Perfumed Husband

The first time she saw him, she kept staring at him. “Why weren’t any of my ex boyfriends like him, so organized, so charming…so perfect,” wondered M as she sat infront of A. A had come to meet his would be wife. They both had never met; M and A barely talked two times over the phone in the presence of their teasing brothers and sisters who kept snatching the phone. So practically they didn’t know each other at all.

Everything happened very fast, within two weeks their marriage was fixed. His parents liked her, her parents liked him…they both could like each other after marriage the parents thought and they fixed the marriage. Since then M started following A on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter…basically on all the apps she had on her phone. For one week she scrutinized his profiles. Social life check, decent check, single check, party animal check, respects women check…on and on she went scrutinizing him. Now she was happy, her parents had chosen the right guy for her, the perfect man.

For all the wedding functions, they both just looked at each other and smiled, they had no time to get to know each other, because they had to spend all the time getting to know the relatives. A had a very good choice in perfumes, each day he would smell different and distinct. That is the only thing M could know about him, in the short period before their marriage.

The marriage day arrived. M was so excited, she was marrying the decent, handsome guy; she was happier about the fact that all her friends were jealous of her. During the marriage, there was one ritual where M kept her hand above A and pandit chanted the mantra’s. After that, M’s hand smelled of A’s perfume. That was the first time she wondered why did he put so much of perfume.

After the marriage, she was brought into A’s room. His room was lit up with scented candles, and decorated with roses. Everything was so lovely, she felt blessed. A walked into the room with a tired smile and said, “I am going to change.”

She wondered, “Why would he need to change on a wedding night?” Nevertheless she decided to wait for him, maybe he was feeling shy or maybe he wanted to talk a bath. Ten minutes passed, he didn’t come out of the washroom. She got bored and started unpacking her clothes and placed them in the space she was allotted in the wardrobe.  Another ten minutes passed no sound of water, no sign of him. She opened his side of the wardrobe; a strong smell hit her nose. Imagine thousands of perfume bottles breaking at once. She wondered if he had some perfume mania of sorts.

Expectations were dying down…another ten minutes had passed with him being locked inside the washroom. She thought, “Should I knock once, did he hit his head and die…no I can’t be a widow on the first night of my marriage.” She shook all her thoughts off and decided to wait for another ten minutes and then react.  Meanwhile she took his shirts one by one and smelled them, each one smelled of some exotic perfume. She opened a very pretty looking drawer, she was taken aback. The whole drawer was filled with perfumes from all around the world, perfumes she couldn’t even spell.  She heard the sound of flush. Startled, quickly she closed the drawer and his portion of wardrobe and returned to unfolding her clothes.

He came out finally, after fifty minutes…with the same tired smile on his face. No apology, no romantic lines, just a tired smile. He took the sanitizer kept on the table and applied it all over his hands and arms. “Who applies sanitizer on arms, “she muttered to herself. He said goodnight and went off to sleep. She stood their looking at him with a wide eyed expression and an urge to kick him hard.

Next morning M’s sleep was broken because her nose couldn’t tolerate a strong smell. She opened her eyes, the room was empty but then where was the smell coming from? As she went near the washroom door, the smell became even stronger. “What stupid soap does he use, that smells so strong,” she said. Again like last night, she couldn’t hear any sound of water.

After some time A came out of the washroom. As soon as he opened the door, the room flooded with perfume smell. He had five perfume bottles in his hand. He looked at her, smiled and went to office without a word. Evening he came home with his friends, the typical bachelor type of friends who just want food. He came inside the room, went to the washroom with a perfume bottle, and came out smelling full of perfume. “My friends have come to meet you, can you please make something for them or should I order something,” he said. She told that she would make the food.

That evening was better than she expected, she talked to all of her friends. With one of them, whom she thought she could trust, she chatted a bit longer. After getting to know each other she asked him, “is A obsessive about perfumes?”The friend laughed and said, “In office we call him perfume exotica…every half an hour he goes to the washroom and comes back smelling too much of perfume…even if he doesn’t put perfume for one week, he will still smell of perfume.” Then he told her that A also had a scented sanitizer which he put all over his hands and arms every one hour.

That night she decided to start what they should have on the wedding night. A comes in, smiles and says, “I am going to change.” She stops him before he could enter the washroom and kisses him. A kisses her back. She thinks, finally something happened. He takes out the perfume bottle and was going to spray some on her lips; she pushed his hand and said “What are you doing? Who puts perfume on lips?” “Me, I even bath with perfume,” he said. She laughed..she thought he was making her feel lighter by cracking perfume jokes.

Still she didn’t give up and tried being romantic. She had heard that bathing together ignites romance. She urges him to bath together. He agrees. They both get inside the washroom and she starts undressing. He empties the bucket filled with water. She watches him with a smile, and starts unhooking her bra. She stops suddenly…her bra is unhooked, but she is too shocked to remove it.

Her husband empties four to five bottles of perfume in the bucket. She freaks out and asks, “What are you doing, are you mad.” She picks up her clothes and runs out of the washroom. The husband follows her and asks what’s wrong. She says, “Why were you putting perfume in the bucket instead of water.” With the same smile on his face he says, “Water? I haven’t used water since ages, didn’t I tell you I bathe in perfume?”