Chickwit : Lalita Iyer

Baby, are you keeping track of our mutual funds and how they are doing? There’s this chunk of money going out from my account every month, and I have no idea what’s happening to it..”

Sigh. I don’t have the heart to tell him that he should forget about the mutual funds for at least three years, given the current situation. But I make it look good.

“Honey, what’s important is that we bought them cheap, so they can only appreciate..”
“Really, that’s great,” he says in a not-so-convinced voice.

To the husband, any money that is not spent on cold cuts, large screen TVs, gaming consoles, beers or Sunday brunches is money gone to waste. Which is why I have put him in charge of entertainment and other frills while I do the boring stuff like planning taxes, building assets, filing returns and all that jazz.

This is not how I had planned it. Ok, let me confess. I had this visual image of a life partner. Who doesn’t? Mine was lean, a vegetarian, articulate, a great cook, a good listener, someone who went running on a whim, knew money and looked a bit like Johhny Depp. Okay, I know it’s a bit much, but what’s wrong with wishful
thinking?

I must say I scored on the lean, the articulate and the Johhny Depp bit (yes!).
What I didn’t bargain for is a salami chomping, exercise-hating, paperwork-phobic, beer-guzzling, non-stop blabbering, OCD-ridden species who peers into the cats’ food bowl to check if they get better meals than him (which he secretly thinks they do, I am sure). Or eyes the pan greedily whenever I cook meat for them and not for him. I try explaining that they need it more than he does, but it doesn’t cut much ice.

At a recent lunch date, we played a little game — we asked who, amongst people we knew would we set the other up with, had we not wound up with each other. Cutely, we both picked really nice people for the part — which made me realise that we do dig each other a lot and would only wish the best for each other.

And think about it. Had I married a financial wizard (which 50 per cent of my clan is) or a nerdy genius (which is the other 50 per cent), I would have driven him insane.

Would Ravi Subramaniam (fictitious name for significant other that I would have ended up with) propose to me post an Indigo brunch in a taxi on Marine Drive? No way. His mother would have called my mother. Or would Neha Srivastava (fictitious name for his significant other) have been able to match him step for step on the floor? No way. She would be too concerned about her eyeliner.

We agreed, what we were both looking for is someone to match our nutty side. And we more than found it with each other. So, just a month away from our first anniversary, I can proudly say, Jai Ho!