One Sunday morning, I was asked: “Where is your head?” The voice was my wife’s and she sounded slightly agitated, so I began to speculate on what I had done wrong. I resisted the strong temptation to indicate that my head was on my neck. I have learnt now to correlate the tone of her voice to her readiness for what my children call “Dad jokes” -- and this was clearly not the appropriate time. I merely enquired, “What head?”
“Your head and my head are the same now,” she muttered, as she frantically looked for something around the living room. My initial reaction was joy, for, after two decades of matrimony, in which we almost always thought in diametrically opposite directions, she had started feeling that we were of the same mind. But the joy was short lived.
Noting my puzzled expression, she exclaimed, “Gosh, you are so slow! Your mobile charger’s head — where is it? My mobile also charges super fast with the same head. I need to recharge urgently.”
Two emotions ran through me at that moment: Relief, that I had not done anything wrong; and a sense of pride, that I was being solicited to help on a domestic matter. “I will search for it right away,” I responded with gusto, and sprang into action. I began flinging the sofa cushions all around with exuberance and determination to find my “missing head”.
Meanwhile, my wife had reached the bed of our 13-year-old son who was fast asleep. Furious that her younger offspring was blissfully unaware of the latest domestic crisis, she shook him up, pointed her mobile to his face, and asked, “Where is your father’s head?”
At that particular moment, the hapless lad faced a major challenge. He had never seen such an early hour on a weekend, and was totally befuddled. In his semi-awake state, he replied, “Amma! It was on his neck last night when I went to sleep.” He then curled up under his blanket and attempted to regain his state of serene sleep.
My exasperated wife then turned to our 17-year-old, who was busy preparing for an examination. Delighted to be excused from his study schedule, he reassured his frantic mother that he would find the absconding head. This kind of confidence usually meant that he was somehow responsible for its disappearance in the first place.
Within minutes the dying mobile device was reconnected to its saviour, the charger. The finer details of how and why it went missing began to be investigated but I did not get too involved in the probe and was able to return to the comfort of my Sunday crossword. Later that evening, my wife quipped, “We really need to get another head to avoid this situation in future. Two heads are definitely better than one!”