Not just good friends

He is a confidante, good friend, philosopher and guide; and he is not your spouse

He gets to hear the most intimate of your secrets — how you wish your mom-in-law must go and stay with your bro-in-law, how your husband refuses to grow up and depends on you even for the smallest chore, how that sticky and flirtatious colleague makes your skin burn and how you sometimes wish you never had a kid.

More often than not you steal an hour after work just to talk to him and it has become a habit to call him two minutes after your boss has screamed on you.

Sorry he is not your husband or boyfriend. You call him a ‘very good friend’ and you will never miss his call on your mobile even when your husband’s waiting on the other line.

“I would lie if I say that we are just good friends. I would also lie if I tell you that I am head over heels in love with him. He somewhere there and the very feeling that he is there gets me going. No we have never been to bed,” a 29-year would perhaps say about her ‘boyfriend’.

Don't make a mistake, she is ‘happily’ married with a kid for the last eight years and insists that her husband is very much aware of “this guy” that she is “absolutely not dating”.

“May be it’s love. May be it’s not. May be he is a punching bag for me. But I can bunk a dinner date with my husband to spend an hour with him after a stressful day at work,” she mutters under her breadth.

Accept it or not, it’s a threesome relationship. And it’s very much in the mind and heart. Somewhere down the line, this third person is ‘the sensitive one’ that you always wanted to have in your life.

“I generally not think about her so much. Because she is always there. Always there to pick up my calls even if she’s in the middle of a meeting. I have taken her for granted and she doesn’t have a problem with that. I saw the difference it made to my life when she had gone out of station for a month as she was shooting a documentary. I was like…uff when are you coming back yaar!” says a 29-year old 'male'in a hushed tone.

Of course, the guy has a two-year old child and a ‘lovely’ wife who tends to “get on his nerves” at times.

This is how the third factor three works for you. Silenty but surely.

Factor three helps to turn your wince into a wink. And factor three helps you blush in the middle of Bandstand when he says, all of a sudden, that you are looking good in a sari.

Just curious?

A low double bed with a crumpled bed-sheet with the mattress peeking out from one corner. Four pillows strewn all over. A pack of condoms, undergarments, two tees are lying in the nook across.

Enter, Mrs Ramamoorthy, the snoopy neighbour who’s on the wrong side of forty.

Now Mrs Ramamoorthy makes it a point to trespass into the apartment house at least one day in a week. The official reason to barge into the flat is the ‘sudden’ need of a cup of milk for tea.

The real reason? Some gossip to spice up her boring afternoon congregation of housewives at the children’s park.

Now this is what Ramamoorthy told her ‘friends’ at the park.

Day 1:

“You know na? These days kids make a show of everything. You tell me, what’s the use of living together when you can very well get married? I was telling my husband the other day that we didn’t make a show that we are having it when we get married (she doesn’t have it now, of course)…. Uff! Everything that these kids can think about is nothing but sex. And sex (she makes her eyes roll). My god! I am sure that they are into tying up and all. Know what, (she gently pats her saheli) They are doing it all the time! God you know what! I can even hear her moaning at the dead of the night…(a one-minute snack break)…. The other day, I even saw him caressing her in the living room. I tried to attract their attention by tapping my feet and clearing my throat, but who listens to me? My god! That you are living together doesn’t mean that you will have to make a show of it all the time”.

The conversation goes on punctuated with some heavy sighs and the regulation interjection of ‘Hai Ishwara!’ with an unmistakable tinge of frustration.

Day 365:

The same couple have got married. And Mrs Ramamoorthy was a special invitee to the marriage. She gave the bride a ‘costly’ saree of Rs 1200 and parked herself with her kids at the couple’s apartment for the three days. Post the wedding, Mrs Ramamoorthy hasn’t forgotten her sly morning trips for milk.

The scene is the same at seven in the morning. Crumpled bedsheet and pillows strewn everywhere the bedroom. But this was what Mrs Ramamoorthy had to tell her friends the following afternoon.

“I tell my kids that I will never let you marry when you are in your thirties…Look at the way they keep the house. The pillows are scattered everywhere, don’t they guys have the time to even make the bed properly? I can understand that they both have to reach office early in the morning but this is also no way to run a house. The girl has not learnt anything from her mother, I say. They are perfect example how a marriage shouldn’t be. I plan to sit with the girl and train her how to make a bed.”

You can’t miss the obvious sarcasm in her tone and of course, her voice speaks of loads of confidence.

After all, Mrs Ramamoorthy is a better housewife.

