“Please don’t lead me into this God’s acre, I don’t even have a nodding acquaintance with her,” I protested heavily against my marriage with an unknown girl, Isha.

“Your dad and me knew each other since our childhood,” my mom was in the aisles for a while. OK, I understood the sarcasm.

“Momma, girls are not what they seem from outside. They are obstinate, they are sordid, and they are foamy and hotheaded. I am happy like this. Let me enjoy my life for a while,” I gave the broadest smile I could ever.

“I guess Isha’s a perfect match for you. She’s a darling,” she said. Is she mad as a hatter? By the way how did she know? I looked at her with a raised brow.

“She’s been to our home. We were simply stumped, bowled over,” she continued. She came to our home? There was a certain enthusiasm inside me craving to know more about her, still I wasn’t interested in walking down the aisles.

I closed my mouth and blocked my nostrils with my two fingers and trying to breathe forcibly. No... Not by inserting them into the nostrils but by pressing the nose with my thumb and the index finger. “You can’t threaten us by trying to take your life,” momma said. What crap?

“I am practicing Valsalva maneuver, to restore normal pressure in my ears, the Eustachian tubes of which are blocked because of a cold. Huh..” I sighed.

Men are always head and shoulder above women. I can drive fast, cook better than a woman, cleanup my house more efficiently, manage the household better and what not. Women are possessive, undecipherable, unpredictable and above all unbearable after a certain time. She becomes a cock of the walk.

Marriage would mean the alpha of my woes and omega to all the freedom.

“I am into the Volstead act. No drinking, no smoking, no flirting. Life looks bleak on the road ahead of me,” I closed my eyes and gestured. “Here’s the card. My days of sufferance will commence from that day,” I gave the wedding card to my friend. She smiled and said, “Don’t worry. Bet your boots, it will all come out itself in the wash,” and she hugged me. “No more hugs later,” I winked at her with a sheepish smile.

A few days after our marriage, the first time ever we have gone out, I wanted to flaunt my driving skill set to Isha. “1349CC, 82BHP delivering a peak torque of 118Nm, this is the most powerful high-end hatchback, Getz,” I showed off. “Pretty impressive,” she said. Did she understand a bit?

After me driving for a while she spoke, “Your gear shift is pretty bad. You are coming down heavily on the gearbox. Perhaps your engaging the clutch-shifting the gears-disengaging the clutch needs synchronization,” she said.

“Huh,” She’s wasting her breath. I have even driven at 150KMPH on these roads. I pulled over my car and asked her to drive. To my jaw downed awe she drove like a beauty. No glitches in the gear shift. No bumpy ride. No honking at all. Yet she drove at a decent speed. Excellent. “You aren’t a bad driver, you know,” I said. She flashed a ravishingly charming yet witty smile.

“I’ve heard of your bon vivant nature. What do you like the most?” she asked me one day. “Dum ka biryani … even chicken tikka biryani will do,” I wetted my lips. “I will make them for you today,” she said.

“I thought you have been a vegetarian throughout your life.”

“I have learnt to cook for you,” she said. An hour later, my taste buds were treated to the most delicious finger licking non-veg dish I ever had in my entire life. I was simply amazed. How could someone who’s never even tasted chicken before turn out with such damn finger licking stuff?

She loves me so much.

She’s never asked me to be a teetotaler. She never asked me to change my modus Vivendi. And slowly my opinion about females changed because of my dear wife.

The undaunted male chauvinism finally bowed before the feminine mellifluousness. All these days, I felt that the girl who’s gonna marry a bonhomie like me is lucky. But now it’s me who’s lucky, in fact extremely lucky to have her in my life. Finally I gave in myself to the Volstead act, not because she told me to do. Because there could be no better addiction than her.

I found her walking towards me in a velvet gown more arousing than the iconic Ursula Andress emerging out from the waves in Dr. No.

I would have still been groping in the dark hadn’t she entered my life.

And this writing is a tableau vivant of her love’s intoxication on my heart.

And the day when she said, “Sanju, you are gonna become a dad soon”, perhaps that was the day I wished, time could stop forever and ever and ever....

p.s. If you have tried the Valsalva maneuver, then it’s time to ring some wedding bells. If you haven’t, read again. I bet you will do it this time. If you are already married, please don’t try.