WOMEN’S BEST FRIEND DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

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            Have you ever realized!  How little it takes to annoy your wife.  Thank God!  for it takes far too little to bring a smile on her face.  A nice comment, a genuine compliment, an intelligently planned dinner and/or a movie date.  Once I took my wife for  a shopping spree. She could manage to buy inter-Alia a jamawar sari she was  planning to procure since long. Shopping over, we returned home.  The booty was seen, touched and appreciated many times over.  She suddenly belched out a massive shriek.  I was taken aback.  In that fraction of a second so many thoughts flashed and disappeared in my mind.  Now what?  She informed “my diamond is missing from the ring” In next one hour entire house was ransacked upside down.  Things were turned and unturned several times over to look for that elusive diamond.  I must confess I was not affected half as much upon her losing the diamond.  What affected me more it had to happen today when she was so very happy happy. I got more affected by the way she was worked up and frantically going through things.  Every nook and corner of the rooms was mopped again and again.  No trace.  Bags, handbags, purse all combed, finely but no trace.

            Finally! I philosophically said “If it is in the house You need not worry.  You will find it all of a sudden lying in your (numerous) pouches or in any one of the (many) drawers.  If it is lost outside, don’t be sad for you can never locate it”.  It was a poor consolation.  Nonetheless, consolation it was.  Though she so very visibly looked unconvinced with my half hearted attempts to cheer her, it left me more miserable than her for loss of gold or diamond is considered a bad omen and an ominous interlude to imminent catastrophe.

                                                

            I retired for the day and went to bed.  Very soon I was lost in my sleep, my folks so often tease me about. My wife and daughters get amused and discuss among themselves.  A normal man’s countdown begins with ten before he is lost to the world and slides into sleep.  In my case the countdown is unnaturally and abnormally short rather too short.  It begins with three.  Three.... two ... one and gone, plunged deep in slumber.  My wife’s shriek of joy had me widely awake.  The way Archimedes had run out of his bath tub to announce to the world “Eureka...  Eureka...!”  She announced “I found it” I couldn’t believe it.  She looked at places which we, at least I could not have imagined. She called for all the garbage bags from the block’s garbage bin.  Driven by her gut feeling - may be while chopping vegetables and peeling salad it might have just come out from the already loose socket of her ring.  Earlier, she had regretted why she didn’t pay required heed when our daughter  pointing to loose socket cautioned her against wearing it.  So the garbage bags were searched... re-searched and combed with a real fine comb along with Dinu -- our domestic help.

            It was only in the ‘third search’ she could locate the diamond in the garbage along with the skins of vegetables peeled by her.  She  proved two points.  One, she proved me wrong.  The diamond was neither discovered in the house... nor exactly outside.  The diamond could have been retrieved that night only as otherwise by morning the garbage would have been moved out and diamond lost forever.  Two, she proved 'diamonds are forever' and continue to be woman’s best friend.