talkaholic

I am at a dead loss. All because of this unstoppable jabbering machine I have for a husband. I have heard of alcoholics, shopoholics and workoholics but talkoholics? Which makes me a stoppoholic, by default. The one word which is always on my tongue is ‘enough’. But it is hardly a deterrent. So carried away is he by his own gift – rather curse – of the gab that he refuses to be even remotely remote-controlled by me. I wish I could put up a board outside our door saying ‘watch your ears’ and ‘mind your mind’.
It was my wedding day, a typical Indian arranged one. I did not know my husband from Adam so to say and he did not know me from Eve. Like the X of a quadratic equation, suspense was woven into the floral decorations of the wedding hall. My friends had raised the bars by assessing his good looks – including deep grey eyes, a perfectly sculpted nose, a very becoming stubble (so they said) and a dimple on the right cheek - and his ‘sociable’ nature. He was not stuck-up like Asha’s husband, they quipped, nor boorish like Lekha’s. He had charmed them with his smiles and easy-flowing words. They showed me visions of a lifelong fun companionship. On our first night together, I got a taste of this companionship. He started by offering me a chocolate. While I told myself ‘how romantic’, he had taken off. No, no, not anywhere physical, but on a conversational jaunt. The whole night – or so it seemed to me - as I sat dazed by his baritone stream of words, rather a verbal volcano, I grew desperate, if not for some appropriate action, at least for an appropriate pause somewhere, just to let out the much stifled yawn. But everything said that he was happy to have his own licensed audience for life. Finally shedding all inhibition, after the yawn noisily exited, I just fell asleep, right before his wide-open eyes and wider-open mouth. I must have broken the Guinness record for a bride’s sleep on her wedding night. I woke up the next morning in a daze, dreading repercussions of a vague crime I had committed; equally dreading the deep-throated day-time onslaught. To my surprise, my husband did not say a word. I had failed him as private audience-period.
Though immensely relieved, I wondered how to rectify the starting hiccups of our new relationship. If not for myself, I needed to show friends how fun-filled indeed my married life was. I tried to recollect at least bits of the topics he had hopped the whole night, err…till I had fallen asleep. Cricket, college, colleagues, cookery, Congress, curves…all starting with C? Did he go alphabetically each day? I decided to confront him with his own weapon the next night. As he sat reading a magazine on our bed, I sat near him and started with a C topic, not knowing exactly what it would do. He was polite in his answer but went right back to his reading. Serves me right, I told myself. Now I have to draw him out, but keep the reins firmly in my control. I abandoned C and decided to be more organized than he was. So I went to A. Words refused to come. I cursed myself for not ever having opened the dictionary my father had got me on a birthday. I should ask him to send it soon. Even as my husband of a day immersed himself into the business magazine (uggh…), I looked for clues to begin a methodical conversation. A for …of course, there was Africa, America, Australia, Antartica. How about honeymoon in Africa? Or migrating to Australia? Did he have relatives in America? No…nothing worked. Instead, it was total action in total silence!

Then four boys happened. Who would have thought it possible? And at such mathematically precise intervals? Between their bawls, brawls and demands, the dictionary that my father had forwarded to me was torn to shreds. There was no time or need for it any more, nor for my husband and me to miss each other, in fact no time to even know each other, except as parents of this unruly brood.

The four of them grew up in no time and went away from home and it was back to the two of us. Looking back, I think I now know when the type II ‘talkabetes’ struck my husband. It was when the last boy left home for university in another city. Number 4 takes strongly after his father in looks and in his liveliness. He is the father’s favorite too. By then retirement looked at us from close quarters. As we settled down in our own flat, my husband let loose his tongue, like an unleashed dog. I became the official muzzle, when he is within muzzling distance that is.
Like a multi-role actor, my husband slips effortlessly into different roles. He turns engineer, teacher, tourist guide, chef, health consultant, marriage counselor and so on. His sole tool is his tongue. The beneficiaries of his self-education are the residents of our building, visiting relatives and strangers on the road, in the bus or anywhere. I think even the idols in the temples he is forever visiting are not spared.
He takes off right after breakfast. Like a doctor doing the rounds, he greets the neighbours, with a little more than a good morning. Some duck, some dodge, some dupe while some succumb to his banter. His unit of conversation is an anecdote. He can pull out short stories, novellas and more from his mind…err tongue, like a magician a rabbit…he walks down the road, enticing known and unknown humans with his (still) charming smile and then he hooks them on or is it webs them in? What does he talk? Well, anything and everything. It may be about the merciless heat one moment, about fake Godmen the next, real estate deals or lower spine surgery, the wickedness of the Chinese. A jack of all trades, is he, and master of none? Who cares? He in the least.
When we go for a drive, he is at his best, at back seat driving that is. If the car is on a smooth fast ride, his talking goes proportionately fast. Why should vehicles rush, he analyses, why is the world in such a maddening hurry? He is not at a loss at signals either, nor does he come unstuck in traffic jams. No, he is not stuck for words. The pattern changes that is all. He has the whole comatose world around us to comment upon and the driver feels doubly dumbstruck as my husband trusts him as a reliable listener and trains his cascading words on him. Today, as we drive to the hills for the week-end, I wish the poor chap good luck silently and take leave of my muzzling duties.
The four boys are now married. By coincidence all the boys have found jobs in our city and we are once more a confederation of high strung, high decibel individuals. The first brought home a slender little talkative thing, his colleague belonging to another community. My husband was instantly at ease with her and she with him. He asked her to teach him her language. And in a short time there were language classes every hour in any situation-on the dining table, in the lift, at the washing machine, accompanied by much mirth and merriment. It suited the ever-busy son fine. The second son looked up to me to find him a bride. I thought I would balance the prevailing ruckus with a silencer. So I searched high and low and found a silent, unassuming girl, who would have nothing much to say, at least nothing to enthuse my husband’s spirits. Instead he passed on his infectious communicative skills to her too. The language classes now have two students! The third son’s wife, his childhood sweetheart, has known my husband for donkey’s years. She deftly avoids him, while flashing innocent smiles at him. But it may only be a matter of time before signs up too. The last son – well it had to happen some time in such a broad-scoped family– married the wrong girl. It was almost printed in the wedding invitation that this was a mismatch. Much above us in social status, the bride thinks no end of herself. She was palmed off to us as an act of revenge, or so an afterthought suggests, by a victim of my husband’s stories. Even I got fooled by the family’s show of decency. She holds our whole family in contempt especially my husband for his friendly overtures. She is the truly stuck-up sore thumb of our family. She manages to ruin all the camaraderie and bonding among the others. Just like the wicked women in TV serials. So venomous is her tongue that when she is around everyone simply shuts up. My husband has been the last to learn that shutting up could ever be a solution to anything. Then he learnt to live the pangs of silence painfully.
You would think that I am happily relieved of my muzzling duties now that a policewoman has come home to roost. But strangely, I weep silently for my talkaholic partner. I miss his free spirit, his guileless charm, his natural friendliness. Not stuck-up like Asha’s husband or boorish like Lekha’s, not one bit.
I break into sobs, and tears flows down my cheek.
Heyyyyyyy! What is THIS?
As the car swerves wildly before hitting the median and coming to a stop, I come out of my strange daydreaming. Since when did I turn a dreamaholic? But the tears are true.
I have cast away the muzzle forever. I simply let my husband rave and rant about the wrongly built median and the crazy ways of the world to the whole listening world which has collected around us. A dream audience!