School Fancy Dress- Testing parent's creativity.

"Fancy dress! Denver has his fancy dress competition next Wednesday", my wife screamed chastising me for my 'laid-back-who-cares-a-@&%@' attitude.

"Don't you worry sweetheart", I assured her. "Leave it to me", I told her."I am serious", her tone had now turned authoritative. I laughed, reeking of pretentious indifference.

Deep inside me, I knew I had to do it - for various reasons known only to me.Come Sunday, I hadn't moved an inch.

It was only when she woke me out of the cricket reverie, I realized I had to move my ass. She stood there, my frail yet beautiful wife- OPAQUE- between me and the telly. She shoved a school circular at my nose...I read on. ....

Damn! The points for evaluation were creativity (hw creative can a 5 yr old get? surely this had to be for parents), confidence (this for the ward), presentation (this again a parent domain)....

"Why didnt they have the parents compete instead"? I wailed. I was confident that I would win this without any attire. :)

" To hell with your IPL and the Kolkata Knights, why don't you get cracking on Den's fancy dress instead"? She was screaming her lungs out; if she could spew fire and smoke- I would surely have been reduced to ashes at POINT BLANK range.

'' Knight did you say? Lets make Den a Roman Soldier" I told her. She gladly agreed- highly confident of my abilities- In retrospect might also have been a subtle realization of a lack of the creative gene in her.

In an apartment, a couple of blocks away- another wife was screaming at her husband- both the wives had the same gene pool. The husbands had to get to work.

Later that evening as the Kolkata Kinghts notched up their second win in the IPL, I overheard my wife speaking to a friend who offered to lend the armor she had designed for her son last academic year. As she ended the conversation rather triumphantly, I was happy too- cos I had very few things to design. I listed them down....

1. Armour- Mrs. PG

ARM BANDS, SHIELD, SWORD, HELMET, SHOES.....shit there was so much to do.

It later turned out that Mrs PG ditched us (ME) at the 11th hour lending some crappy piece of silver paper that she called an armour- quite in contrast to the picture she had mailed us. It took me 2 days to conceptualise, design and execute the Roman Soldiers costume.. This is how it turned out finally....