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Whatever...Wherever...!

Discussion in 'Snippets of Life (Non-Fiction)' started by Oviya, Oct 5, 2008.

  1. Oviya

    Oviya Silver IL'ite

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    My husband is a physics buff and I am his polar opposite.

    In his college days he had written 'papers' on Physics. My writing on the subject can be best described as a 'head of a pin' case under normal circumstances and a 'back of the bus ticket' case on my Star birthday with my guardian angel whispering an encouraging, "You can do it, girl!" into my ears. Again, don't think that I can write theories on the back of that bus ticket in question. Only the names of a few Physicists like Newton, Einstein and Sir CV Raman. That is all I can repay my teachers on the subject with. So, as far as I am concerned Physics is just history.

    Since we belong to the Love-First-Marriage-Next creed, soon after we had declared love (He first, of course. Yours truly has always been a girl, first and last) I asked him once if I was the first girl in his life. Without hesitation he said I was his second.

    I wanted to know who the first was.

    " My Science teacher. At age 13".

    I could not help feeling a certain jealousy towards this unknown woman.

    "Was she very beautiful?"

    "Hmmm...May be. But, I loved her more for her Physics than for her physique"

    Was he telling me the truth or was he recovering from his careless mistake?

    He is the sort of a guy who, even when he was deeply in love, bored me endlessly with 'Space and Time'- a concept in physics - sitting on the beach on glorious evenings. A criminal waste of such splendid space and scarce time and a young maiden who somehow foolishly got into the middle of the two. He made me go thru what can be termed as the buyer's remorse.

    His love letters were even worse. He had equations in them! Sample: Love = Freedom + Respect. Noble thought, no doubt. But, I used to feel that probably, the love letter was written not for me but for Madam Curie, the discoverer of radioactivity and long dead. Or, to his lost love, the Physics teacher.

    Well, other than this incorrigible weakness, he was a splendid guy. So, we got married.

    Many years have passed since then. Yet, his passion remains the same.

    You may have heard recently that an atomic smasher test was conducted successfully in France. On reading this news, my hubby was very buoyant.

    You would think that there is nothing wrong about it. But, he made the cardinal mistake of sharing that buoyancy with the woman of the house who had been plunged into the bottom of the household sea with the pressure of clearing the mess he and his son had created since that morning. The fall of the twin towers would have left lesser debris than what these two couch-sitting and cartoon-watching militants had wreaked in our home. They had made so much mess with clothes, books, play-dos, paints, papers and plates that I was simply reeling under pressure.

    That was when this Physics-bee came to the kitchen with the proverbial ‘last straw’.

    "Hey Look. The scientists have smashed the atom!" His victorious laughter said he was all excited.

    "Perfect. Now, ask them to come and clean my house. I am looking for help and they are free!"

    He was shocked at my response and immediately became upset.

    "What are you talking about? Do you want 'them' to clean the house? You have no appreciation for what they are doing?"

    "Anyone who has nothing else to do in this world but splits atoms all the time can attend a rehabilitation program and be more useful!"

    "It is a multi-billion dollar experiment and you are saying it is useless?"

    "If it is multi-billion dollars, then it is not just useless. It is madness. More fruitful tasks can be done by hiring a maid for a few hundred dollars"

    He was speechless. When I am angry and emotional, contrary to the popular opinion, logic becomes very sound. Forget beating it, nobody comes within a sighting distance.

    He stood there for a second, all his buoyancy lost.

    "What is so bad about our house? It is very clean, as I see it!" he declared.

    "That is because I cleaned it spending four back-breaking hours. Did you see how it was when I started?"

    "How can you say we did not keep it clean?"

    "Not 'we', Mister. 'You'! "

    As I expected, he did not even know that he did not keep the house clean.

    "Well...no…yeah, ok, what did I do?"

    "Aha... What did you not do?"

    This time he tried his usual tactic.

    "Listen, you need to give me the details. You can't talk just generally"

    I was armed to the teeth with data and was fully prepared.

    "Details…? You want details….? Let me give you one hundred instances. Start counting, my sweet heart! Have you ever put your shirt and pants in the hanger?"

    "Yeah! All the time, all the time!"

    I picked up his pants from the back of the couch he was sitting on and asked him, "Tell me in which country a couch is called a hanger? If there is any, it must be in outer space. Your scientists can name the planet"

    He blinked. And slowly said, "This is just once..."

    "Wrong! Not even once have you not done that"

    I was not sure if he got my double negatives in the sentence. But, I continued.

    "Every time - without exception- you are leaving the shirt, pants, towel, shorts and yourself wherever you are. I need to pick them from the couch, the bed room, the kitchen, the dining table, the TV stand, the floors in all the rooms and the garage! Why haven't you ever thought about it.....ha? Is it because, it is yet to make it to the online newspapers?"

