The Eleven Balloons!!

I was busy reading my novel when Ritu suddenly interrupted me.

"Again you started reading your book, cant you get some time to talk to your wife, you and your books are just too much". her stern voice commanded an explanation from me.

 Ritu and I were married just few months back and were on our way to visit her maternal relatives for some ritual where in we have to visit for lunch. In first place I was tired of attending these ritual from past couple of weeks and secondly the place we were going was some where in a remote place from Chiplun. And too worsen my woes I had to travel from the state transport bus, thanks to the breakdown of my beloved car. I was already pissed with the too comfortable ride that I was taking from last 30 minutes and hence to divert my mind preferred reading my favorite novel.

"Ritu! I need to complete this book before we leave for Mumbai you know how hectic it gets once the office starts, I wont be able to read it then and I'm already tired from this traveling, can't we talk once we reach" I pleaded.

"What, you are tired of, talking to me, what about me? you never have time for me" she argued, somewhat getting annoyed with me now.

I tried to calm her down by giving some logical reasoning, but you know once you offend a lady and that too your wife it gets difficult to get her back on right track so easily. 

"Fine you continue with your treasured novel I'm not going to talk to you anymore throughout this journey" saying this she got up and took a seat few blocks behind from where I was sitting. The bus was almost half vacant so getting a seat was not such a big deal. 

I knew her well, she would calm down after few minutes and come back to me on her own. But to avoid further elevation in her temper I closed the book and started observing things around. I noticed an old man may be in his 60's sitting on seat next to mine he was well dressed clean shaved and interestingly he was carrying lot of balloons along with him which got my attention. One thing peculiar about those balloons was, they had smiley on them. Curiosity got better of me and I couldn't resist myself from asking him, hence curiously I asked.

"Nice! balloons are you carrying it for your grandchildren?"

"No! not for my grandchildren but for my wife!" he replied with a smile on his face.

"For your wife! why?, its her birthday or does she like them so much?" I queried.

"Actually whenever she gets angry on me for any reason, this is the only way I say sorry to her, all that I need to do is get her 11 balloons with smiley on each one of them and a sorry card to compliment them" he responded.

"Well that's so nice but I guess they are more than 11 if I'm not wrong" I questioned.

To which he smiled and replied "Yes actually by the time I reach, some of them burst, and if she sees less than 11 than I have to come back next day to get them again, so its better to be safe than sorry".

"Yes you are right, but its such an easy way to persuade a lady you're lucky to get such a wife" I smirked.

"No not so easy, you know I have to travel 20 Kms to get these balloons from that Bharni Naka" he responded to my smirking.

 "But why is she angry on you, what did you do" I queried.

"Well nothing serious, she gets annoyed on me for any small reason, like yesterday she got annoyed because we couldn't decide the color of the commode. Now tell me is this reason sufficient for argument, how does it matter which colour commode you have white or red, as far as it serves its purpose" he said mockingly.

Even I had a smile after listening to this weird reason for the tiff between him and his wife.

He continued "You know she keeps getting annoyed with me for simplest of reasons, just as your wife got annoyed because, you were busy reading the novel and not talking to her. But that's how these women are, all they need is your company and someone to listen to them and when we don't understand their such simple needs, its obvious their temper will rise, isn't it"

I nodded to what he said, I was getting his point, it did made sense. But I was eager to listen to him, his talks were interesting and his way of portraying them was even more significant.

"After 30 years of marriage still we keep fighting on petty issues, then we try to persuade each other by doing these simple things, like me getting these balloons for her and she makes my favorite sweet dish Gajar ka Halwa for me, till now we have had fights on all the weirdest topics possible, right from which side on the bed I should sleep, to me sneezing" he completed his sentence with a comic expression on his face.

"What fight on sneezing? that sounds interesting" I interrupted him.

"Yes on sneezing, you know what happened I was drawing mehndi design on her hand and suddenly I sneezed, now its a natural phenomena what could I do, but due to it the mehndi design somewhat got altered, that's it she got annoyed!" he continued with his story.

"And then" I queried eager to know, getting involved in this animated talk.

"Then next morning when I got up, I had a red nose! she had applied mehndi to it previous night. Now imagine I had a important meeting that day, and even if I didn't had any meeting, how was I suppose to go to office with a red nose. It took a month for it to get back to normal" he finished and bursted into laughter.

Even I couldn't contain my laughter and even I joined him.

"So do you need one of these balloons to persuade your wife, but you will only get one" he teased me pointing to my still upset wife.

"No thank you so much, I will get, her favorite chocolate when we get down from the bus that should be enough to get a smile back on her face" I replied to his generous offer.

Suddenly the bus stopped and I realized it had reached its final destination, the conversation with that jolly old man made the whole journey an interesting one. That old man got down along with those balloons and headed away. I was about to get up from my seat when I noticed he had forgotten his sorry card on his seat. I took it told Ritu to wait for me near the rickshaw stand and went behind him to hand it over to him.

I followed him, he kept walking for some time and then entered a gate, from outside it looked like a cemetery to me. I wondered what was he doing here, and to my shock I saw him seating in front of one of the gravestone. My heat sank, his wife was no more, she had died a year back, which was evident to me from the name plate carved on the grave. I didn't wish to disturb him hence I left the card on a rock beside and left.

But this incident did touch me deep within, this old man in such a short journey thought me such a big and important lesson of my life. How often we take our own people for granted, time and moments are precious, once they pass by they never come back. As soon as I reached the bus depot I went to Ritu and handing her favorite chocolate and holding my ears I said sorry. She was surprised to this gesture of mine, she never expected this from me, with wide open eyes she asked me

"What happened, you OK Na?,"

To which I just smiled and said 

"I'm sorry dear I will see to it that next time onward no books when I'm travelling with you, now lets take the rickshaw and head to your uncle's place before we get too late for the lunch"

Holding her hand I walked towards the rickshaw, she was puzzled with such a sudden change in me, but was happy from within, and I was happy to see her happy and also to learn a lesson from an old man and the 11  balloons .

-Aditya Kasar (AK)

P.S: The story is inspired from one of the tales from the Bollywood movie Dus Kahaniyaan.

The images used are for representational purpose only and are property of rightful owners.