I Don't Forget Anniversaries

“Memory is what tells a man his wedding anniversary was yesterday”

Today is my marriage anniversary. I have been married for n years (I won’t tell you the value of n as it is a very large number and you will start guessing my age!). Coincidentally, Ambika, my wife, has also been married for the same number of years.

Ambika has been the best thing that has happened to me. If you wonder if she feels the same way, feel free to ask her and I am confident she too will agree that she has been the best thing that has happened to me. I am glad that I fell in love with Ambika over the few other girls I thought I loved. I am told by my women friends that the reason why god created man first and woman second was because he needed to have a rough draft before he made a masterpiece. If one sample couple can prove the hypothesis, look no further.

I met Ambika at a Chartered Accountancy class. I did not want to fall in love then, as I thought that it would be like learning how to cycle – would take a lot of time and would get injured in the process. But to my surprise, it was love at first sight. Then I took a second look. And a third. I have never looked back again. On our first date, like all men, I told her a bunch of lies which got her interested enough to go for future dates.

Being an extraordinarily handsome man, I assumed it my responsibility to marry the perfect woman so that we could produce children beyond comparison. So I immediately decided to marry Ambika. Of course, she decided a lot later. Ambika believed that the poorest people are the happiest. And now that she is married to me, we are the happiest couple. We used to always hold hands after marriage because we wanted to make sure the rings did not fall off since we paid good money for them.

We have been sharing things ever since – we use the same toothpaste though different toothbrushes, the same bath soap though different bath towels, the same dining table though different plates, the same closet though different clothes, the same television though different shows, the same bed…. Sorry, this is a family blog, remember?

All married men contend that marriage is not a word but a sentence. However I don’t agree; I would like to look at it as an ‘investment’ that pays big ‘dividends’ if you manage to keep up the ‘interest’ (from this you would have guessed my profession – yes, I am an accountant). My wife and I always compromise which has been the secret behind our co-existence; I admit that I am wrong and she agrees with me.

We have had a very successful marriage so far, because I practice in my life what I preach at work. I work for an outsourcing company and as a true-blood loyal employee I have outsourced the decision-making process to my wife. She is the boss in our house. I have seen the kind of things she does in the house as part of this job and honestly, I do not want it.

This does not mean that we have not had our rough times, like when I send my wife an SMS ‘I wish you were here’ thinking that it was a smart thing to do, but mistakenly missed the last e in ‘here’, or when I forgot my wife’s birthday. I realized at that time that our marriage can be defined as the alliance of two people; one who never remembers birthdays, and the other who never forgets them. During the process I found that the best way to remember my wife’s birthday is to forget it thrice. But I cannot ‘remember’ the last time I ‘forgot’ her birthday.

We have stuck together during the good and bad times all these years. Just a note of caution for the readers – families that stick together should bathe more often. We have a little girl amongst us now, our daughter Niharika. The store had run out of the big ones. And even the little one took nine months to download. O that note, the child experts say that men should not have children after 35. It may sound very restrictive, but they say that there is research evidence to support this. 35 children are enough!

Finally, you may ask what the gifts that we exchanged today were. My wife, a wonderful and great lady that she is (no, no, believe me, I am not saying this because of the gift!), gifted me a $1,500 digital SLR camera with multiple lenses and other accessories. And I returned it with an even more costly one – this blog! (because ‘little time is a lot of money’; yes I added additional words, but remember this is my blog?)

PS: If you assume that I was coerced by my wife to write this blog dedicated to her, then you should be married. Oh by the way, didn’t I mention that this is dedicated to her!