Whenever I go to play badminton, I take two extra T-shirts, a pair of socks and a towel, but last week, I forgot to take my socks and that almost made my wife divorce me.
Now that I have your attention, let me narrate the whole story.
That day, once I was at the badminton court, I wore the knee brace on my right leg (I need the additional support because of the ACL surgery I had ten years ago), took out my non-marking shoes and then realised that I’d forgotten to bring my socks.
There were five other friends, so I shouted to no one in particular, “Extra pair of socks, anyone?”
Deepak, a very tall friend who hits smashes so hard that I feel the shuttle goes two inches underground before coming out, said he had an extra pair. And then he started removing the socks he was wearing.
“Why are you removing your socks? I just asked if you had an extra pair,” I said.
“I do have an extra pair, but that is the pair I wore yesterday.”
I laughed.
“But don’t worry. I’ll wear the socks I wore yesterday, and you can wear the new ones I just wore before I started warming up.”
We men are like that – selfless.
But thankfully, Deepak didn’t have to part with his fresh pair and wear the one he had worn the previous day because Sasi, another fantastic badminton player in our gang, got me a fresh pair from his bag.
They were no-show socks, which meant they wouldn’t show above the ankle. More importantly, they were beige and white – a colour combination I had never worn in my life.
When it comes to socks, I am a boring man because my socks are usually black, blue or grey. I don’t know what it is with men – their innerwear story is always boring. Remember my visit to Jockey showroom to buy innerwear, where I almost puked on the counter after seeing men’s underwear in orange, teal and purple?
But beggars can’t be choosers, so I wore those beige-white patterned socks, played badminton for two solid hours and got back home by 10:15 p.m. Once home, I threw the socks into the washing machine along with the sweat-soaked T-shirts and shorts and forgot about them.
The next day, as usual, I went to the office at 8 a.m. I slogged my butt off, as we Rajans usually do, to ensure our women always have enough money to spend on Myntra, and then came back home at 6 p.m.
Let me describe the scene at home when I opened the door.
After finishing all her office calls Rekha had taken the clothes that had dried from the balcony, folded and arranged them in three different piles – one for me, one for herself and one for my son – beside her on the sofa.
If you’ve been married long enough, you know that if a woman has been working while her man was free (driving in traffic doesn’t count) she is going to be pissed off.
That’s why I did not let out an exuberant, “Hey, Rekha!” Instead, I uttered a tired and feeble, “Hey.”
Protocol suggests that Rekha should have asked me, “How was your day, Rajan?”
Instead, she pointed at something lying on the carpet and asked, “Whose are these?”
As someone who has so many skeletons hidden in the cupboard that sometimes I am scared to open it myself, every hair on my back immediately stood up.
Where had I been caught?
With whom had I been caught?
What did Rekha know?
And, more importantly, how much did she know?
For about five seconds, so much blood rushed to my brain that I almost fell down because of the rush.
In those five seconds, my brain opened every secret file it had stored over the last twenty-five years. Every harmless conversation with a woman, every message I had deleted because I didn’t want to explain the context, every time I had to delete my call records – everything ran as a movie in front of my eyes.
A married man doesn’t need to have done anything wrong to look guilty. Years of marriage train us to assume that if the wife is asking a question, she already has the answer, screenshots, call records, and probably also two witnesses.
As I prepared myself for my life to collapse around me, I slowly looked towards the carpet.
It was the pair of beige-and-white socks. Thank God it wasn’t a bra…that would have definitely been difficult to explain.
I immediately felt relieved. But that relief was short-lived because in that sudden rush to prove that I was innocent, I had completely forgotten where I had got the socks from.
Rekha continued looking at me enquiringly.
I continued looking at the socks as if I had never seen socks before in my life.
“Whose are these?” she asked again.
There are some questions to which you can give a wrong answer, survive and tell the story in your parties. And then there are some – questions like “Whose are these?” – where one wrong answer can change your residential address.
With my memory playing tricks with me, to save myself, I said, “they are mine.”
Rekha picked up one sock and looked at it.
“These are not yours.”
