The Bitter Half

While we have every sympathy for a newly retired man who looks forward to a quiet life but does not quite know how to handle a not-so-quiet wife, a thought ought to be spared for the other half of the sketch too.

Just like a man expects to relax when he comes home from work in the evening, so too he expects to relax when he comes home from work permanently, in the evening of his life. He looks forward to languid mornings with his coffee and newspaper, to which he can now pay full attention rather than downing them both in one gulp. But what of his wife? She has not retired from housework, and never can, as long as she lives. She has set a routine for herself over the years, whereby the housework is done as speedily as possible with minimum disturbance to the rest of the family.

But now, the retiree is at home, and underfoot. The maid cleverly shirks sweeping and mopping around the area where he is sitting, “so as not to disturb sa’ab” as she virtuously puts it. She can overlook the dusting of the study table with impunity, because he himself has instructed her not to touch it – important papers you see! In the winter, the retired man stays in the cozy bed half the day, with the result that the bed stays unmade until nearly lunch time. The house which looked neat as ever earlier, now sports a neglected air. Obviously the housewife is held responsible!

These drawbacks are at least passive. What about the husband who, freshly retired from an executive or management job, conducts a time-and-motion study on his wife’s chores and concludes that she is hopelessly inefficient? He helpfully tells her so too, unmindful of the sound of her teeth gnashing. I actually know a lady who screamed out in exasperation when her husband told her she was not cutting the vegetables into equal pieces. Then there was the gentleman who had dealt with ‘labour’ all his working life. He watched the maid at work for a couple of days and told his wife that she didn’t know how to get work done by ‘these people’. He generously took over the task of supervising the maid, who didn’t take kindly to her work being criticised. She upped and left. No prizes for guessing who had to take on the maid’s tasks until a new one could be found.

The man is mystified that the smiling, gracious wife, who presided over the evening tea when he was working, has turned into a shrew. The key to the mystery is that she is tearing her hair out because he is constantly in her hair!