I have been a scary poker for half of my life, that was before I met my husband. First there was the scare of people - family, parents even some friends to an extent. There was always more importance given to walking the line than personal gratification. Then there were these added benefits of getting what you wanted if you toed the line. Then I met my husband and that changed everything. A strong man with impeccable values, knowing exactly when to draw the line. More importantly for me, somebody who didn't think too much of parents and family, as they distracted him from his eventual goal, which I realise at that point time was me. How much he struggled to get married to me, either I would know and he definitely understands it. I come from a very orthodox family, we are traditional people and as far as I have known have always been that way. He is from a very different background where culture and religion was given less importance than education and honest uprightness. Bravery is a word which is second skin to him. He will fight when he sees injustice being done, and like he tells me, bravery is not what you do when things are going for you but rather what you do when you aren't getting anything like what you want. He has stood by me in all my good and bad, through all my tantrums and moods, handled all of it with the stoic attitude that comes out of good Punjabi stock. Six feet tall and in the best of days, he would take me in his arms and swing me around taking my sorrows and blowing them away in the wind. Touch wood !!!
He travelled the countryside when things weren't working out for us with regards to marriage. God is not something he has intrinsically believed in, it was just the thought of not getting me, that he started visiting the temples in South India. There was a death wish that he made during those days. He asked of me from God, at the expense of everything else in life. I do believe he made a decision that early in his life that very few people have the ability or strength to understand. He is still with me, caring when needed, dominating when I need him to be, a tower of strength and understanding. Now what fruit could be the tower of strength or understanding I wonder. I do believe the watermelon is that fruit. Very much the summer fruit, understanding the heat like no other, handling it with aplomb and cooling to the body. I do believe this might be the "Willy Watermelon" we might be looking at.
So what did Willy Watermelon say to the God of small things, no puns intended to Arundhati Roy. He said to God "leave me alone please, I want to live life on my own terms, want to see what it is to be a man I want to be. And heres what God did, plucked him from his tree and threw into a pool of crocodiles and said "there you go, live now". Willy Watermelon woke up with a rude shock where nothing worked, he was a frog of a small pond thrown into the sea. There were people with sharp knives who carved him up, but Willy had his own mechanism to handle that, this Willy was wily as a fox, he spit the seeds out at his attackers, until he had them running. That is the Willy Watermelon. The king of the summer fruits, and a sweetie pie.
In another life I might have been the Watermelon
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