Note: Udipi is a kind of sub-cuisine of India. In Bombay, udipi restaurants are cheap and ubiquitous, and are known for their prompt delivery.
My wife gave me the best birthday gift ever when I was 10,000 miles away from her. And it was a total surprise. For me. For her too, it was partly surprising. Let me explain.
I was in Atlanta for a short term project. She was in Bombay. We were on Skype that day like almost everyday. I was up at 5 AM to get ready to go to work after talking to her. In India, it was 2:30 PM. We had been online for about 15 minutes. She had sung happy birthday for me and we had exchanged notes about our days. She was working from home that day. Had finished up a call a while back and had ordered food from our usual udipi delivery place for a late lunch.
"Anyway, I haven't showered all day and it's hot so I feel sticky. I'll just take a quick shower. Won't be five minutes. Stay there."
"Wait, won't the....."
I started to remind her about the food she had told me she had ordered. But she kept the laptop on the couch and was gone. So I sat there waiting for her to return. I stared at the screen for a while. The camera was pointed towards the living room passage that led to the front door. In a couple of minutes I got bored so I changed windows and started checking Google News.
That's when there was a sound of the doorbell ringing from the speakers so I switched back to Skype.
"Coming!" I heard her say off camera.
I watched the screen nonchalantly, making a note to tell her that she had rushed away before I could remind her about the food. And then I sat up straight. Bolt upright!
My wife scampered towards the door wrapped in a big towel, her hair completely wet. That's when suspicion began to creep up on me. Was she? Could she? Nahhh! Whenever I had suggested it in the past, she had summarily shot me down.
She adjusted the towel, tucked it under her arm and opened the door. It was the usual delivery guy, a scrawny old man in a wifebeater and discolored khakhi shorts. He seemd a little taken aback seeing her in a towel. But he didn't say anything. He offered her what looked like two pretty big bags of food. Why did she need all that food.
"Thank you." she said, taking one bag in each hand. Then she turned around and rapidly started walking towards the couch. I saw her move her left arm slightly. And sure enough. It happened. The towel started to unravel.
"Oh no!" she said loudly and made it seem like she was trying to stop it from falling. But there were bags in both her hands. Ah, now I understood the reason behind the big order. So it was clearly by design. The towel fell around her feet.
The old man's eyes had gone as wide as TV screens and his mouth was open as he stared at the naked ass and back of my wife.
She seemed to have rehearsed the whole thing because she put on a very convincing act of being stunned by the situation. She bent down in the knee and "tried" to pick up the towel. But of course, there was a bag of food in her hand. It slipped out and a bunch of smaller plastic bags rolled out. The udipi place wasn't fancy enough to afford boxes so they sent curries and such in plastic bags tied with strings.
"Shit!" she said, and instinctively tried to stop one of the rolling bags with her left foot.
The foot landed on the bag instead and she slipped and started falling. Plus the bag burst and I saw sambar spread everywhere on the carpet. She brought her hands forward to break the fall, forgetting that the other bag was in her right hand. So she fell on her hands and knees but her right knee landed on top of the bag. The weight burst the smaller curry bags inside it too. And a second later, my wife was on all fours, naked, with a small puddle of various curries all around her.
