As I do each day, I made myself a cup of tea and came to my writing table. Just then, my wife Alka came with her soft, sober smile as ever. She peered at me and my heart started beating harder, thinking that a big demand was about to come. She said, “It’s June 26.”
I am a historian by profession, yet forgetting dates has been my habit. I looked nervously and soon remembered that it was our wedding anniversary.
I have never given her a gift on this day; only last year was an exception when I had knelt down to offer her a rose. And at this she had reacted with a charming, hesitating, tinkling laughter that is still fresh in my mind. Such a charming, hesitating tinkling laughter she had given once before too. It was not long after our marriage when I had gone to take her from my in-laws.
At that time, I was studying Chinese and I had told her two phrases as code words which we could use anywhere. These were wo ai ni , meaning ‘I love you’, and he cha pa , meaning ‘Would you like to have some tea?’ The latter expression was meant as an enquiry if a visitor was to be served tea.
As I entered the large courtyard and went down to touch the feet of my father-in-law, standing behind his cot Alka uttered, he cha pa , and repeated it twice more. Evidently, she had confused the phrases, so I smiled. And then she realised where she had gone wrong, and instead of uttering the right phrase, ran inside the house with the same charming, hesitating tinkling smile, which has remained fresh in my heart all these years.
I was thinking, had she uttered wo ai ni (which in Hindi can mean — ‘Did he not come?’), my father-in-law was sure to ask if someone else was to accompany me.
All these twenty-nine years of her company have been like god’s gift to me. She has stood by me like a rock — in happiness and in grief, in abundance and in deficiency. She has worked with me shoulder-to-shoulder, and together we have treaded the path from bicycle to car, from low-quality clothes to branded ones, from cheap street food stalls to big restaurants, from small schools for children to the most renowned educational institutions in the country.
Love at one time and confrontation at another have been regular features of our married life, yet her sacrificing nature has always kept me fascinated to her. If ever I wish to say a phrase to her, it would be — wo ai ni.
akganndhi@yahoo.in
