Austerity & posterity

Husbands should not be permitted to sit at home – it creates a crisis worse than war. Kamala was livid, because I had decided to follow the austerity measures suggested for all patriotic Indians. I was going to sit at home behind closed doors, until Hormuz Strait was open again. The bitter half just wanted her territory free from invasion by the male of the species, for a few hours every day.

To add to the confusion, our household help Hamsadhwani had also decided to work from home. As a consequence, our work, at our home, had been piling up for several days. Among the chaotic consequences of Iran war in our little home, I was recruited to moonlight as the maid, until things returned to normal.

After the laundry and the vessels were done, I started chopping up onions in an attempt to curry favour with the wife. She had decided that we were going to have one meal a day, in order to save fuel. “It’s good for health and good for the country,” she declared fervently, combining intermittent fasting and virtue signalling in one neat move. I nodded my head meekly. It was the least I could do, since her long-planned foreign vacation this summer and her gold shopping for a family wedding, had both been cancelled unceremoniously. As my weight and the rupee value to the dollar had both hit 95 recently, it did make sense to undertake these austerity measures. After all, CMs were cycling to work, autorickshaw drivers were walking with you to your destination, and policemen were working from home – because traffic and crime were both waiting for the war to finish.

I tried calling Plumber Padmanabha because our kitchen sink was leaking like the NEET exam papers. He recommended the ostrich approach, where if you pretend it’s not leaking, the problem will go away. He further suggested that I tap into my latent talent to handle leaks with equanimity, just like NTA does. Going even further, I made up my mind to be like the Monk Who Sold His Maruti – since the car, like my life, was not going anywhere. Alongside, we also doomscrolled social media, by turns watching doomsday prophets predict disaster, and divas in designer outfits and heritage jewellery walk the ramp at Met Gala and Cannes. Austerity could be postponed there – for posterity’s sake.

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