Salim and Kayal #Watty's 2016 # YourStoryIndia #ProjectWomanUp

We = Us=Ours

Content warning: The attached video is of slightly matured content. Please don't watch it if you are not a fan of Indian cinema.

Kayal's POV

(Year 2017)

It's going to be almost a year since we married. When Thaatha passed away, Paati insisted on staying in Trichy even though we asked her to stay with us for some time. So we are living our life shuttling between Chennai and Trichy. Salim and I do have a little bit of disagreements here and there because I couldn't attend any of my friend's wedding including Sara and John, MalarMaari, Feroz, Prince one of my cousins etc. He indirectly wants me to give standing instructions to all my family and friends that anybody who wants to get engaged, marry or even die should die on a weekend and MUST check it up with Salim's family and friends because when two events fall on the same day, it goes as a rule that his family's event should be attended. He also has a problem with attending events which may take us a little far. So they get naturally rejected because, 'how can we go there in this traffic or hot sun or rain'? As a matter of fact we couldn't even attend our convocation, so we got our certificates through post after paying 'In absentia' fees.

Somehow, he manages to attend and sometimes drag me as well for his friend's wedding, engagement etc. His cousin and business partner Farooq also got married. Farooq's wife is a sweet heart. And then Salim's OCD for cleanliness drives me nuts. To top it all he forgot my birthday and managed to wish me one month later. Still we love each other in fact we are crazy about each other.

One good news is that Fathima Anni had conceived a baby. I remember seeing a Medical File of Mustafa Anna in their house when we went for dinner in their place. The file had the name of a famous fertility clinic in Chennai. When I asked Salim whether Mustafa Anna is suffering from some problem, he told me in not so clear words that since Fathima Anni didn't conceive even after almost a year, she took her tests from Athai and found out that there was no problem with her. So Mustafa Anna took his tests and found that he had a very small rectifiable problem. Just within a month after the treatment, Anni got pregnant. Thanks to latest medical facilities.

Two decades back men would have never accepted that they had some problem with them. But they would have gone ahead and married twice or even thrice. The situation was so cruel that there was no Tamil equivalent word for men who were impotent. Women bore the brunt of society. I silently thanked God that Mustafa Anna agreed to the treatment. In this age of stress and competition men suffer from a range of disorders which affect them physically, emotionally as well as sexually.

At last the bathroom door opened when I was scrutinizing an ad from a newspaper. As soon as Salim saw me looking at the ad he said, "Kayal, you are not supposed to stare at that dirty ad."

"Salim, I was not staring at these guys with lust. I feel pity for them. You know every time there is this Ad of a perfume where a man wears perfume and crowds of women follow him, ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India) is flooded with complaints from women. But there are no men who complain that their self respect has been tossed around. To tell a man that he would be judged by his perfume is disgusting. Similarly when women pose for lingerie ads we fight against objectification of their bodies. Why can't they apply the same rule to men? If at all if I had been a sister of this male model who is posing almost naked wearing nothing but briefs in the front page of a National newspaper seriously I would have cried for him."

He laughed and said, "Why don't you tell this to your Advertising Department?"

"As if they would listen to me. Who would say no to money? Earlier in the front page there was just a small ad in the bottom right of the newspaper, then it took the bottom half and on Saturdays, the whole of first page is ad only. When these advertisers spend so much of money on advertising, they dump that cost on customers as overhead cost."