Holi wishes again to all of you, from a person who has checked into a hotel during Holi. I wanted to write on easy but useful topic - ‘how to spend one year doing nothing, still not let others know about it’; but changed my mind because something else happened.

First things first. Not liking Holi in North India is almost blasphemous. But, I have no childhood memories associated with Holi, having grown up in a small village in coastal Karnataka, and therefore my dislike can be understood. If you can’t understand it, think that I am retaliating against North Indians for discovering items like paneer dosa. That’s also equally blasphemous.

So when I told my husband that I wanted to take some rest during Holi, he readily agreed. He said ‘let’s check into a hotel’.

I said ‘why don’t we lock the door from outside and stay inside? We have two side doors and one back door and we can get out of the house through any of those’. I am the typical Indian with my ‘cheap and best' ideas and by staying inside house and thinking that I am in a five star hotel I thought I would become the epitome of eternal Indian cliche called ‘simple living , high thinking’.

My husband wouldn’t listen to any of these ideas and booked a room in a hotel. Now you know that my husband and I have some fundamental differences.

Sometimes my life becomes insufferable doing stressful things like getting up, going to clinic, eating healthy, exercising and smiling at people when all I want to do is to use my wand and say spells like ‘expellius’ or ‘disappearento' or something.

The root cause of all this is in my finger prints. I have one chakra in my hands. They say ‘Eka chakri, maha bhogi, and that means you can’t blame me for always wanting to be comfortable.

I belong to the school of thought that new clothes can solve almost all problems except some newly acquired problems like corona virus. So, every three months or so we go to a place called ‘Eastside’ for detox. 'Eastside' has stopped old fashioned way of luring people with 50% discounts or season end sales. They offer cards which give 20% discount on all the goods bought in the cardholder’s birthday month. The card is detected by phone number and a person can make different cards in the name of family members. The boy in the counter was after my husband for making new cards. I said ‘we shop here all the time. We can make cards at an interval of three months and get 20% discount whenever we come here.’

My husband said ‘but we don’t have anyone’s birthday in three months’.

I said ‘but how will they know?’

By then the boy chipped in ‘Ma’am, there are a few people who have twelve cards. There are a few who have 24 cards’. I liked this idea very much and decided to make cards for every month with random names and dates of birth because I believe in idea of ‘ Vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ and there must be some Soumya born on 4th april , Ayush on 5th May and so on. Moreover I thought it would be a charity, though towards a not so poor person called Matan Tata. A charity nevertheless.

By then my husband’s anger shot up and he said ‘that’s called fraud. I will not do any such fraud’. I tried to reason with him that this was not income tax return filing procedure, but just a shopping strategy. My son joined the conversation and said ‘mom, what’s wrong with you? You should be teaching us the right things’. My daughter did not pay attention to what was happening but had a rough idea that she would be benefited if she sided with me. So she kept quiet.

Things were out of hands now and I decided that I would take revenge against these Y chromosomes soon.

Once in the car I said ‘Look, we had a fight once and you had promised me that you would come home by 5.30 in the evening. You never kept that promise. According to me, that’s a fraud too. Now if someone asks me what you do, I will tell them that you do fraud’. My son said ‘mom, you don’t have to say that he does fraud. Just tell them he works in the university. They will understand.’

Now my husband realized that Y chromosome is not supporting him unconditionally, and agreed to come home by promised time. I told him that I would make 10 fake cards in his phone number if he doesn't.

My new target was my son. I am a fan of Kangana Ranaut. I picked up her ‘victim card’ and said ‘see, you took father’s side. I am so hurt. Now on I will not take any interest in cooking for you’. He said ‘mom, your food cannot get worse anymore than what it already tastes’. My card failed. Now I picked up ‘study card’. ‘look, it is also a fraud that you play minetest during the time allotted for studies’. The ‘study card’ always works on kids at all situations.My son understood the consequence of being selectively fraud sensitive.

Now we reached Kerala Café for our usual masala dosa. My daughter demanded for cold coffee with ice cream. ‘Make hay while the sun shines’ is my idea always. I said ‘you bring back your unfinished lunch box everyday. So you won’t get cold coffee today. Now on for every unfinished lunch box I will cancel one treat.’ She agreed.

Our house is like india. Everyone gets to speak, everyone thinks that he is bound by rules but none obeys.

I am considering my next visit to Eastside to make those ten cards.