re-creating magic and aftermath

The other day, I was looking out of my drawing room window and on the other side of our compound wall I saw a couple, presumably unmarried. The tête-à-tête seemed to be the parting event for the day, before the girl is dropped off and after a pleasant date. I wasn’t in the least embarrassed to stare at them; after all, I was on this side of compound wall.

I turned around and said to my husband who was in a state of oneness with our couch enjoying a cricket match “did you hear that?” Without looking away from the TV, he asked, “hear what?” I told him “a void filling within me”. This must have really been too much for him to relate to, he moved his eyes away from the TV only for as long as his eyes could retain the last frame viewed and looked at me questioningly. I said “we must re-create the magic in our marriage” he gave a non perplexed look and increased the TV volume.

Not to be outdone by his reaction (if the above could be classified as one), I decided to use one of the tried and tested (not sure if it ever worked) strategies best explained by this old adage “the way to a man’s heart is through is stomach”. Two things came to my mind: (1) I think it is pretty long winding to get to the stomach first to find something which is exactly half way from the starting point (2) Every once in a while when I start this exercise, I seem to spend considerably long hours in the kitchen to satiate his palate and end up wondering if it’s a real maze between his stomach and heart as I never seem to get to the destination!

Above thoughts didn’t dampen my spirit and I paraded to the super market with my grocery list. Saturday lunch was four course Chinese meal and Sunday brunch an elaborate Mexican and Italian fare. I could sense I was still lost somewhere between the stomach and heart! To bring an element of variety I booked a table for two for Saturday evening for a romantic dinner. I must confess that the food was so authentic that I hardly shifted my focus from the menu card and my plate.

Two more weekends of toiling in the kitchen trying my hand at south Indian (thanks to Yoga for the recipe), Punjabi, an all chaat dinner, high-cal sweet dishes, fine wine, surprise gifts and movie tickets (bought by me) and dealing with daughter’s occasional insecurity pranks (bribing her appropriately) I still seemed to be nowhere close to “his heart”*.

If you are looking for a magical, romantic end to this story, I suggest you stop reading this piece right away. Reality is as follows:

Yet again, I was forced to give up my earnest attempt which resulted in everything else other than the desired outcome. First, my cook threatened to quit her job thinking that I was using my culinary skills to challenge her. Secondly, with a bloated body and battered ego, I decided to use the weighing scale in the gym and realized that much of the food I cooked seemed to have found way to my stomach (hello, wrong address!) and cursed myself for the 4 Kilos added in these three weeks would take much longer to shed. The one that threw me off my mission was my credit card bill - it smacked me back into reality.

* Hubby darling feels that during my treasure hunt, I seemed to have missed the heart and went straight up to his throat and my extra efforts and sweetness was throttling him. He is as relieved, if not more, that I am off his neck.