Who wears the pants!!

My significant half (Deepa) shoots a yan (yet another nag): "you should check if the toaster is really ON when you press the lever!" She means: we are delayed by another 1.5 minutes to office and that’s because of me. I sip the morning tea at leisure, as the clock chases the deadlines, the stress mounts, and my wife is directing the maid all over the house. I turn to the cartoon section and giggle quietly so as not to upset Deepa, who is already quite touchy. To be fair to her, she likes Calvin as much as I do, but not in the mornings. Well, after some hot words are exchanged, I reluctantly finish my morning ablutions (or skip them in extreme hostile conditions!) and proceed to kitchen. That is my territory!

I can do close to 16 variations of omelet, some innovative ones like chanterelle/salmon filling and some pricy ones, like a plain sunny side up with a hint of truffles. Deepa likes her omelets runny, melt in the mouth type with the aroma of Oregano taking you to hills as you bite into the double decked omelet burger! (I invented it recently). Before you think I am being immodest, you just need to tell me: how long you intend to stay awake and I’ll make a tea with real “character” to keep you awake for “exactly” that long! My friends still miss that character in their wife’s tea. Kitchen is like my battlefield, I can do twenty different things the same time and still serve you a piping hot breakfast on a clean sparkling white plate, taking full care of the presentation, colour, aroma, texture of the food and temperature of the drinks! I ensure that the kitchen is left cleaner than I found it! I can marshal the gods of gastronomy at will and cooking is like conducting a symphony. Pass me the baton, please, any time.

Even After eight years of marital bliss, my wife still can’t cook rice! She’s tried pressure cooker, electric rice cooker, Microwave, pan, yet no luck so far. Her “I’ll make rice” day is strictly a red/white wine day for us (red for burnt rice, white for half cooked). So we have come to a consensus, she takes care of the clothes (I can never fold a shirt correctly) and manages my loo cleaning schedules, besides making sure that our kitchen is adequately stocked up.

So what does this lucky lady do! Well! She writes software for a living, earns a salary as fat as my modest one (well, nearly…). But, she is a very good rock climber (5.12 feature last week!) and an avid mountaineer too. She is a long distance runner with a couple of half-marathons under her belt. She is a martial artist and has the standing record of 300 ab crunches at our local gym!

The traditional roles of women and men are changing, I guess! Not that I wouldn’t have liked a petite wife waiting for me at home and pressure cooker whistling its evening music! All I get is a wife who shouts “under-cut on right, overhead hold on left.c’mon you can do it”, while I suffer on a warm-up boulder…

Are the good ol’days of male glory over?