This is the problem with being married for twenty-two years. Your wife knows everything that belongs to you – she knows your shirts, your pants, your socks, and your underwear. She even knows about that green-coloured T-shirt a girl I like gave me, which I have been hiding from Rekha because she has been trying to turn it into a cleaning cloth since 2022.
“They are mine,” I repeated, but this time with less confidence.
“Rajan, you only wear black, blue or grey socks.”
I looked at her with pride. After all these years, the woman still noticed the colours of the socks I wore.
But this was not the time to feel romantic. “Wrong time! Wrong time!” I told myself.
Again, I put on the desperate puppy look and continued to stand by the door.
“These look like women’s socks,” my wife continued.
By now the blood that had rushed to my brain now changed direction and rushed back to wherever blood normally stays when your wife is not questioning you. And that’s when I remembered that these were Sasi’s socks.
“They are Sasi’s socks,” I almost jumped in excitement as the words escaped my mouth.
“Sasi’s?”
“Yes.”
“Why are Sasi’s socks in our washing machine?”
Even when a man tells the truth, a wife has the ability to make it sound like the weakest explanation ever presented in a court of law.
I tried to remember the events in sequence.
“Yesterday…badminton…socks…”
Rekha waited.
When your wife is staring at you, even simple English becomes difficult.
“I forgot to take my socks yesterday when I went to play badminton. Then Sasi gave me these.”
“And why does Sasi carry women’s socks in his badminton bag?”
“They are not women’s socks. They are no-show socks.”
“They are beige and white.”
“So what?” Now that Rekha believed that it wasn’t my girlfriend’s sock, my confidence had returned.
“If it is beige and white, they have to be a lady’s socks,” Rekha insisted.
This is something I have never understood about clothes. If a black sock is worn by a man, it is a man’s sock. If the same black sock is worn by a woman, it can be a woman’s sock. But if a man wears a beige sock, suddenly questions are raised about the sock and it continues to be a woman’s sock.
Since we Rajans hate stereotyping of any kind, I told Rekha that I would ask him.
I took out my phone and messaged Sasi.
“Bro, the socks you gave me yesterday have been washed. Do you want them back?”
He replied almost immediately.
“Please return them. They are my wife’s.”
I read the message twice.
Then I looked at the beige-and-white socks.
Then I looked at Rekha.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Show me.”
There are moments in life when a man knows he is going to lose, but still holds on to the phone because hope is a powerful thing.
Rekha took the phone from my hand and read the message.
“I told you they were women’s socks,” she said.
I didn’t reply – I just stood as most husbands stand when they are proven wrong. But I was glad that the interrogation was finally over, and I could walk inside the house and sit down on the sofa.
“Keep them in your badminton bag and return them tomorrow,” my wife said as I plonked myself on the sofa.
I nodded obediently.
As I sat on the sofa wondering how one pair of sock could have separated the two of us, Rekha looked at me and asked, “But why did you look so frightened when I first asked whose socks they were?”
“I wasn’t frightened,” I immediately replied. I have said this before…we Rajans are cockroaches. Even if we do get frightened for a while, we never accept it.
“Rajan, you held the door for support,” Rekha wasn’t going to let this go easily.
“I was tired. I had worked all day.”
She continued staring at me. At that moment I knew that if I stayed there any longer, she would bring her pincers and start taking my nails out till I revealed everything.
So, I picked up my clothes and started walking quickly towards the bedroom.
Behind me, Rekha said, “What other skeletons are you hiding in your cupboard?”
I didn’t turn back. A married man must know when to answer a question, when to remain silent, and when to take his pile of folded clothes and disappear.
The next day, I returned Sasi’s wife’s socks.
But now I have two backup socks in my badminton bag – one for me, and another to help other men who may forget their socks. I don’t want any of my friends to go through what I have been through.
And if at all I forget to pack socks again, I will happily play barefoot. An ACL surgery may heal some injures, but injures to a romantic heart take a while to heal – if at all.
Note: Next day when I told Sasi how his pair of socks almost derailed my marriage, he started laughing loudly. In between his bursts of laughter he said, “Thank God I didn’t give you the pink colored ones!”