An ode to love!

AMITABH SHANKAR


Two journalists fell in love and got married. Though I knew both of them by their names earlier also, it only happened recently that I got to work with the woman and I meet the husband often as we cover the same beat, for different newspapers.
A friend of mine always used to wonder what did they see in each other that they got married. The friend has a strong belief that people marry in romanticism and once the romance is over, life becomes hell for those who go for love marriages.
The question always looked frivolous to me. What the hell do you see when you are in love? Don't you know that love is blind? And that's it's beauty. But I always looked the other side when this question was raised.
Now about eating habits of the couple, the woman is pure vegetarian, doesn't eat even onions and her husband has always been a non-vegetarian. Looks like the meeting of the north pole and the south pole.
Because of her taste and upbringing, the woman never cooked non-veg items. She couldn't even stand the smell. Because of his taste, husband didn't like the monotony of eating green vegetables daily and lost his appetite.
And then this happened one day. A guilt feeling dawned upon the woman that her husband was loosing health because of her callousness and thought to do something about it. She left office early one evening and headed directly to Karim's in Nizamuddin. Unfortunately, that day being a Monday, the famous non-veg eating joint in the capital was closed. She was disappointed because she knew that her husband was a great fan of the food from that place. But the heart, she didn't lose.
Called up a colleague to ask which other place should she visit to get good non-veg items. The colleague guided her to Kake-da-dhaba in Connaught Place. She took a bus and not knowing exact location of the dhaba, alighted at wrong bus stand and asked her way to the dhaba from the pedestrians. She had to walk for over a kilometer to reach there.
Then began the biggest ordeal of her life. The meat hanging from the ceiling, she couldn't look at, the smell she couldn't bear. She asked the person manning the counter for the menu and didn't know what to order.
She told the person to give her the best non-veg item there. That didn't solve her problem for the person told her that it's a matter of personal taste. Every item here is fabulous.
She somehow ordered for some sort of chicken. The waiter packed it in a polybag and gave it to her but how could she hold the polybag which was touched by his 'dirty' hand. She picked up another polybag and held it herself and asked the waiter to drop the food in it and fastened it tightly, as if the cock would jump back to life from the curry.
Then she called her husband and asked him not to eat outside. She has a surprise for him, she said.
She reached home at 10 pm, cooked rotis, curries for herself and her father-in-law.
But the worse was yet in store. How would she serve the chicken without heating it again? For heating it, she would have to touch it. There she lost her patience, asked her husband to go to kitchen and do the rest of the job himself. Till now the husband was oblivious of the surprise that was pending. When he went inside the
kitchen, he smelt fishy when he saw the polybag. He opened it and his nightmare came alive. There it was.
He threw the entire polybag in the waste-bin. Called her wife and asked her, "What made you think that I will eat non-veg item brought by you? You don't have to do all this." And all the four eyes were wet. They had their dinner of rotis and curry together.
A small gesture, a little sacrifice and lots of happiness.
Isn't that love? The meeting of the earth and the sky, the horizon...
And I am feeling jealous of them...