Dear reader, I cannot begin the new year with a lie, so let me tell you that I went to sleep not at the midnight hour, as I had promised, but at dawn, accompanied by a hangover, and full of guilt as I had office to attend (for which I was naturally late). And since I intend to be transparently honest this year, let me tell you that the blame for this lies not with me but with my wife. Our friends say that my wife and I operate like the good cop-bad cop of Hollywood movies, which might sound glamorous, but they are only trying to be insulting.
So, when a friend called to say we should spend New Year’s Eve at their house, my wife (the good cop) said she would first check with me (the bad cop). I mentioned that another friend had asked us to a party to which I had said we would come for a short while as we had our other friends to go to before midnight, even though I knew my wife would prefer to stay with the first lot where the food was likely to be better than at the second place. Once at Dinner Place #1, she refused to leave till the last meal of 2019 had been served and then told our hosts we had to go since I had stupidly promised to be elsewhere. And at Dinner Place #2, she complained that if I had not accepted the other invitation in the first place, we would not have been late. She good cop, me bad cop — you get the drift?
Even before, she’d placed the role of villainy at my doorstep when her friend Sarla wanted to know what we were doing for New Year’s. “She wants to come over,” my wife hissed at me. To Sarla, therefore, she said the following: “We’re going to Mauritius” one day; “We’re going to Goa” on another day; and “We’ll be in Bikaner” finally, before laying the whole fiasco at my doorstep: “We are not going anywhere because my husband has to go to work.” Catch the good cop (her), bad cop (me) routine?
At any rate, it was late that night (or early in the morning) when we got back from party number two to find that our children had decided to shift their bash to our home because some genuinely bad cops had busted their party. When we have visitors over, my wife pretends to be solicitous, so even though it wasn’t our party, she said to them, “What will you drink? Let me get you something to eat.” And she said to me, “Why are you hiding your good whisky, let these children enjoy it.” Adding, “And go see what you can warm up so they are not drinking on empty stomachs.”
And so I had some more to drink, and later, my wife said I was not a good influence on young people with all that party hopping and soaking it up like a sponge. I said I would turn a new leaf if she would allow me to be good cop instead of always being the bad one, and I hope this clears the confusion about who will be good cop-bad cop in our household in 2020.
 "The good cop-bad cop routine")
