A month into the relationship I insisted to my new boyfriend that he buy a new car, immediately. Two common friends of ours, office colleagues too, and also, like us, in a relationship, two years to be precise, a veteran sort of, and like us small towners experiencing the big city life, with hearts full of hopes and even bigger dreams, advised us that there was just one secret to making a relationship last long maybe for ever, but rather two, a non-compromising, non-negotiable bi-weekly all nighter at a premium quality Airbnb and a car.
The first was a no brainer. Madly in love, and wildly in lust, we both in our late thirties, thought nothing of splurging our collective hard earned money on our more than weekly bed warming exercises.
He had a blunt albeit apt word for such encounters: SEX.
Not that I minded. All I knew was that Akshat truly lived upto his name. Ever ready, his battery seemed always charged, and proved hugely successful in illuminating the dullest and most quotidian of days and nights.
Did I love that? Who wouldn't? Which girl in her right mind would ever turn her face (and other body parts) away from the blinding force of such high octane physicality and sheer unbridled sexual hunger as Akshat so shamelessly and ferociously displayed. Anyways, suffice to say that we had a gorgeous time gorging off one another.
All was well in our little paradise except for...
Yes, you guessed that right! Except for that somewhat ticklish issue of the car. Not that Akshat was disinclined to any contraption with four wheels. In fact it was he who insisted that we go from point A to Point B only on a car.
"Uber is really uber" he was wont to say once too often. Which at some point began to get my goat. "If you are so voluble about the positives of using a car then why don't you get one of your own.
His rejoinder to that was too simplistic. He said that owning a car was too much of a hazzle. How is that I would ask in all my innocence and he would respond to that with such nonchalance spouting such wisdom laden inanities as maintenance, parking, repair et al. All Greek and meant to make me feel like a fool.
And if I were to further probe him on that he would silence me off with a standard volley, delivered with his trademark smear that complimented an equally supercilious banal tone: YOU ARE TOO ANTAGONISTIC.
You are too antagonistic!!!! His secret arsenal, now longer a secret. Something that summarily extinguished all further discussions.
Yet long after we had parted for the day, his words were a hammer stroke that rammed against my eardrums ensuring long sleepless anxiety ridden nights. It was only much later that I discovered that there were other non-car issues, broader and much deeper that were acting as spokes in the wheel, threatening to tear asunder the fabric of our fledgling relationship.
Six months later, the arguing continued; only this time with an add on viz; his mother and sister.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
I’ve nothing against mothers and sisters, being myself possessed of one each.
But it rankles me no end when the man you are in love with and who you intend to spend the rest of your life brings up his ‘mom’ and ‘sis’ into every other conversation, especially and more so when it came to making life decisions such as buying a house, going on a couple vacation, choosing when and whether to have non-vegetarian food on certain days or not and so and so forth.
What took the cake was his insistence on not wanting to settle down for at least the next five years. Or until such time his dear divorced sister, blessed with three kids, walked down the aisle for the third time.
And to think, he had dropped this bombshell just after sex, and just before we were settling down for a few downers after filling our stomachs with the bestest, spiciest, most delicious chicken biryani I had eaten in my entire life.
Something snapped that instant; I called it quits.
A year on, my pride and joy, my very own two wheeler, clad in ocean blue, awaits her mistress as the two get ready to paint the town red, blue, or whatever colour that catches our fancy.
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