kanchuki club

Asha's 90 yr old great grandmother and her five yr old daughter had heard the loud sobbing and come to investigate. Asha' other three friends and me, were all trying to console the hysterical female who was holding a 38 DD lace and satin bra and yelling at the top of her voice:"Whose is this? What is my fault ? Where did I go wrong?"

The great grandma told Asha's daughter to go and get a glass of cold water . She then took away the bra from Asha's hands and drew my sobbing friend and consoled her with a big hug. The old lady then proceeded to tell us all a story from her past.

"This is not a modern day problem Asha " she whispered. "It was there even in our days!"Asha momentarily looked up in bewilderment at her badi sasuji..."We were a group of seven young brides all 15 or 16 yrs old when we had discovered the dirty secret about the kanchuki club! Oh yes" The grand old lady wiped off a tear and continued:"

We had just found out that our husbands not only had mistresses, but they all belonged to a secret society of mistress swappers.They called themselves members of the kanchuki club! "Kanchuki was a traditional undergarment, not as fancy as this one.."She lovingly felt the silk and the lace and admired the crafting of a 38 DD push up bra.She sighed as she spoke

"On every weekend they used to meet in their aristocratic friends house for wine women and song.They had a regular mehefil and dancing girls and all that stuff. After drinking and gambling they each got out their mistress's kanchuki and tossed it in a big copper pot.Then everyone drew one out and off he went with the mistress to whom it belonged." She seemed lost in thoughts.

"After about four months of my marriage I came to know that my husband was an active member of the kanchuki club.I was totally shattered.I went back to my parents house, but they told me that we cant help you in this matter. It is between you and your husband, and they sent me back to him. I was alone, in that great big house barely 15 years old, and my husband was 18. On top of that I had found out that I was also pregnant.So I was stuck for good with that crazy life!!"

We all were stunned. None of us had the courage to ask what happened next. Only Asha's 5 year old daughter dared ask the obvious next question. "Then what did you do grandma?" she wanted some answers before her great grand mother fell asleep in the middle of her story or forgot it alltogether.

"Oh yes! I did the same thing that you are doing now. I took the kanchuki belonging to my husbands mistress to my friend's house.We all were equally perturbed. None of us could dare divorce in those days, but we did not want any kanchuki rivals either." Another pregnant pause from the old lady. It was killing the cats.

"So we decided to start a ladies club of our own.We began inviting young poets and young writers to our club and started showering them with praise and admiration.This began to irritate our husbands.We began praising these young Turks openly till our husbands began to worry a bit. "The old lady burst out laughing till tears rolled down."We declared that we would be going on a picnic with all our friends and children and the poets will accompany us.That did it. All the husbands wanted to come too.They found our activities highly suspicious and they never wanted to leave us out of sight." More laughter.

"Gone were the mistresses and the kanchukis! We continued to organize some new activities every weekend, and soon involved the husbands in every possible way. We flirted openly with each others husbands, knowing all the proper commas, semi -colons , question marks ,and fullstops, and never going too far!!"

Asha wiped off her tears and drank the whole glass of water. She wiped off her tears and ventured a feeble smile.

"That little spice which these activities added to our lives saved all of us.We all had 5- 6 or even more children, and overall led happy married lives, or at least so we like to think.!" Great grand mother had finally fallen asleep.

"Oh you were very clever grandma!" said the 5 year old and ran inside to drag out an old black and white photo album from the old women's trunk. It had pictures of all those picnics. Can you believe it? All the famous marathi poets from the 20s and 30s were there in those yellowing photos....Wow!Could it be true?

My girlfriends decided there and then that we needed to spend more quality time with our hubbys, in the bedrooms of course,and it all started with a trip to the Lingerie shop.We got the wackiest ,expensive ,silky, satiny ,Lacy push ups and Cami's and undies that they had in the shop.We too hoped to engage our straying partners in wild escapades so they would not be tempted to form a modern kanchuki club.