Of Mars and Venus

“The glass shoe fitted Cinderella perfectly and she and the prince got married. They lived happily ever after.” I ended my story telling, stifling a huge yawn in the process. Happily-ever-afters do get boring after a while – the sour grapes factor perhaps. But my 3-year-old daughter was not bored and not a wee bit sleepy. She sat up on the bed, and despite my attempts at cajoling her back to a horizontal position and calling bluff my empty threats, she decided to clear some issues with me.

“Amma, Cinderella and prince married, you and acha (dad) married, muttacha and ammamma married, Rakhi aunty and Sunil uncle married, who I will marry?”

I told her there was enough time to worry about that after she grew up.

“But boys marry girls?” She had to be sure.

I hmmm-ed. I coaxed her back to lying down with me.

“Amma, when I marry, I wear whale?

“Whale, darling? As in blue whale?” I muttered half asleep.

“Nooooooooooo,” her voice was shrill with impatience. “That thing white they wear, yesterday we saw in TV.”

I suddenly remembered, “Veil, dear.”

“See, I told you, you forget.” She said with obvious relief. She gets a little peeved when I don’t understand her. “And I kiss the boy on lips?” My sleep-laden eyes opened a little wider. Not so soon missy, my motherly possessiveness raised its head.

“Not now, not now.” I sh-shh-ed her.

“Amma, girls don’t kiss girls on lips, girls kiss boys on lips, like how you kiss acha.” Oops!

“Yes, we kiss because we love each other, dear.” I was now fully awake. “After you become big, you love somebody, you marry him, and then you kiss him because you love him.” I explained. That was not the order in which the events worked for me, but we keep re-creating our own realities.

“I love acha,” she said quite simply. She understood love, like how children do, in its all-pervading, indispensable sense. I admired her for it.

And when I worried about the indiscreetness in our marital relationship and what her little gray cells might have gauged, she became quickly bored with the intricacies of love and lips and men and women. She got down from her bed, picked up a book from her book rack, and asked me to read it to her.

And amidst billy goats gruff and trolls, the strangeness of human affairs gave way to the sure familiarity of fantasy.