A day to remember

Ever since I got married, the advent of May every year always makes me nervous. Will I remember it on time or not? is the question that bogs me in the early days of that month. As most of you might know, May 21st is Shree's birthday. Though she simply expects a wish, shamefully that itself has become difficult for me to do nowadays. Wait a minute, I do have my excuse. Her birthday falls on the same day as many hollywood women celebrities, and that being the case how come a humble guy like me could remember so many birthdays on the same date. I do have to make some compromises here and there, isn't it Ms.Cher? Hope you liked the flowers from this fan of yours!

I recently read a joke that the best way to remember the wife's birthday forever is to forget it at least once. Trust me, the joke must have been written by a person who has known me. Plagiarism!

I did in many ways to remember: Google calender...check. Making Akshur remember..check. Brainwashing Arhath to keep repeating "May...Amma..." "May....Amma", again and again,...check.

While the scaffolding was being secured to keep me from falling on face, all of a sudden the crook in me wanted to do something different. Nothing romantic like going to an underwater restaurant or anything - just different in my own terms.

This is where the problem was. I am so screwed up that I could think nowadays only in terms of exotic running spots - the places I always liked to run. You would have figured out that, being on a date with me is not an option for a gourmet food. You just have to be satisfied drinking gatorade, and taking water from the tap.

Suddenly, I hit on an idea!

How about, take a day off a week before, and just take Shree to the place where I have always wanted to run! That seemed like a pretty cool idea. I know she was in to hiking, and I took that angle to offer a bait. I was very much worried about her commitment to the Veggelution (plant huggers), but some how my desperation won her attention.

Once I got the approval, it took me an hour to find a place. It was the "Quick Silver" county park in the Almaden valley. I made sure that my manager knew that week on Friday I won't be at work - by Monday itself.

My selection of that place was based on a lot of different factors:

1) Just 15 miles from home, and the evening traffic coming back is not an issue.

2) That place is so isolated that, if I get beaten up due to disagreements, there won't be anybody around to see that.

3) "Quick Silver" was an historical mercury mining site. If my teeth got broken in the brawl (with Shree you got to take all kinds of precautions), I might be able to find some "quick" fix with some left over mercury amalgam.

4) This could be used as a scouting trip to locate nice places and houses, for my wonderful friends RajKishore & Raji, when Raji gets to go to the IBM research labs there.

It was all set. On May 14th, send A & a off to school and get us going on a hiking trip to "Quick Silver". I prayed all along that the plan should not turn in to a "Quick Sand" of hope by letting it slip away. The night before when Arhath coughed a little, I ensured that he had enough dosage of benedril drops.

The last time I technically had a date (only date?) with Shree was the day before Akshur was born. Yep, it was the movie, "Last Samurai". I know, how much of disappointment she had when I turned down her request to invite her parents too.

Fortunately, things worked as planned. At 10 AM sharp last Friday, we were at the county park. Of all the trails, we opted (actually, I had never been on that) a trail that was a decent 9 mile round trip.

Ten minutes in to the hike, Shree got a phone call from one of our friends - well, I don't know whether that caller still considers me a friend after all the furor I created this week - anyway, let us not get lost there, and for now keep it as, one of her friends. Interestingly, the cell service was amazing in this part of the valley.

The gradient of the course was decently high enough to make the hiker take deep breathes. I was doing a pretty good talk and hike, thanks to my recent hill runs (I never waste a moment to glorify myself, aren't I?) and Shree was having a pretty heavy breathing.

So, imagine this scenario.

Caller: Shree, are you free to talk?

Shree (with heavy breath): Go on.

Caller: Why are you breathing this hard?

This is where it gets interesting. Whenever Shree wants to say something, the context or the actual matter is told only at the end. The listener usually has to wait till the whole sentence is completed. I don't know where from she got this trait, but I believe, it could be due to too much reading of Mahabaratha, where she must be fascinated by the most quoted Yudhistar's shout,"Aswathama Hathaha....Kunjaraha." (Google to find the facts about this.)

Thank goodness, she is not in to designing the IP routers, where the concept of "cut through routing" is very important to know the destination of a packet before even it is completely received.

Also, I can't image her writing a screenplay for an adult movie. It will have so much of foreplay that the actors will simply go to sleep before the main play.

What was I saying? yeah, about Shree's traits. Let us continue with the caller and Shree's conversation.

Caller: Why are you breathing this hard Shree?

Shree: Rajesh has taken a day off today.

Heavy breathing - 10 AM in the morning - kids off to school - husband taking a day off. Do the math.

For the love of God, I was couple of feet away and was shell shocked. What would the caller think of? It is quite natural for anybody to let their imagination run wild. I know the caller is a major contributor to the Facebook, and I could see the joke running all over the globe, even to the extent of getting translated to the masai people in the African Savannah.

Caller: (Showing class) Is he also at the veggelution?

The caller still must have wondered about the heavy breathing part. Must be heavy lifting of some kind going on, the caller might have thought. Luckily, the call ended quickly and we continued on the hike.

It was supposed to be a relaxed, 9 mile, uphill hiking on a hot day. I know how much time, effort and desperation I had put in to make this happen. Being a runner who does everything solo, I took a lot of precautions, but forgot some simple, simple things, such as, taking some kind of solid food (energy bars, trail mix), sun screen, sun glasses and obviously water!

If we had passed out over there, probably somebody would have made "Marocharitra II". Nothing like that happened, and we were able to complete the hike in 4 hours.

Four hours of solitude...with my wife! I screamed, "I passed...I passed, the test!" Still not good enough when some of my good friends could do 8 hours or more.

The lunch around 3 PM, at Subway (they have avocados too) was awesome! With tiring legs, and burnt out skin, we looked at the watch and said, "Rush! it's pick up time!"

Despite all of the miscues, it was nice, to be honest.

So today, no cakes, no gifts, nothing...just this note.

Many, many happy returns, Shree.