The Ex's At War

Chapter 17 - The Man Speaks

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the small cut at the corner of my lower lip, yes a gift from my wife when I tried to kiss her forcefully earlier today. I dragged a lungful of breath and looked at myself again. Let's do some talking now(through the mirror to the readers)

Phewww!!! Finally the time when I get to do some talking, my takes on certain things, my version of our problems. I am sure by now Nandini has told you a lot of things about us which had mostly me. Well I am her personal zoo...the monkey..the donkey..the rhino..the lion and what not and not only that all her love calls also only refer to me I mean the ones like jerk, moron, idiot etc etc. Now see I am not out rightly rejecting her allegations.. fine I did a few mistakes.. okay a little more than a few mistakes but she was no saint either. The other end of the mistakes always had her happily waving her hand at me to give equal feed to our tiffs.

Well it is a long and forgotten story and to cut it short something like this is what happened. Honestly I don't even remember where it started from particularly but it was somewhere when we had started losing out on a lot of international shows. We were doing good in India in fact better than good but I wanted to expand to the European market. It had started off well initially but gradually we fell short in meeting the requirement of our clients which meant a lot of projects slipping out of our hands and a lot of money clogged in the already started projects.

Nandini was an important part of AURA, the premium designer of our fashion house but purposely I had never involved her in the business and money making part. It was a ruthless and shrewd world that ways and I never wanted to burden her with those worries. She was a perfect wife and a perfect mother to my daughter and made my 3 BHK apartment in South Mumbai my earthly heaven. At the end of a thrashing day when I stepped in my home it was bliss, the smiles on the face of Nandini and Manini would ease off all the stress of the world. I was a happy family man but a kind of growing frustrated professional. I had always had things on my own terms and it would bother me immensely when I had to butter people who were zero percent capable but were occupying the top notch seats.

Nandini and I had started having arguments regarding the projects we picked. I being the shrewd businessman wanted the more profitable ones whereas Nandini vouched for the more creative and unique ones that could make us stand apart from the rest but ignored the profit part completely. I might be wrong in this but somewhere Nandini may be started feeling that I was jealous of her because she used to get the maximum amount of praise for any successful show while my focus still remained on what money we made out of it. Small tiffs in the beginning led to debates to arguments to fights which at times got a little nasty as well. Nevertheless we would patch up with a few of my hugs and kisses.

But the issue screwed up further when during the AURA crisis she decided to reunite my parents..like what seriously. She knew no matter what, I hated my mother. Yes now I was more used to her being around me and my family but I would never accept her in the same place which she herself had left years back. I can never call her Mom, I can never share that relationship with her that I was supposed to but Nandini hardly understood that. All she was bothered about was my Dad's loneliness. Now my Dad is yet another feeble hearted man. I failed to understand how he could never hate the woman who left him in between a beautiful relationship for another man. I always sensed he went weak whenever she was around. I didn't want my Dad to be hurt yet again because of that same woman. But Nandini my dear wife had to set everything correct, had to see everyone happy. So without informing me she called Dad from California to patch him up with my Mom. I was the last person to know about all the developments in my family concerning my very own parents and as expected I erupted like a volcano, thrashed Nandini, Dad and my Mom left right and center at my Mom's place while our baby slept cozily in her home.