To marry or not!

A man was walking down the beach. Isolated, nary a soul around. As he waddled down  he spotted a bottle with a cork.  Carefully, he took off the cork.  Poof!  Out came a genie. All of green skin and in pink harem pants with a lot of bling. Very metrosexual!  Happy at being rescued, the genie granted the man one wish.

The man said, “All my life I have had this fascination about visiting the moon.  It is difficult for us mortals to get there.  Please build a road which goes from the earth to the moon.”
The genie looked at him incredulously and indignantly. With consternation writ large on his face he exclaimed; “Do you even know what you asked for?? Do you understand the logistics and the engineering which would be needed? For heaven’s sake! Both rotate and revolve at the same time!! Ask for something else!!”

The man contemplated. Light dawned.  “I have been married for 20 years.  I have never understood women.  Please enlighten me!  WHAT do women want?”
Without batting an eyelid, the genie replied, “Do you want the road to be six lane or eight lane?”

The famous neurologist and founding father of psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, said “Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not yet been able to answer the great question that has never been answered: What does a woman want?”  I read this when I was very young.  As life progressed and I moved from early puberty to adolescence and then as a young adult, I kept an arm’s distance from the fairer, and allegedly, the weaker sex.  Weaker sex reminds me; I have an idea that the phrase "weaker sex" was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.

I had no intention of getting married.  My parents were exasperated. Little did I know that one day the thunderbolt would hit me, and that if I survived I would make the mistake which all men make. It happened.  

When I was about 28 years, I met this wonderful person.   Like the proverbial thunderbolt which hit Michael Corleoene, one hit me.  After a year of courtship, and a few months of being engaged, we got hitched. The only reason my wife agreed to marry me is because Amir Khan wasn’t around to propose to her. Little did I realize that wedding rings are the world's smallest handcuffs.
2014 we completed ten years of being together.  I can very safely report that I am in the same league as Freud.  I do not understand or can even begin to fathom what women want.

You would all have heard the famous adage, “Where there is a will, there is a way.  In a marriage, a man has his will; but the woman always has her way!! I am not sure how many of you are science graduates. I did my graduation in engineering and quantum physics was one of the pieces I learnt. Trust me when I say this. Marriage is way more complex than Quantum Physics.  Marriage is mutual misunderstanding. Man is a strange creature; woman stranger!!

I never knew I had so many vices till I got married. When I help with house hold chores the refrain is “You are making a mess”. When I don’t help  “You are not considerate”.  If I watch television, “you are wasting time” and when the wife watches “I am tired and I need to relax”. Right.  I go to work to while away my time.

My wife suggested a book for me to read to enhance our relationship. It’s titled, “Women are from Venus, Men are Wrong.  One day I told her I need more space; she locked me outside the house.  My uncle and aunt, who have been married for close to thirty five years now, were having a conversation sometime recently. My aunt said, "I want to be cremated at the ghats of the Ganges." Uncle immediately replied, "How about day after tomorrow?"

There are two options in a marriage. One can either be happy or one can be right.   For happy married life men must remember: when you are wrong confess immediately, when right keep quiet; absolutely quiet.  A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong. Always remember, in marriage you do not get parole for good behavior. The elders say that marriages are made in heaven. So obviously someone up there really doesn’t like us. Reflecting on that, if marriages are made in heaven, so too are thunder and lightning! 

Trust me, I do have a very happy marriage.  An oxymoron, but true nevertheless. I had read somewhere, that to be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all. So, my wife and I have an agreement.  I don’t try to run her life and I don’t try to run mine. I have learnt that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it. I am not a gambler, but I have satisfied my urge for it by getting married!

So, for all of you who are not married and are still single, you know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.  Marriage or to get married, you need money. Whenever you can afford to get married, buy yourself a sports car! Probably bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t, they’d be married too. That said, all you singletons, you have got to get married! You just can’t go through life enjoying yourself.  There are some people who claim that marriage interferes with romance. There’s no doubt about it. Ask any of the married folks. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere. But nevertheless, as the Greek Socrates said,  by all means, marry. If you have a marriage which you can manage, you'll be happy; if you get into a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.