    He was dumb.

    "Your scientists have broken the atom, Mister. Now, you at least break your silence and answer me.
    Does it cost a billion dollars to do so?"

    He mumbled, "Small mistakes....You are blowing them out of proportion."

    "Once or twice, it is small. If it happens every day and every night, it is a big mistake not to correct it."

    I paused for a second. Not because I expected the effect to sink in. I knew it never would. But I wanted to take a breath before the next strike.

    "Now, have the second instance. Remember the time we found your wallet in one of your socks? Is that the place to keep the wallet?"

    "Hey, hey, hey, I did not do it. It was our son...cutie, cutie....!" He was frantically calling our son out as if he wanted some support to face me.

    "I don't believe you. You are ‘more kid than the kid’ "

    "Hey, seriously.... I did not do it!"

    "Psst....Now, take the third. Do you remember the cell phone incident? You left it unattended and this little guy took it, thought the antenna was a pencil and used a sharpener on it…. Didn’t he say, ‘Mommy, I can’t write with this. It has only wires!’? ”

    "....."


    "And remember the time when we came back home from your friend's marriage, late in the night…? Just before opening the door you gave the key bunch to this little guy because he was crying in sleep. Now tell me Mister, what did your son do?"

    He turned his head away. I turned it back towards me.

    "Tell me, Sir, tell me!"

    He feebly said, "He threw the key into the house, through the window! What about it now?"

    "Like Wordsworth's 'Throw the books thru the window'... ha? We stood outside for 3 hrs before help came our way, in a very cold night. Which intelligent person will give the key bunch to his son crying in the midnight? And remember? Your uncle was with us with a weak bladder.... You made an otherwise very nice gentleman, educated in Oxford, England, relieve himself…. well….outside the confines of the house! That was the 'come to the nature' part of the poem!"

    "Well, he could have controlled himself for a few hours...."

    "Few hours? The atoms in his bladder would have been smashed....Cheaply though!"

    He was trying to answer. But I stopped him with a raised hand.

    "Take the fifth. What did you do an hour back, Mister? While I was vacuuming the house, you lying on the bed reading the paper, dropped the empty chips pocket on the vacuum cleaner! You not only disrespected me but my 150 dollar cleaner also!"

    "Hey, I did not notice you were cleaning....Sor.."

    "I know! That is the problem, your noticing nothing…! Your mess, my ear rings, my saree, my hairstyle and my waistline. You are noticing nothing!”

    I went on to talk about the fan incident, the TV incident, the bathroom incident, the car incident, the pillow incident, the chocolate incident, the school incident, the homework incident, the play-area incident and all other incidents that have had a significantly adverse impact on the orderliness of the house. It took about an hour or so for me to provide him with the details he wanted. Or, no longer wanted.

    In frustration he said, "This is all because, I came and talked to you about an historic incident!"

    "For you, it is historic. For me, it is nothing.... What Sir, we don't help each other in keeping the house clean, but we talk about the atoms and the universes!"

    "What do you know about the atoms and the universe? This experiment is going to solve the mystery of the God-particle. You know the whole Universe started with the Big Bang! This is going to be something similar to the big-bang. With Protons traveling at....."

    God, the bangs he received so far were not enough. He needed more.

    "What is so special about this big-bang business, big guy?" I said with sarcasm. He missed it as usual and went on to explain.

    "You know, the whole universe started from a single point. A single point, mind it. Such a vast Universe, all the stars, nebulae, planets, earth, you, me, the trees....everything. Condensed in a single point! Sort of an everything-everywhere situation!

    I asked him coldly.

    "If you wanted an everything-everywhere situation, why did you have to go to Physics and big bang? Look at our house. There is everything, everywhere. More precisely, a 'whatever-wherever' situation! More mysterious and puzzling than the everything-everywhere state of the big-bang. If you doubt it, note the verbs in the ‘Wh’ form. Very questionable. We need to find answers to our situation first!"

    He sat flabbergasted, holding our son for support. I felt better. I mean, my back felt better. It ached only a little now. A marked improvement from before the conversation. That is probably why they say all problems, including back problems, can be solved thru dialogues.

    He murmured something. I asked him what. He said it was nothing. I persisted and he came out with the truth.

    He said angrily, "Ok, I said, I wanted to take Sanyas. You are trying to discipline me way too much. I really feel like taking upon the life of a sage and live in a forest. Far, far away! That was a wish I expressed. Does it satisfy you, now?"

    "Aha, look at you! The sage! You will go to the forest Today and tomorrow morning you will give me a call on my mobile from your holy river to say, 'Sweetie, bring my towel, I forgot to bring it'...... Look at the sage! You can't live without me for a minute!" I shouted back.

    He was silent for a while.

    After a few minutes he broke the silence.

