March 18, 2004

As I write this the Indo-Pakistan cricket series will be in full swing and I wonder if there are any other women like me who are thinking, “Oh God, not again.”

It’s that time again, when my husband r will wake up early on a Sunday so he can catch the pre-match festivities on any of the dozen sports channels he finds, thanks to the wonders of cable TV.

It is the only time of the year when he is actually sensitive to my fatigue. So I am not surprised if I hear him say, “Honey, come sit down and relax, you have been working non-stop for an hour now.” Before all you women swoon over how wonderful my husband is, let me just tell you that behind these seemingly sweet words is his more ulterior motive. What he really wants to say is, “Please turn off the *** vacuum cleaner because I can’t hear the commentary with that *** thing on.”

The one thing that comforts me is the fact that all men are like my husband. Every time his buddies come to watch the game with him, I am reminded of this reality. They can all watch the match for a good four or five hours in complete silence.

If any of my girl friends remains quiet through one commercial break when we get together to watch an episode of Will and Grace or Friends, the rest of us pounce on her to find out why she’s upset. Even if that means she will whine and wail for an hour and we end up missing Grace’s new hair style in the process.

But I have to give these men credit for one thing. For people who last saw the inside of a gym when they went to check out the aerobics instructor in college 15 years ago, they certainly are a robust bunch. They can talk to each other for hours about the unhealthy habits of our cricketers, all the while munching on dorritos and salsa.

“You’d think that by now they would have realized,”my husband tells me every time a player is run out, “the wonders a simple 40 minute walk can do for their fitness.” I would almost be convinced in the virtues of exercise, if he hadn’t called me two dozen times to change the channels for him, because we ran out of batteries for the remote control.

I am sure a lot of wives agree with me when I say that men are a confident species. My husband is so confident that he knows he can help his team out of a troubled situation if he concentrates hard enough. He knows that if things go bad, he can coach our team from our couch and it would help them win.

Sometimes, when our team is doing really badly and the phone rings, I almost think it’s the captain calling to ask for his advice. But at least men have a lousy memory. When Bobby died in NYPD Blue, I could not sleep or eat for a week.

Every time we lose a match, my husband rants and raves for a good five minutes before switching to some comedy channel to watch whatever sitcom is on air at that moment. Maybe that is why they have so many instant replays in cricket. Men forget everything and constantly need to be reminded.

I think the cricket season is that time of the year when women are most grateful to God for being women. We know that sportsis fun, but we don’t believe there’s a direct link between the size of our teams’ score and the size of our womanhood. We know that it is great if we know terms like “Chinaman” or “One Short” but if we don’t, it’ll do nothing for our social status or disgrace us before our friends.

And so, as the cricket season commences, the promos for the matches get more antagonistic and the stack of junk food in the pantry grows larger, this is the mantra I chant to protect my sanity in the days to come: “It’s good to be a woman, it’s good to be a woman.”

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)