Column

After Effects

I knew all about Miranda-Escobedo from the Ed Mc Bain thrillers I devoured as a teenager. It’s the American police shorthand for two separate Supreme Court decisions, which together lay the ground rules for interrogation of suspects. In short, it’s something you often hear mouthed by cops in Hollywood films,“You’ve the right to remain silent and if you do answer questions, your answers may be used against you!”

Interestingly, most men discover soon after marriage that their wives already know about Miranda-Escobedo without reading American pulp fiction! That’s why hapless husbands slowly learn to keep their mouth shut before their missus! For, you never know what will be used against you!

Like, I’d blurted out to my wife in a moment of weakness that we’d watch ‘Aaja Nachle’ last weekend. But little did I expect Madhuri Dixit’s comeback flight to be grounded soon after take off because Mayawati reacted faster against the lyrics of a song than a series of bomb blasts in Uttar Pradesh! So I decided to keep my distance from the multiplex fearing a disrupted screening.

“But you promised,” protested my wife. I apologised and offered to read her a good book instead. But she laughed it off.

“By the time you find a book to read,” she said mockingly, “it would be banned!” I suggested going out for an ice-cream and she snapped, “By the time we reach the parlour it might be closed down because someone took offence to the swirls on an ice-cream saying it resembled some divine force! It happened with Burger King! Don’t you read the papers?”

So we spent the evening at home doing nothing. But just before I went to sleep, there was another slip of the tongue, “Getting offended is an interesting preoccupation,” I grumbled to myself. “Maybe I should make it my occupation!”

The next morning my wife asked me when I was starting out on my newfound profession. “You said it last night,” she pointed out. “Getting offended is easy, ensures fame and an opportunity to express your frustrations in life by damaging public property!”

Finally, I relented and looked for something to get offended. I didn’t have to look far. I found it in the Oxford Dictionary and promptly dashed off a letter to the publisher, “I am deeply offended by the word DEBONAIR, which hurts my surname sentiments and demand an apology and immediate withdrawal of the word from your dictionary!”