IF WIFE IS TALLER?

                By virtue of my age I am often taken as an Agony Uncle and many people in our complex come to me with problems seeking quick fix solutions ignoring my pleas that I am neither a trained psychiatrist nor an expert psychologist.

                As Karl Marx said most of the problems are economic and so are the problems of my clientele. A joint family of three brothers earning different levels of income and waiting to go on their own ways after marriage wanted to know what should be their contribution for running the joint family. A simple solution in the ratio of their incomes is generally not acceptable to the one earning most. In a strange case the brothers agreed to the ratio that their parents spent on their education. The second brother  although less qualified but got a better job with more pay by virtue of passing a competitive examination benefited most and the other two surprisingly didn’t complain.

                The disparity of incomes of the husband and wife is a tricky issue and has many permutations. If the wife is not working and simply a domestic engineer the husband feels quite comfortable and has no problems in introducing his wife to his friends. If the husband is earning more than his working wife he moves in a different circle and feels uncomfortable with his wife around. He even squirms every time he takes her to a party or a social gathering involving his circle of friends. My efforts to convince the husband that a wife with a pay packet however small is better than a wife with no earnings didn’t wash with many husbands, even when I pointed out that the wife by dint of hard work may get promotions and even surpass him. At the same time they didn’t want their wives to resign and assume the role of a simple housewife. Some husbands want to eat the cake and have it too. In one case the wife resigned following my advice, acquired better qualification through school for distant education and finally landed in a job comparable to her husband’s and solved the domestic crisis.

                The case of the wife earning more than the husband is quite   complicated and sometimes defies a solution. Such a wife sports different clothes, starts using war paint, speaks a different jargon and moves in circles where even drinking a glass of wine is part of the norm. In higher circles not drinking the occasional glass of wine is even looked down. In such circles the husband becomes excess baggage to her and she faces a great dilemma whether to leave the husband at home or take him in tow and subject him to avoidable mental torture in an ambience in which he doesn’t fit. My advice to such husbands to burn some midnight oil and move ahead in life to achieve parity with his wife often fell on deaf ears. The husbands perpetually suffered from some complex and even started entertaining doubts about the faithfulness of their wives. Some people have an uncanny skill of inflicting misery on themselves and pressing self destruct buttons. Some even enjoy wallowing in misery of their own creation.

                The latest case had taken me by complete surprise. A couple to be approached me with worry written in capital letters all over their faces. The two families, friends for long fixed the marriage between the boy and girl when they were still young. The boy went to study abroad and the girl continued studies in India. They kept exchanging notes, had long chats on the internet and even sent their photos. When he returned the boy found to his great surprise that the girl was at least six inches taller than him. By then both found jobs with MNCs with comparable compensation package. Karl Marx had taken a back seat in their case and the boy and girl desperately wanted to get married. The only hitch was the disparity of heights. They didn’t seem to mind but all the ladies in the community made unsavoury comments to the effect that they would make an odd couple.

                I thought of a simple answer and asked the boy to wear six inches heels and the girl to wear flat sandals with no heels whatsoever. I hoped that my simple solution would reduce the chasm between them and they would live happily thereafter. The boy even after complying with my instructions looked no less miserable as he couldn’t think of wearing high heel shoes all the time even when at home. He also had apprehensions about the effects of this disparity in the bedroom. The friendly neighbourhood Andrologist’s counselling also didn’t help them.  When all my efforts to assuage his doubts failed I suggested an implant for which the boy   readily agreed, thinking that the implant would be somewhere below the knees. He expressed shock when I said that it would be in the head. I then told him of a Spanish Plastic Surgeon who invented a new method of increasing the height by implanting the requisite silicon between the head and the scalp. He is reported to have added up to six inches of height for his patients. When I showed him the news item the boy readily fixed an appointment with the Surgeon putting aside his doubts whether the implant would affect his intellect. Such is the force of love and the optimism of youth.

                  The girl and I wished him bon voyage today and are waiting for his return after a fortnight. I wonder how he will look with his scalp raised by six inches. My credibility as an Agony Uncle will take a beating if the results are not up to the satisfaction of the couple to be.