– Suresh Subrahmanyan is a Bengaluru-based former advertising professional

Forget about international war games and geo politics. I am doing a 180-degree turn. I have my hooks into domestic violence, by which I don’t mean macro issues affecting India, but micro matters that take place in our homes. My thoughts, at the moment, are with two male members of a family living far apart in Hyderabad and Vadodara, who expressed extreme unhappiness with their respective wives’ culinary offerings and paid the ultimate price.

In a macabre turn up for the books, here is what actually happened and The Times of India is my witness. The husband in Hyderabad threw a petulant fit because his wife did not prepare chicken curry for her lord and master. Being denied the same on his arrival and sitting down to dinner, and finding his plate replete with cabbage and greens, not to mention two dry rotis, he expressed his disgust in no uncertain manner. ‘Yuck’, about sums up his feelings. Vile abuse was then hurled at his wife to which she responded in kind. What was till then a perfectly normal slanging match, a noisome argy-bargy, soon took on a frightening turn. The good lady wife had ‘had it up to here’ with her hubby’s constant cribbing and bickering, her blood was up, she eyed a freshly honed sickle lying in a corner of the room. To pick it up and deliver a swift blow to her life partner’s neck, with plenty of wrist work and follow through was with her the work of a moment. ‘I shall have my revenge,’ she seemed to be telling herself. Remorse and recrimination, to say nothing of her heinous crime and consequent punishment, can come later. A momentary lapse of reason, blood thirst satisfied with some justice, and she was prepared to face the long arm of the law.

A little over a thousand miles away from Hyderabad, in the city of Vadodara, another domestic contretemps was brewing. A labourer, the press report was not clear on the precise nature of his occupation, comes home for lunch and sits down for his afternoon meal. The report is not forthcoming on what was on the luncheon menu but the husband looked askance at his plate and proceeded to issue a volley of abuse at his wife. Perhaps it was, yet again, the complete absence of chicken, mutton or fish that so incensed the husband. I am only conjecturing.

On the other hand, they may have been strict vegetarians and the wife fobbed her husband off with some cold rice and dal. Period. No fried potatoes, dal fry, boiled carrots and paapad to go with the main course. Enough to get anyone’s hackles up. The labourer husband went on a shouting spree, and at some point, the wife seemed to tell herself, ‘Up with this, I shall not put.’ She did not merely stop with verbals. She picked up, what the newspaper described as a ‘bladed weapon’ and proceeded to stab her husband multiple times in the head and chest. Neighbours, hearing deathly screams, rushed round to help. By then the assaulted husband had shed his mortal coil. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The lady of the house is now cooling her heels in judicial lockup.

I realise that I lay myself open to criticism from right thinking people who might well go, ‘The world is in turmoil, WW III is at our doorstep and you are going on endlessly about a couple of guys who literally got it in the neck because they were not served chicken or potatoes by their harried wives. Where are your priorities?’ Tell you what, I have a snappy answer to that question. If The Times can ‘go on endlessly’ about the chicken and veg starved husbands, I do not see why I should hold my horses on the subject. Our women have been subjugated for too long, and if they choose to take out their frustrations on ungrateful husbands with ‘bladed knives,’ bully for them. If push comes to shove, our women will take up arms and risk imprisonment or worse, but they will take no prisoners. As for me, I gobble up whatever is served for lunch and dinner without a murmur of dissent. I place a high price on my neck.

In sum, I can do no better than to reprise Sir Winston Churchill’s defiantly ironic words in 1941, reacting to his allies’ dire warnings from Hitler. ‘In three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck!’ Brave words, but when Churchill went home for dinner and was served a plate of cold cauliflower cheese by Lady Clementine, he wolfed it down uncomplainingly. It was war time after all; rationing was on and stringency was the watchword, and it was more than the Prime Minister’s neck was worth than to demand steak and kidney pud of his good wife.