Thrice as nice

You could never miss the queer style of walking when Kalpita strutted around the office corridor with a heavy file clutched closely to her large bosom. Her shapely buttocks swung from side to side as she took a step. But there were days when it used to be stiff.

Those were days, we were told by the office gossip collector, when she used to fight with her husbands. It always used to be a fun bet to guess with whom she fought with that day. I had also won a few one of them.

The girl’s name has been changed all right but the plural of the word husband is not a typographical error. Kalps (as we called her) is married twice with no divorces in between. She was quite candid about it and she claimed that she loved both of them equally.

“One my husbands is a merchant navy officer and the other is an out-of-station journo. They are both aware of my ‘marital status’ and they don’t have a problem. There are times when both of them are in town at the same time. These are best of days,” smiled Kalpita.

In India, Kalps is a criminal. The Indian uniform civil code makes it a criminal offence to cohabit or get married twice without a divorce. She has, till date, managed to register both the marriages and continues to eschew the law of the land. For Kalps, it was a matter of the heart. She claimed that she is so much in love with both her husbands that it would be criminal to imagine her life without both of them. If you fall in love once. Why can’t it happen twice and simultaneously? It can, of course.

“Our Indian mindset tells us that we need to be a one-man or a one-woman person. More so, if you are married. The moment you meet another attractive person in your life, your mind tells you that it’s not right. Have you ever thought that what will happen if you ever let your heart go?” 'R' asks.

'R' claims to know at least three such ‘couples’ who are in a relationship with two people at the same time. “We are not talking about sex here. We are talking about falling in love and marriage, which is a long-term relationship. And there are people who are getting into it and they have no pangs of conscience about it,” 'R' adds.

Wait! Before you jerk off that guilt feeling about fantacising a relationship with that sweety cutie office colleague of yours, here’s a flip side to a three-some relationship.

“You have to be extremely careful in maintaining a fine balance with both the guys. When you say that you love both of them equally, you have to mean it. You cannot afford play games and take both of them for granted.

Otherwise, you will lose one of them. But if you kinda be honest to both the guys, it’s an extremely satisfying relationship at the end of the day,” that was what Kalps told over one of those treasured coffee moments at the office canteen.

There are better three-in-one situations of course, when one of the guys is a gay and both the woman and the guy end up loving a guy.

But then, that’s a different story!

Twice as nice

It's a strange feeling. It makes you uncomfortable in your office seat when that long lost ex-boyfriend of yours suddenly pops up on your chat screen to say hi. You steal a furtive glance over your shoulder to see if that always-interested-in-gossip colleague is around.

And then…you reply to that message.

"Come on! It's just a simple hi," you tell yourself as your fingers instinctively start tapping on the keyboard.

"Hi"

"So what are u up 2 these days?"

"Nothin. You tell me"

The conversation goes on. Every time your finger tries hitting the log-off button, somebody pulls you back. You don't talk after a while. But you do after a while.

Secretly keeping in touch with your ex is something that some people just can't resist. No matter, whether or not they have parted ways on good terms.

"Me and my ex had parted ways on good terms. Things worsened when I started seeing another guy. He just couldn't take that. We had a very bitter fight before finally we called it off. That was about a year back. Two months back, I got engaged to a guy," says 24-year old ‘N’, who's into media sales.

But ‘N’ wasn't prepared for what happened next. Two months ago, she found herself talking to her ex once again.

"Yes we are in touch. He calls once in a while to ask me how I am. I know if I need him he will always be there for me. Of course, I have not told this to my would-be husband," ‘N’ adds.

Twenty six-year-old ‘I’ doesn't mind chatting with her boyfriend "once in a while".

"He is in the US and he won't be able to disrupt my relationship with my boyfriend. My boyfriend does get upset when I tell him that I had an hour-long chat with my ex. But I don't mind it. I cannot deny the fact that we shared a meaningful relationship and I guess a part of me will always love him," ‘I’ says.

Guys are more secretive about keeping in touch with his ex. Most men, given a chance, will always like keeping in touch with his ex. A section of women on the other hand, will never give their ex a chance.

More so, if they have parted ways on a bad note.

"Men are multi-directional by nature. They can fall in love with more than one woman at the same time. So keeping in touch with their ex will be an instinctive thing for them. Women will at least think twice before renewing ties with their ex or at least they will come clean in front of their boyfriends or husbands."

Some men who still choose to keep in touch with their ex, can't help but agree.

