THE MARRIAGE RING

Why do most marriages become deadly bouts in a boxing ring with the gloves off and the children the reluctant referees? What happened to the halcyon days when the biggest threat made by your mother was “wait till I tell your father”? Now she is so busy telling on him, when she is not knocking him senseless on the floor, the poor man has been stripped off his halo leave alone his authority. My parents are like Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield and like Tyson; my mother believes in chewing ears off especially if it’s my Dads...

ROUND 1- “Your Dad never listens to me”. Naturally, he has no ears Ma, remember you chewed them off with your senseless drivel about servants, your endless rambling about the pain in each nerve, ligament and sinew, your not so insidious barbs against each and every relative on his side to name a few reasons why he won’t and can’t listen to you...

ROUND 2- “We never do anything together”. The last time you did do something together, we were the unfortunate result and look how that turned out...

ROUND 3- “He’s wedded to his computer”. Well, at least the computer did not call him names or demand to be taken to every 31^st cousin’s wedding, birthday or funeral or subject him to ridicule at every opportunity. Threatening to pull the computer plug was Ma’s weapon of ultimate destruction and in a fit of pique at not being taken for a walk she went ahead and did it... “Until death do us part” was strongly tested that day. However, both are still alive and kicking (at each other)...

ROUND 4- “He always turns the children against me and pretends to be a martyr”. Considering the “children” range in age from 45 to 53 surely they are capable of making up their own minds Ma! Not that you left us with half a brain to decide. By making all our decisions for us, no matter how trivial, you shrunk our brain to the size of a peanut...

ROUND 5- “I am going to leave him and live in an ashram in Pondicherry”. No nuclear threat has hung so promisingly over Dad’s head. All his prayers waiting for this dream to be realized evaporated each time like clouds over the Gobi desert.....

Well, the day the boxing gloves come off, one of them will be knocked out cold on the floor. Till then the sparring continues and we “kids” ineffectively count backwards into a zero we never reach...before that both are up and jabbing at each other again....

Nimmou Nilakantan

Child No.3

Age 51 years