With cow firmly tethered to the post, he threw little baits my way to see if I would bite. After a year he gave up and just settled into what I imagine must be perfectly bovine domesticity. I imagine a placid couple sitting on the couch, chewing cud and watching Hindi soaps on cable TV. While I can't see myself in that frame of reference, neither can I picture Malhar in it - he just wasn't the type. I felt a great sense of solidarity with his ex who, like me, lacked the bovinity Malhar sought in a wife.

The third time was not nearly as dramatic as R or Malhar. H was smart enough, but not nearly in the same league as R or even Malhar. He looked as train-wrecked as a man might look like if, after five years of marriage, the wife, on the pretext of going home for a vacation, just flies the coop. Other than that he was reasonably, if not somewhat dangerously normal; but then what I find normal would intimidate most people.

A couple of months into this "vacation" that was happening back in India, H tries to find out when she may be returning home, to which she responds "Never." Any other woman in my shoes would have panicked enough by this point to consider running as fast and as far away from H as she could. Not I. I soldiered along, knowing in my bones that I had landed myself a mega-project truly worthy of my greatness.

So what if R and Malhar could not recognize my potential? Our friend H would surely not miss the obvious when it stared at him in the face. I liked the quirky sense of humor, the passion for all things dangerous, the vigorous work ethic, and not so much the fact that dinner was often two slices of bread with "Kannadiga gun powder" for spread accompanied by Kamchatka Vodka or Rum and Pepsi.

Just for the record, I am a health freak. One major bone of contention between R and me was our dietary preferences. For those who ask "Then why?" I would answer that a worthy cause is worth the supreme sacrifice. With me in his life, H would magically be weaned off his drinks and gravitate of his own free will to Odwalla carrot juice. I just know these things to be self-evident despite all evidences to the contrary from past experience.

There was so much work ahead that I could not wait to get started. H needed to be rescued from the ghosts of the past and the closet full of his wife's clothes that he held on to for close to two years, saying all the time, "The purge will need to happen." That was aptly dramatic for me.