Of Wine and Women

No, I haven't been reading Steinbeck over the Xmas break. It's just that this post is dedicated to my dear pal, Mr. B, and the title sums up his problem in a nutshell.
I met Mr. B about five odd years ago, and ever since the day I met him, he's been on the hunt for a good desi damsel who would agree to spend the rest of her life with him. Several near hits with the dear Misses later, B is still single and searching.
"So, what's the problem," I queried last week when B asked me to help him choose a flattering mug shot to go with his shaadi.com advert. "How come you're still searching? Tumhe koi ladki pasand nahi karti ya tumko koi pasand nahi aati?" I pestered even though I knew the answer to my question already. B's lonely bed was indeed of his own making. Common sense told me there was no way any of the prospective brides had rejected him. You see, Mr. B is eligibility personified.
"I'm so frustrated Maggi," whined B. "All the girls I've met so far are soooo childish and naive. Wish I could meet someone like you."
"What d'you mean, someone like me?" I countered. "Well, you know, bold and beautiful, cold and cut-throat, fiesty and funny, sexy and smart," was his comeback. "Ahem..." I parried wondering if B had taken to drink to fill up his lonely evenings. Here I am, a harried woman in her 30s, much-married and with kid, living a humdrum existence in slumber inducing suburbia. Why had B used all those epithets to describe me, I wondered. Then I got it. Maybe he was just pulling my leg and it would not do if he saw that his words had quickened my heartbeats just a wee bit. "Yeah right!" said I nonchalantly. "I'm serious, Maggi. I like how grounded you are. There is an aura of complete control about you. Don't you realize that? It is very apparent when one talks to you that you lead a very complete life," said B.
That night I pondered over B's comments. Soon I realized that he was right. Ok, before you think I'm being a pompous ass, let me clarify. What I realized is that I am much more confident of myself and my abilities now than I ever was before. Even though I complain and whine and drone about the mundaneness of my existence, B is right. I do lead a complete life; I am married, I have a child, I work full-time, and despite all my commitments I find time to socialize with my buddies over the weekends. I cook reasonably well, entertain often, am a fairly decent housekeeper and manage to find time to read, write, sew and craft.
I'm at a stage in my life where I know what I want and I'm not afraid of my wants. I'm Indian enough to like eating with my hands and American enough to not care about what others think when they see me eat with my hands. I'm traditional enough to eschew make-up and New Age modern enough to know that my choices are good for me. I'm ebullient enough to attend every social do I am invited to but the loner in me loves to turn the ringers off once I get home at night lest the phones ring. I'm pragmatic enough to know that I am not beautiful enough to win the Miss Universe title but I'm smart enough to know that when I wear my black kanjivaram saree, leave my hair open and don my million watt smile, I can make some heads turn. Yes, Mr. B, I now know why you would like to marry a woman like me. The million dollar question is, though, would you have wanted to marry a girl like me had you met me 15 years ago, instead of five?
MOH will vouch for the fact that yesteryears' Maggi and and today's Ms. Maggi are as different as from each other as cheese is from chai. When he married me, I was a flighty kid with unformed dreams and a don't-really-care attitude. I'd never left the confines of my parents' home and like the frog in the well, I believed that the whole world was just like Mumbai and all humans were like Mumbaikars. I guess I was haunted by the ghosts of some sadak chaap Romeo in Mumbai the night I came back home and yelled at MOH and his friends for having the Customer Service clerk at Sears page me by announcing my name since I thought that people at the store would now know my name. Now I want the whole world to know who I am. I drive around in a red coupe that is proudly registered as Ms.Maggi. Then there was the infamous fight I had with MOH when after four weeks of marriage we had to move from the Midwest to the Southwest. We were packing up the stuff from our tiny apartment and I flew off the handle when I saw that MOH had used an carton that had Always Ultra written on it to hold his CD collection. "Now the movers will know that I use Always Ultra when I get my period," I whined mortified, when MOH wondered why I wanted him to throw away a perfectly good brown box. Little did I know then that three years down the line I would be have a whole class of nursing students watching me writhe and heave as I tried to give birth to the brat. Yes, I have come a long way since then.
So, Mr. B, no Indian girl in her early 20s, however stupendous her qualifications or liberal her upbringing, can have the sassiness of this 30-something wife and mother and teacher. Girls, like good wine, must be allowed to age before they can become women!