The Husband Syndrome

Living in a concrete urban jungle like Bombay, it’s usually difficult to sight or appreciate the wonders of natural wildlife. Lions, tigers, rhinos and most other wondrous animals of the wild remain limited to NatGeo or annuals treks to the zoo. Save one creature that roams the city quite freely in its many avatars, amusing and amazing the populace, especially single women with their deft disguises — the chameleon aka the modern-day husband! These men range from the charmingly chatty to the dangerously flirtatious and a single girl needs all her wits about her to suss the different types out especially as they all uniformly morph into dutiful yes-dear hubbies in the presence of their wives.

First there are the kosher male friends. These are the guys one has done countless lunches, dinners, home decorating and even pet-shopping with when both were single. And then this guy gets married (usually to a woman on a very different wavelength of fun). And proceeds to get thoroughly pussy-whipped! The same guy who would be sitting in your house till 4am watching movies will now call his fiancée to inform her of his whereabouts even if he is having a 4pm late lunch with you. Or probably not meet you at all until wifey dearest is out of town altogether! I’ve scratched my head many times at the unnecessary subterfuge. Despite no history of a romantic relationship or drunken hanky-panky these men will for some reason insist on underplaying their friendship with their female friends in front of their wives and drip awkward pleasantries if and when all three are together, like something long and sharp has been lodged in his posterior for three months!

Then there are the trickier ones; the married men on the lookout. First come the cowards who are happy to just look and flex their charm muscle from time to time just to assure themselves that they can still snag a girl. Some water-cooler flirtation, Facebook solicitation and a meal or two is enough to whet their vicarious pleasures.

Most of these guys are scared to death of their wives’ ire to actually do anything more and the possibility that she will throw a shitfit and put his home in jeopardy is enough to stop him in his tracks. It is no coincidence that most of these men are of modest means and status.

Because the minute you throw some power and prestige into this mix, you get the most dangerous and rampant species of all; the Hardened Husband. Ironically these men are often blessed with copious charm, armed with humourous trivia and know all the smooth moves to make a woman feel wanted. It helps that they come fitted with an über-elite Centurion Amex credit card! So one hand there are the duty-free diamonds n’ thongs for the girlfriend du jour, champagne and caviar dinners and steamy hotel room sex. And then on the other end of the spectrum there is the dutiful attendance at the wife’s jewellry exhibition, annual company dinners and family summer holidays in Monaco. These men have mastered the art of managing a busy schedule and dual lives, and remain unperturbed even in the rare occurrence that their twin worlds meet. The arm is auto-locked in the small of the wife’s back and the bland impersonal smile for the girlfriend is pasted in place. The former is largely ignorant and the latter either fed on some cock n’ bull story of him about to leave his wife or happy to be the designer arm candy as long as the credit line is rolling.

Earlier I used to be perturbed by this flagrant hypocrisy if not downright flabbergasted at these two-faced human Januses. I know better now. The plurality of the human heart is an unavoidable fact of life as is a certain amount of hypocrisy required to maintain the façade of any human relationships. I think that why my male married friend and I enjoyed our afternoon at the movies so much yesterday. After all, we'd just spent two hours watching the deliciously ironic tale of adultery and double-crossing called Married Life.