Genes Do Matter

My wife has a reasonably good ( I may call it large, but I will not do so as I do not intend hurting sentiments)  collection of hand bags. All of them carefully picked after painstakingly going through innumerable such pieces displayed in windows, arranged on shelves, hung on hooks, stacked on foot paths etc etc in Goa, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and Michigan. And (it has been drilled into my head repeatedly) there is a purpose behind every single procurement. Few of them might also have been picked up because they were on a discount, which is a very very sound reason to buy a bag.

They occupy the top two shelves in her wardrobe and tend to fall over my head whenever I open the door. And open that door, I have to. Because somehow a missing cap, belt or a jacket of mine have been found to have reached there even though they do not have any right or business. Also, some of the things commonly used by the whole family, like the scissors, nail cutter, needle and thread and safety pins etc are usually found in the lower shelves of the same wardrobe.

The following are the utterances she is used to hearing whenever me or my son open that wardrobe.

"Oh God, why do you need so many bags? keep half a dozen if you must, and throw the remaining  out"

"What is this nonsense? If you keep filling the house with bags, shortly we will have to look for another house to live"

"Bags seem to be the major investment in our family"

"You complain that there is no place for the clothes. Why don't you dump this junk in the loft?"

After experiencing the result of my careless utterances, I have tried to control the natural urge and say something good about the bags but have not been able to bring out anything better than "oh" and "ah".

Last week our niece visited us. She inadvertently opened the wardrobe and had a shower of bags. I was reading the news paper in the next room. The following are the excited remarks that I heard.


"Oh, aunty!  what a collection! I want to see everyone of them in detail!

"How cute!!! where did you get this?"

"What a pretty colour! It goes so well with your blue saree!"

"Beautiful! You can never make out it has so many compartments!"

"So elegant! But you need to wear a Mysore Silk saree with this."

"You can either hold this in your hand or hang it on your shoulder. So very convenient when you go shopping."

"Ah, you got this from US. Say that! You just can't find such things here."

Needless to say that auntie and niece spent a very enjoyable hour and a half going through the entire junk. I am sorry. Entire collection.

It needs a female gene to understand a female gene!