may have rolled into eternity for the rest of the world, but of the two of us it was as if we had been blessed with conjugal bliss only yesterday (excluding the courtship period, of course!). In all these years, I had not changed a thing about my typically Indian “husbandry”.

The day began with instructions to the domestic help. The do’s and dont’s were notified in clear terms. Nothing was to be served in two portions. Not even water, for the boy might out of habit bring two glasses and my wife might drink some by mistake and thereby commit an “indiscretion”. “Khana sirf sahib ke liye banega,” my wife too joined to say in a matter-of-fact manner.
During the early phase of our married life, my wife used to coax me into observing a fast with her: “All good husbands are supposed to stand by their spouses in difficult times.” But being a hard-nut, I maintained my expected standards of masculinity, guided more by the time-tested traits of playing husband than mutual feeling. After all, I had to think about what society could say—I dreaded being called hen-pecked, one who swears by the wife!

The day of Karwa Chauth being a holiday, I followed my wife to all the nooks and corners of the house, particularly to the kitchen, lest she be led to consuming any edible stuff. I doubled as her conscience-keeper, doubtless adding to her woes. The fact she told me that, for the last one quarter-of-a-century, she had been taking care of herself did not cut much ice.

I watched her dress in a green silk saree we had purchased for the occasion. I noticed her tenderly putting on bangles on the wrist. I saw her putting a bindi with extra care in the middle of the forehead. And I very nearly felt butterflies in my stomach when I put sindoor on her head as she touched my feet. Rather than given in to the intensity of my feelings, I chose to think I was the best “husband” in the world and that my wife was still the prettiest woman on earth—my zohra-jabeen.

By afternoon some ladies came to our house to listen to the kahani which a Brahmin woman was supposed to relate to the fasting women. I eavesdropped and listened to the story, the plot of which would frighten any husband-loving Hindu-wife. I, for once, thought that the theory of imitation propounded by Aristotle had its universal relevance. Quietly I went to the kitchen and prepared tea for my wife. The domestic help couldn’t help giggling, for he had never seen me look at kitchen even by mistake, let alone enter it.

The evening set in, and I escorted my wife to the rooftop to “discover the moon”. After all it was the moon’s turn now to clinch the issue of fasting. I tried to locate the celestial body with sincerity. Lo and behold, the shining ball appeared on the northeastern horizon to relieve countless souls. Who said I didn’t take care of my better three-fourth as they say these days on Karva Chauth? And, if I said at the beginning that the husband in me hadn’t changed a bit over the past several years, well, I was lying.