Kishore Singh: Consensually challenged

Sssh,” my wife whispered to me, which was strange considering there was no one else in the house, “you must never, ever tell anyone this” — even though she herself had just got off the phone with various members of the clan to share what appeared to be the secret she was now bent upon disseminating to me. “Cross my heart,” I whispered back solemnly, for though I might appear disinterested, I enjoy my in-laws’ waywardnesses, and anything that affects them is a source of curiosity to me. Besides, if my wife wanted to throw open the cupboard with the family skeletons, who was I to discourage her?

It all started a few days ago when a cousin-in-law, who had become estranged some years back because of a disagreement about whose original recipe for bread pudding was now the family recipe, called to ask my wife if she still had her scrawled notes for charlotte pudding. “It was my recipe, stupid,” my wife told her. “I was the one who copied it for you,” insisted her cousin. “Anyway, I make it better,” argued my wife. “Not according to my husband,” spat out her cousin, and in a matter of moments they’d overcome years of sulking and were back to a consensual sparring relationship.

“Gosh, I missed you,” my wife said to her cousin, and spent the next seven hours talking to her on the phone, the cook serving her tea, then lunch, and finally dinner, by the telephone side.

I couldn’t hear what her cousin was saying, but my wife ran through the entire tribe’s recent history that cannot, alas, be repeated in a family newspaper, suffice it to say several generations of flawed relationships were witheringly shredded.

Nor was that the only time she spent on the phone, for no sooner was she through with her talkathon, she was back, after a loo-break, to tell her other cousins, scattered across the globe, what a member of their kin had to say about them, creating a debate that had nothing consensual about it. “I can’t wait to tell you what she thinks of your wife’s behaviour,” she said to one, before putting the call on hold to tell another, “You’ll never imagine what she said about you,” and what with shared snatches of conversation punctuated by several “Can you believe its?” that I caught as I dozed fitfully, I was woozy with sleep by the morning, which is when my wife cradled the phone closer, slid more comfortably into her chair, and called back her cousin to fill her in on the abominable things the others were now saying about her. By the time I left for work, she’d only got to the part where one thought she was a control-freak, and another that she was a penny-pinching shrew. My only regret was that all the juicy bits would be spilled only after I had gone.

In the evening, finding my wife free of telephonic encumbrances, I was hardly surprised to learn that she and her cousin had had a falling out over who said what to whom, thus foreswearing not to talk to each other for the next two years. “Tut-tut, you poor thing,” I pretended to commiserate, while secretly relieved that at least my telephone bills would not scald my savings, “But why did she break her silence to call you after all these years?” “To complain about the flirtatious relationship her son is having with some girl he’s met,” my wife reported. “As long as it’s consensual,” I pointed out, “I don’t see how it’s any business of your cousin.” “How can any relationship of his be consensual,” my wife tarried, “without the approval of his mother?”