Kahin pe nigahen, kahin pe nishana

By the looks of it, it’s not easy being a woman, and a married one at that.

Some women have to deal with a spouse who drinks too much coffee and leaves the mugs lying around. Others put up with slothful husbands who don’t bother to remember the correct sequence of their wife’s first cousins.

Still others are married to men who suffer from selective hearing; who cannot discriminate between natural gifts and silicone implants; and cannot locate a gallon of milk in the refrigerator unless it jumps into their arms gasping, “Take me, take me!”

In mom’s case, she’s married to a man who is guilty of all the above and more. Dad not only brings his work home every night, he even goes to work on the weekends.

A paragon of perfection herself, mom finally put her foot down last week after dad walked in the door after dinnertime, as usual.

“That’s it!” she cried from the kitchen. “You better stay home this weekend and spend time with the kids before they forget you.”

Visibly contrite, dad reassured her that he would spend the entire Sunday at home. He even backed his promise with an impromptu hug. As mom melted in his arms and started composing a ‘honey-do’ list in her head, the kids walked in on this rare scene of intimacy by the pantry.

“Guess what?” exclaimed mom. “Appa’s not going to work on Sunday.”

“Yaay!” cried Kuki, trying to pry her parents apart.

“Well, duh, it’s Super Bowl Sunday,” shrugged Anu, masking his elation with nonchalance.

Before mom could reach for the kitchen knives to aim at dad, he beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom and stayed there until the coast was clear.

Mom woke up bright and early on Super Bowl Sunday and headed to the mall after cooking dinner for the week ahead. With nobody but dad’s credit card for company, she was determined to spend a large chunk of time and his money on herself.

Among the largely female population at the mall Sunday afternoon, mom was surprised to find a proliferation of desi couples holding hands and sauntering through the stores at a leisurely pace.

She saw an obedient desi husband at Macy’s waiting outside the fitting room while his wife entered with an armful of clothes and modeled them for him. He even clutched her purse without a trace of embarrassment.

Another guy had a protective arm around his woman as she inhaled bottles of fragrances and held them up for his inspection. There was even a giggly couple sitting with their heads together at the food court, sucking through a common straw and feeding each other forkfuls of noodles.

At last count, mom passed by the puppy store where a desi lass cooed over a fur ball and squealed, “Cho chweet!” while her companion gazed at her indulgently and slid an arm around her waist.

Somebody, please tell me, where can one find such men?