Column: Hooked by an ad

Hooked by an ad

To accomplish the daunting task of selling myself in the matrimonial market, I diligently tailored the matrimonial advertisement that eventually helped change my status to 'married'. For reasons that I had thought must be strange, my wife has kept the cutting of that advertisement in her bank locker.

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I had thought that she may be keeping it as a souvenir. On the contrary, I believe now that she has kept it as documentary arsenal to be used against me whenever she may wish to break free from the shackles of matrimony. To think that that small piece of hagiography that played an important role in initiating me into the relationship could possibly become an instrument to terminate it is not just ironic, but a downright weird quirk of fate.

When the coveted advertisement was carried by the newspaper, I was showered with accolades by prospective in-laws as most of them felt convinced that I was a man of very many letters.

My friends too lauded me for scripting a neat work of creative copy. I was expected to help them draft similar florid copy for their matrimonial advertisements. I missed at least half a dozen appointments with prospective wives while helping my friends draft their own creative copy.

And that, I believe, is where I faltered. Those three words ‘sense of humour’ have been flung at me with the regularity of an alarm clock all these years. My sense of humour is non-existent, I’m told, and in all these years she maintains, the blatant lie has been highlighted once too often.

The lady of the house never forgets to cite instance after instance where my sense of humour completely failed to, uh, humour her. The Oliverian circumstances of my life shaped my sense of humour that has a subaltern flavour opposed to her elitist wit. Would she realise, and acknowledge, that is precisely what makes some marriages a race to have the last laugh?