Krishna, my room-mate and a good friend was hot property in the Brahmin matrimonial market but if you took one look at him, you would definitely think otherwise. Short, stout and geeky, he looked rather like a bespectacled cardboard box – even if I may say so at the risk of sounding bitchy. One conversation with him would convince you permanently that spectacles do not necessarily bear any association with intellectual prowess or even a remote affinity towards books and related objects. But you could say he was “well-read”, considering the towering stacks of Debonair and Vanity Fair that spilled over to all corners of our room. Here it is important to mention that in a situation like this, there is nothing better than being the only son (a much pampered one at that) of an industrialist and the heir to a multi-million worth Business Empire. The only irony was that Krishna wasn’t willing to let go of his eligible bachelor status and clung to it like a baby monkey clings to its mum.

It must be quite tough refusing the bevy of beauties who flung themselves all over him at the drop of a hat. What hat? They were more than willing to drop all they had on the floor, only to floor the most eligible bachelor in town. I could do no better than gape in wonderment, sigh wistfully and wish to be in his shoes, even if only for a day. Talking of shoes, did I forget to mention that his feet were so tiny that he had to get his shoes custom-made because most shops had his size only in the kid section- u know the squeaky variety with those irksome red lights and Velcro straps and ..and Barbie and batman motifs? Ughhh…the very thought of them can make any eligible bachelor and his eligible bride throw up in disgust. Well, after a lot of prodding and pushing, he did confide in me the reasons for giving a cold shoulder to what other men would have welcomed with a warm hug. “I don’t want to loose my freedom. I want to live life on my terms without the baggage of a woman and children, who are obviously part of the whole package. I hate women and I hate kids, really.” he candidly admitted over (and after) three pegs of whiskey on the rocks. He liked women only in the magazines, with bikinis or without them, but he obviously didn’t want one to fetch him tea in the morning or share his beloved tooth-brush mug- quite understandable, I thought.

You would think I was being plain jealous, considering the sabotaging in the first paragraph- but like all dark clouds, he too had a silver lining although it seemed rather faint amidst all the darkness (oops, I did it again!). He was really good with the paintbrush- an artist par excellence. Little did I know that he harbored ambitions of artistic fame which seemed to come in his way of settling into the comforts of domestic life?
“A painter’s only food is inspiration and only a woman can provide that”, he said philosophically, “but that woman is never a wife, remember?”

“Yeah, right”, I muttered looking at the empty boxes of pizzas and cola cans strewn around his bed.

College days were soon over and it was time to go our own separate ways and like most roomies we promised to be in touch. Daily phone calls and weekly outings gradually curtailed to one or twice a month until they dwindled out altogether. And then we had our class reunion, exactly four years from the convocation day.
“Hey dude! Long time. How’s it been?” he greeted me with a hug and a high-five, like the one we shared in college days.
“I’m doing absolutely fine and you seem to have lost loads of flab. You look great buddy,” I poked at his belly which had now morphed into a well- chiseled abdomen. It sort of embarrassed me because I had developed an awkward little paunch myself.
“Gee, thanks. Dad gifted me a home-gym for scoring pass marks,” trying not to sound too boastful.
“That’s anybody’s guess”, I replied sarcastically. At that point I couldn’t help but notice a pile of love-handles garnished with a furrowed neck looming up from behind him and wondered what (or who) it was. It couldn’t have been his mother for I vividly remembered her petite frame and this woman simply spilled out of my visual field. While I was attempting to frame an appropriate question, Krishna dragged the heap by the hand and blurted, “Darling, meet Aryan, we shared the same room. He’s a real pal!”. “Aryan, meet my wife.” The woman clumsily folded hands to greet me. Her teeth shone from between the tart red lip-stick but I could not make out anymore of her facial features because they were buried under layers of adipose and the glare from her enormous gold ornaments and heavily sequined magenta sari blinded me. I felt like a fish out of water- stuttering, stammering and gasping for breath while my friend stared reproachfully expecting me to say something as regular as “hello, nice to meet you”. His expectation however remained unfulfilled as he walked on to meet others ,leaving me standing there with my jaws agape till a house-fly strayed between them, thus snapping me out of my stupor.
That night, I roamed the hotel garden like a bat and was immensely surprised on finding a very melancholic Krishna reclining on a chair by the fountain. I walked up and stood beside him, wanting to provide an explanation for the impropriety of my behavior earlier that day. Before I could mutter out an apology, he caught me unawares, “I know what you must be thinking Aryan,” he said looking straight ahead to negate any possibility of an eye contact, “I know she’s on the not-so-pleasantly-plump side, but you really could have done without those grunts and snorts”.
I hung my head in shame but quickly recovered because curiosity had won the battle with embarrassment. “Don’t blame me dude, you took me by surprise. I thought you didn’t want to…I mean what finally drove you into it?” I asked anticipating a sensational story to unfold.
“A dog, a rabid one”, he replied flatly in a tone that made it seem like a regular everyday thing.
“Huh, what are you saying? Have you totally lost it?” I thought he was up to his usual bizarre self again.
“No really, had it not for that darned mongrel, I would have been as single today as you are.”
“This I would like to hear, what happened?”, something in my guts told me that I had asked an essay-type answer question so I parked my rear on a garden chair, leaned forward and cupped my face with the palms of my hands and waited for him to narrate the sordid saga of his matrimony, or should I say ‘martyrmony’.
“Soon after college, dad had been pestering me to start a factory of my own and I had to travel to outskirts of Guntur to look for a suitable plot. I had been scanning a particular piece of land, when this salivating mutt emerged out of nowhere and bared his fangs at me. It was as if the devil had chosen to come in person and drive me to my end.”
“And then…” I felt like a kid waiting for a fairy tale to end. Reality check: this was no fairy tale, there would be no prince and princess holding hands and walking into the sunset, no ‘happily ever after’ and I mellowed my tone to suit the context.

