It’s all foretold in the name

A friend who once wanted to create an intellectual aura about himself put his matchstick in his mouth and tried to light it with a cigarette. When we seemed not to notice, he pointed out to us how absent-minded he was. Adolescents often project such a philosopher’s image to impress their peer group, particularly the opposite sex. Being a teacher and an academic, my self-confessed claim of being dreamily neglectful of minutiae also sounds like a bit of a boast. However, the problem exists for me at great detriment to my self-esteem, but unlearning these unenviable lapses is easier said than done.

If compatibility could be defined by a scatter-brained duo, I am married to a commensurate partner. Wearing singles belonging to different pairs of shoes to work is second nature to him. So is wearing a sweater inside-out. Yet the muddle-headed pair who are often lovingly ridiculed in public are not so pleasantly outrageous when they have to encounter each other’s goof-ups seven days a week. For double the number of slip-ups mean starting from scratch twice in order to put things in place. I, particularly, am prone to the more potentially disastrous kinds of negligences. Making custard with besan and pakodas dipped in a batter of custard powder are among my more innocent offences. But the climactic episode was that of my husband having to rescue me in a state of violent burning of the eyes and face as I supposedly tried to wash some mehndi off my hair. What I had painstakingly soaked and nurtured as conditioner was not mehndi but a bowlful of granulated pepper that had to be washed clean off my eyes before I would stop screaming in pain.

Mutual recrimination and bitterness do not make things any smoother. The irony of it is that we both hail from families that are super efficient and organised. The rest of them are packed with competence and infallible workmanship. There is no scope for anything going wrong anywhere, which justifies their self-righteous contempt of us. It gave me vicious pleasure, therefore, to see my husband’s brother realise, while departing for Ahmedabad on a Sunday, that he had left his train ticket in his office. He had to go on a wild goose chase, first to retrieve his office key from the chowkidar’s house in Ghaziabad, and then the ticket. As if this were not revenge enough, he made it to New Delhi station in the nick of time to discover that the train was scheduled to leave from Old Delhi.

This disoriented state of inattention to detail that makes the journey of life rather bumpy for the likes of us, therefore, is probably because we are condemned by our very names to be victims of premature sen-ility.