Chi chi, and by that I don’t mean Govinda, what is our once great land coming to, I say?
Read with much sadness that when the Delhi police stopped a couple in a car for travelling without masks, apparently, the woman and her husband behaved in a most unsanskari manner with the law enforcement officers.
While the husband said, “Why did you stop my car? I was inside my car with my wife,” the woman — Shiva, Shiva — was heard saying “If I feel like it, I will kiss my husband. What will you do?”
That this comes in the wake of 15,000 cheques made out by our brothers and sisters towards the building of a great monument, amounting to approximately ₹22 crores, bouncing like stuntmen hit by Allu Arjun is doubly devastating.
Is this what we have worked so hard for? Is this our culture? Is this the citizenry that deserves a bullet train, the world’s tallest statue, windmills that can separate oxygen from hydrogen, Vedic internet, the extra 2ab in the (a + b)², Coronil, drought-reducing frog weddings, and a new movie from Akshay Kumar every three months?
In our pristine culture, when did wives, heaven forbid, start kissing husbands this way, I say? Even if they are their own. And that too in public? And declare it shamelessly to the law?
The job of wives, as we all know, is to wear 11-yard (inclusive of blouse piece) saris and stand demurely behind the doorway, one side of their faces illuminated by the flame from the kerosene stove making ginger tea for the father-in-law, mouths tightly shut, their eyes doing the talking. Provided they have helped the children with their Class 3 nuclear physics homework, packed them off to their virtual classrooms with a snack of Patanjali noodles in their tiffin boxes, pressed the mother-in-law’s swollen feet, politely brushed off the untoward advances of husband’s cousin from the neighbouring town, and made sure the husband’s shoes gleamed like mirrors before he went off to the club.
Women, please understand, 20 lakh buck-naked sadhus have dipped their body parts in the Ganga for the safety and well-being of our ancient nation. Before that, true patriots like the entire Bachchan family have taken time off from going to Maldives and clanged thalis, lit diyas and rung ghantis. All their prayers and efforts have been nullified by brazen mahilas like you who travel mask-free in their own cars, wear ripped jeans and speak of doing unspeakable things with their husbands.
What will NASA and UNESCO think of us? What will our overseas brothers and sisters from Palo Alto to Palookaville, upholders of ancient Indian values, say if they hear of this?
Don’t our women know that from time immemorial their desire, that terrible thing, is expressed by rubbing two flowers against each other and running away with a ‘Chi, you naughty,’ every time the husband bites his lower lip suggestively?
What books authored by Nehru are you all secretly reading, betis? Detox yourself by watching Ramanand Sagar’s old serial which is back on DD like a saviour from heaven. Don’t forget to have a cold bath from the water you’ve drawn from the well of your 3BHK.
A final suggestion to the sister who wanted to kiss her husband: repent, behen, round up other misled sisters, and make yourself useful to the nation. Form a nari posse, and unearth the names of those 15,000 cheque bouncers. Try and persuade them in our uniquely gentle Indian way that they should pay up. You can’t cheat God, you know.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist. He has written four books and edited an anthology.