"I know my wife will never be able to take it if I tell her that I am touch with my ex. So to keep things quiet at home I have never told her that we are in touch. After all, we are not having an affair," says ‘P’, an accountant.

"We are not having an affair," this is how you justify it to yourself. The truth is, keeping in touch with your ex is something that you can do without.

Then why?

Well, it's a question with too many answers.

Just as nice

There’s a queer, familiar smell of every city in India. Be it Mumbai, Delhi or a Kolkata— the familiar smell waits to greet you as you get out of the plane. This might sound a little perverse but I have developed a strange habit of smelling each city. All this was fine till one day.
It was the day when I stepped out of a Royal Druk Airlines flight into Paro. As I started walking on the airport tarmac, I instinctively took a deep breadth.
Nothing but fresh air.
“Can’t be,” I muttered under my breadth.
I stood there. Still. And took a deep breadth again.
Nothing but thin air.
I realized that I had only been touring India. And hitherto, my foreign travel itinerary had only taken me to Dubai and Dhaka. Bhutan was different. The city doesn’t smell at all!


Back then (well, that was about six months back) only the Royal Druk Airlines used to connect Bhutan and Kolkata. There are of course other modes of travel like taking your car till Phuntsholling through north Bengal but taking a plane to Paro is the most comfortable and abrupt way to reach the country. I am deliberately using the word ‘abrupt’ because you require at least half an hour to adjust to a no air-pollution zone. For my part, I dozed off.
I can’t call that a sleep of course. The early morning flight and the drinking session with my friends the previous night had taken its toll. As I struggled to keep my eyes open, the Maruti Omni taxi took me off for Thimphu from Paro airport. It was a partly smooth, partly bumpy two-hour ride through a meandering road cutting through hills. I remember opening my eyes for some lovely views from the top. But that was the most peaceful sleep I had after years. It all seemed like a dream.

The journey cost me just Rs 600 and a realization. In Bhutan, the taxis are all Maruti Omnis. It seemed strange at first but my ever-smiling-ever-shy driver told me that is the most pocket-friendly vehicle in the country. The taxis were clean like the country and all of them had a music system fitted in the cabin. Some even treasured a Phil Collins or a John Denver album. They listen to these songs apart from the indigenous Bhutani albums that are churned out regularly from the local artistes.

My tryst with Thimphu was interesting. I drank and sang along the Bhutanese men in a make-shift garage-turned-pub where they were signing along a Spice Girls number. The song was not important, drinking and having fun was more important. The average Bhutanese men, I found, drank and made merry every night. The good part about Thimphu is that it is such a small town that every man knows about the other man. They will even tell you the gossip like that man living on the other end of the town is a next door neighbour. After all, the other end of the town is just a two-hour walk!

Paro is a sleepy hamlet. You can cover the entire town on foot in two hours flat. Me and my partner decided to stay at a cottage perched on a hilltop. As I looked out from my verandah, Paro looked like a dream, partly covered under a speck of white cloud and partly sunny. Believe me or not, you can cover the whole city on foot just in an hour!
The shops in the Paro are hardly open till eight. That’s like late-night for the sleepy hamlet. My partner could manage a huge Bhutani mask carved out of a single wood for Rs 900. The shopkeepers, a Bhutani middle-aged women was not interested to sell it to me. None of them are for that matter. They never bargain with you or push their product. You offer a price. If they like it they give it to you and if they don’t like it, they just shake their head from side to side in negation. Paro was like a little advanced hilly village full of colourful people in their traditional costumes. Trust me, everybody wears them. The men can be seen handsomely trotting wearing the ‘gho’ which is a ankle-length Scottish kilt and the women will wear a ‘Kira’ which is, in some ways, an improved version of a kimono.

The women slogged all day and except for driving trucks, they can be seen doing everything. They are even there to be bellboys in hotels and lift your heavy suitcase with ease with one hand. Talking about women, they are really beautiful and smart! Whatever you ask them, they greet you with a smile which, in most of the times, used to be the answer. Never mind the question!

Liquor in Thimphu was cheap and the traditional food was not that good for an average Indian palate which is more used spice and chilly. I remember the red rice and a shredded beef that tasted really good with their traditional local liquor made out of rice bran. You get lots of good beef, good mutton and chicken. It will be tough for you there if you are vegetarian. But you will manage, trust me.

If you want planning a proper “tour” then please don’t go to Bhutan. Bhutan will get you whatever you miss in Bombay—proper sleep, lots of leisure, a noiseless evening and…a dead cellphone.