“I sprinted to escape those fangs and while on the run with the gnarling creature after me”, he continued, “this word “hydrophobia” flashed across my mind and I plunged into the nearest pond and stayed underneath till the cursed cur found something else to chase. As I regained my senses, I realized something bouncy underneath me. The cushiony object had actually made my fall more comfortable and I felt it up to guess what it was. Not slimy enough for a fish and not hard enough for a turtle. The thing moved and I heard a blood curdling scream. As a popped my weed covered head out of the water, I saw this enormous black boulder rise out of the water. My glasses had drowned and looking at it through the curtain of weeds, I was convinced that it was a low profile and rural version of the Loch Ness Monster. But it was screaming and I wondered why? I turned around to fumble out of the water, when I saw this crowd of people with air guns and bamboo sticks in their hand”.
“What makes you think you can get away with outraging the modesty of our women”, one of the burly ones barked. “Women? What women? I looked around dazed and saw that the Monster had actually morphed into a female form, a huge female form.
“You were trying to rape her, weren’t you?” another one accused me and the mob of fifty angrily nodded their turbaned heads. “You city slickers should be taught a lesson, and then you’ll know better than to molest our village belles.”
I stammered out an explanation which sounded lame even to me and to top it all, the rabid cur was nowhere to be seen. The villagers only growled in reply and dragged me out by the collar. The burly one kept me pinned to a tree while others animatedly discussed how I should be killed. I overheard phrases like “drown him right here”; “burn him alive”; “hang him from a tree” to which one replied “but that’s way too common”; “slice off his head and feed him to the vultures” and that was it- an affirmative chorus and the final judgment was made. The very thought of it made me shudder and I went cold all over.

“Uh uh”, I listened eagerly, urging him to continue.
“And then, this elderly, hunch-backed man appeared out of thin air and the crowd sliced in half to make way for him and they all bowed. I knew it had to be the village chief and before long, it dawned upon me that it was his beloved daughter I had pounced upon and felt up all over. I knew death was certain and there was no escape. I tried to offer monetary compensation but that only added fuel to the fire. “Do you think a woman’s modesty can be measured up with money?” the chief said, literally breathing into my face. I just apologized and focused at my feet and wished for the sky to collapse, an earthquake, a flood, anything! But Aryan, some things are worse than natural disasters. The chief told me I could be spared the death sentence only if I married the woman I had molested. I had to make an impromptu decision and I chose life over freedom. Next thing I knew, I was standing at the altar, by the holy fire.”

“Phew! So dramatic! Life’s not been fair on you man”, I laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder and for the first time in seven years of knowing him, I didn’t want to be in his shoes.

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