Remember that as you walk in through the polished and gleaming doorway of marriage, there are several windows with unwashed curtains that love could fly away from
Advice to peace-seeking newly-weds: split the housework. Or split!
Every newly married couple want to start off with a great looking, well-decorated, appliance-compliant home. Take my pals Ritu and Rocky. Their brand new house looked exactly as they did, just after their riotous wedding party. She was well-painted, and he was plastered.
They joyfully unwrapped their wedding gifts, many of them given by thoughtful relatives who gave them exactly what they had hinted at. Bread-toaster, drinks-coaster, coffee-maker, coconut-breaker, gasburner, chutney-churner, window-washer, potato-smasher…they had them all. All they had to do was to buy an alarm clock to wake them up every day, as they were planning to have kids only three years later.
The couple’s early days of marital bliss in their new home were splendid.
The only arguments Ritu had with Rocky were over the dishes: whether to have dinner on the yellow ones given by her sister or the blue ones given by his aunt.
A husband like yours is hard to find, said Ritu’s pals.
Very soon, that remark started coming true. Rocky was hard to find...especially around the house. And Ritu began to discover that husbands are like wood-fires. When unattended, they go out.
Leaving Ritu home alone, to do all the housework.
One day Rocky met his pal at a pub, who said, “Hey, I heard you got a new dishwasher.” “Yes, I got married to Ritu,” said Rocky. Which made a lot of people around laugh at this good joke. But he probably didn’t know then that the dishwasher was heading for a breakdown.
Back home, Ritu found that earlier she was always ready to sink into his arms; nowadays her arms were always in the sink. Soon, even the laundry started piling up. When Ritu’s sister asked, “Has Rocky changed since his marriage?,” Ritu replied: “I encourage him not to; who’s going to do all the washing and ironing?”
Ritu set off to the bookstore for some self-help books. A salesman said: “Madam, this book will cut your housework in half.” “Good, then give me two of them,” said Ritu.
When even that didn’t work, Ritu decided to throw in the towel and cared less and less about how her home looked or smelt. Soon even the resident rats and cockroaches began looking at the classifieds for new places to go live in. Rocky noticed the changes in their home, and asked her one day, “When will you straighten out the house, honey?” She replied: “Why, is it tilted?”
Earlier, Rocky would enter the house every evening, sniff the delicious waft in the air, and ask, “What’s cooking?” Nowadays he had begun to ask, “What’s thawing?”
Ritu had also begun to discover that a garden is a thing of beauty, and a job forever. So there wasn’t much of a lawn to have their cosy coffees together any more either.
When Ritu heard that her neighbour had got a bottle of Scotch for her husband, she said, great, she too would like to make such a trade-in. And one day Ritu told Rocky, “If you really loved me and wanted the best for me, you’d have married someone else.”
When Rocky didn’t laugh at all, Ritu asked, “Hey, can’t you take a joke?” Rocky replied, “Well I took you, didn’t I?
As Rocky began contributing more and more money to the local pub’s maintenance and less and less to his own home’s, Ritu began to protest. “If you don’t give me money, I’m going home to mother,” she declared. He immediately gave her a couple of thousands for her fare home.
But then Ritu found out that the cost of leaving had really gone up…
By now, Rocky realised that his marriage was as rocky as his name, and the promise of finding peace and joy in his home-sweet-smelling-home was a filthy lie.
So all you dear newly-wed couples, remember that as you walk in through the polished and gleaming doorway of marriage, there are several windows with unwashed curtains that love could fly away from. So do your homework on dividing housework. Come clean and tell your spouse: “I promise to love, honour and maintain our household appliances, and will be yours to have and to hold; for richer, for poorer. Till dirt do us part.”
(Indu Balachandran is a travel and humour columnist. indubee8@yahoo.co.in)
Keywords: marital issues, relationship tips
I loved all the word plays used in the article and though it was
hilarious it brought some of the very practical issues in marriages.
While married couples might have been able to relate to it, I'm taking
it all in as extremely good advice before I step into the portals of
married life.
That is a really humorous article and conveyed the message without boring the readers..You are good.........i have read a few of other articles and they were all equally and exceptionally good......
I agree with your article only if the women is a multitasker,means she does job and looks after the work in the house.For house wife I don't think the husband does the job and rush home to clean the dishes and clean the house.If both are job holders then there is a necessity to share the work at house to make it home.
Haha! Really funny piece I must say. "Is it tilted?" was hilarious.
A nice read. This article presents us a simple solution to a marriage-
breaking problem in a hilarious fashion.
I love the way author chose to put a very simple, but not so widely
followed principle. Hilarious article. Very good read.
All The Thatha-Paatis and Mama-Maamis are reading this and enjoying this.
Enjoyable piece! A timely advice for the young ones who step into the
bliss of married life without truly grasping the pitfalls ahead. Hope
after reading this they do the brainstorming sessions to have the best
time in living together.
This was such a fun read, I enjoyed it! Starting my sunday with a cuppa coffee and reading this article with a fun-take on mundane things. Thank you for posting this.
Familiarity breeds contempt! A lesson on what not to do post marital bliss. It is always necessary to maintain a detached attachment. Over expectations lead to disappointments. False promises lead to disillusionments. Balance in attitude is a sine qua non for a successful marital relationship provided there is no disturbance from the ubiquituous in laws who want poke their clean noses into others dirty affairs and advice on reighteousness on every matter starting from the bed room right upto the toilet with a plethoras of dos and donts.
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