    He said, "Yeah, that is there!" and drew me near.

    "And what about you? If I take Sanyas, will you stay home? You can't too. You will come to meet me under the pretext of giving me the towel" He smiled sheepishly.

    I smiled back with a "Yeah, that is there!" and snuggled into his arms.

    Thus our peace talk was all over, until the next time.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2008
  2. Paulina

    Paulina Moderator Staff Member Platinum IL'ite

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    My dear Oviya kutty,:thumbsup

    You have 'Out Banged' the Big Bang theory and every other known theory known to all physicists ,( your DH heading the list ofcourse ) with this brilliant piece.
    Your RantRantRant was superb .....I could hear your panting and could almost see the smoke and fire spreading around .
    I just loved every line of your explosion ...you put Mount Vesuvius to shame I'm sure with this eruption and lava spilling all over your lovely home...I felt like I was :hide:there witnessing the whole drama of wifely rage at hubby's and kiddo's negligence about maintaing a clean homely environment.
    Dearie you have excelled yourself ......the tender romantic ending was like a sudden summer shower after the sun's scorching heat.......cool and refreshing ...
    .....and once again all is well with the world ( PHEW !! I was worried about a head on collision at the speed with which you were zipping through !! ) and we could:clap&
    Big Laugh and exclaim :wowwhat a great show !!

    So Oviya kutty I'm just rushing to the FP section for know what?

    An immensely enjoyable read with a riot of Big LaughBig Laugh!
     
  3. sundarusha

    sundarusha Gold IL'ite

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    Dear Oviya

    :bowdownI read your post first thing in the morning and it has already brightened my day. I first went to nominate for FP and came back to leave a FB here.
     
  4. varalotti

    varalotti IL Hall of Fame

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    My dearest DD,
    You made your SriPa's heart swell with pride beyond all imaginable proportions. My God! You should have published a dozen books by now!
    What a humour! What a style! The right words sitting at the right places and taunting us with all types of emotions - the back-pain of a housewife, the big bang particle physics, and the big-bang the physics buff had from my DD, and finally the sweet reconciliation.
    With so many things clogging my mind your writing made me forget them all and laugh out heartily.
    You know DD, ironically I too am a physics buff. I have never studied physics in school or college. I was trained in Accounts right from my 16th year and I can do balance sheets behind bus tickets or even postage stamps.
    If Accountancy is my lawfully wedded life, physics, especially quantum physics has been by chinnaveedu all along.

    I was hooked on to that subject by Fritjof Copra's Tao of Physics. Then came the Dancing Wu Li Masters. Friedmans books and lectures. Stephen Hawking, Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, Einstein and all. I could understand your dh's plight as well as your response.

    I am not going to tell Indhumma about this article. For she might pick up some cues to taunt me as I am far worse than your DH.

    Any time you feel frustated with your dh, just send a mail or chat with Indhu. You will find out that your dh is a thousand times better than hers. ha ha

    I loved this piece, DD. May you and yours be always blessed.
    love,
    Your SriPa
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2008
  5. Gowri66

    Gowri66 Gold IL'ite

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    Dear Oviya,

    Good one ... dearie !! You have written so well... enjoyed everybit of it !!! :thumbsup

    I too place "dit-to" marks to all your points... Experiencing the situations on my day to day life..Living and enjoying life with a Scientist. They just need a "Science" book by their side ...It is their life.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2008
  6. Oviya

    Oviya Silver IL'ite

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    Dear Aunty Paulina,

    What an enthusiastic FB!...

    I couldn't resist feeling on top of the world reading it. My mind is filled to the brim with joy.

    Thanks sssssssso much...

    Love,
    Your Oviya Kutty.

     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2008
  7. Oviya

    Oviya Silver IL'ite

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    Dear Buddy Usha,

    Nice to hear from you that you made your appearance in the FP forum first and then here.

    I was going to read the FP post after aunty Paulina's response and guess what. Found you there!

    Thanks a lot...

     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2008
  8. Oviya

    Oviya Silver IL'ite

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    My dearest SriPa,

    What a whole-hearted appreciation!

    SriPa, good that I posted today to get your time immediately.

    I showed this reply to my DH and he was so glad that a great writer is appreciating me.

    I am really blessed to receive such praise from you. Feel like, "Vashishter vaayaal Brahma Rishi!" Thank you so much.

    So nice to know that my family and your family share the same interests and same sufferings.

    Thank you so much. Your blessings motivate me.

    Love,
    Your dear DD.

     
  9. JustAni

    JustAni Silver IL'ite

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    :clap :clap :clap :clap

    That says it all!
     
  10. Oviya

    Oviya Silver IL'ite

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    Dear Gowri,

    Thanks a lot...

    Let us wait and see, how crowded the boat is going to be...

     

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