Life after marriage

The best period in a married man’s life (yes there is one; albeit brief) is the one that starts right after the wedding ceremony ends. It’s the part I have been looking forward to everyday in my seven years of courtship. And finally the dream came true…

I had meticulously planned each and every move; carried out extensive research which involved talking to a friend whose friend was a friend of someone who knew a thing or two about such things. With such painstaking planning and a faultless execution that would put the best neurosurgeon to shame, my long pending desires were accomplished in a most delightful way.

Let me take you through this most fascinating time of my life. The journey to Goa with my newly wedded; brand new wife (Did u guys really thought I was gonna tell u about the..…hee hee hee).

The wife had never been outside the state of Maharashtra and as for me; I had been to Goa only once, that too on an industrial visit during graduation days. The only memory I had of Goa was of puking in an auditorium during a presentation by the Goa Port Trust. In hindsight I think the idea of going for an Industrial visit to Goa is like going for a pilgrimage to Vegas. Imagine the stress it puts on budding minds – competing to drink as much vodka as possible in a night and then attending a presentation about the growth in shipping tonnage or things like that by pot-bellied PSU managers the next morning; the puke was inevitable. (I don’t know why the wife keeps saying that I get off-track very easily. She feels my thinking is a disparate assortment of random thoughts with seemingly little or no connection with one another…may be she is just jealous). So what was I saying… umm… shipping industry… err…no..umm…yaa… industrial visits are planned…err…what the heck…umm…umm…Yes honeymoon to Goa.

So on the 12th of Dec 2009, I and my wife of a few days boarded the new super deluxe air-conditioned blue Vagon-R taxi for the domestic airport. The wife wanted to fly some fancy airlines like the king fisher but I put my foot down. It had to be Air India. I convinced her (read pleaded) that in such turbulent time we should fly our national carrier; we should try our best to help the white elephant survive the financial turmoil even if it meant risking our lives in some pre-historic, second hand airbus 319. Finally her patriotic sentiments got the better of her and she relented. (The fact that Air India offered the cheapest tickets had no bearings on my decision to fly Air India; honestly….I swear…quit smirking…)

I think I mentioned somewhere that the wife has never been outside Maharashtra. Well there is a story to it; she has a jinx on her that thwarts her from setting foot outside the state. Every time she tries to do that some calamity strikes like the deluge in 2005; terrorist attacks; a Himesh Reshmiya movie release etc and her plans have to be cancelled or indefinitely postponed. This time we were desperate to break the jinx. So as a precautionary move we left home at 1100 hours though the flight was scheduled at 1530 hours. Luckily we reached the airport without any mishap a well 3 hours before the flight time. After checking-in at around 1300 hours we were on our way towards the waiting area for gate no. 10. We found ourselves walking through a passage separated from the airfield with a huge translucent glass wall. Though most of this glass wall was semi-opaque a narrow stretch across the length of the glass wall was made of transparent glass that provided the passersby a spectacular view of the airfield crammed with Boeings, Airbuses, private jets and helicopters. There were tractors with trailers attached carrying luggage to & fro from the airplanes. From our point of observation these tractor trailers looked like they had been handpicked from Noddy’s toy town and placed at the airfield; so miniature; so tiny; criss-crossing across the monstrous Boeing 747s. Then suddenly I felt my hand almost involuntarily creep towards my wife’s handbag; I pulled out my Kodak C190 digital camera.

I had a feeling that this might be a mistake; but as if under some spell I started clicking picture after picture of the field; zooming in and out with my digital camera. After a few shots my discomfort vanished and I graduated from taking pics to shooting videos. I shot a very beautiful video of an Airbus taking off. I had lost all sense of time, I had no idea how long I had been shooting oblivious to the surroundings and then suddenly I felt a very strong tug at my arms. It was the wife, looking almost hysterical she pointed towards a man; more than 6 feet tall with shoulders so broad that even Mathew Hayden would look like a baby in comparison. The man wore a uniform with a weapon dangling at his left shoulder and was walking intently towards us. He was accompanied by a female officer who was the exact opposite of what they show in the sleazy deo ads.

I realized I had made a terrible mistake; taking pictures at an airport in a city which is almost always on a high security alert; an airport- which is always on the radar of some bloody terrorist organization. My mind started throwing terrible questions; what will they do? Will they detain me for questioning? How long will that take? Will they torture me? Why did my parents name me Jalaluddin? Any security personnel are bound to get suspicious when they hear that name. Will they torture me? Why…why I had to be such an asshole? We would surely miss the flight, Was that the wife’s jinx? Surely that jinx was working. It had defeated us. Our honeymoon would now be spent in prison?

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