She wanted to know what I thought of Madame Tussauds. I told her it was very nice and that I would be sending her the photos shortly. She asked me if I liked the statue of Mohanlal.

I was slightly taken aback, to be very honest. I know Lal-ettan is world famous. But this much fame?

After thinking very quickly on my feet, I told her that the statue was very nice.

She asked how Lal-ettan’s statue looked like. I told her that they had thankfully chosen to make his likeness from his glorious early 90s period, when he was still lean and muscular. She asked me what he was dressed in.

I said white dhoti and off-white shirt, as seen in the classic super hit movie Dasharatam. (Gouri only watches Shah Rukh Khan movies. So this was a low-risk move. Also I said off-white instead of the more fake-sounding cream.)

Then she asked me which statue was next to Mohanlal’s statue. Thankfully I used an old trick I learnt during a Lederman training session where I secretly saw The Usual Suspects on my laptop.

I looked around my hotel room and chose the printer. I told her that right next to Mohanlal’s statue there was a statue of William Epson of Edinburgh, Scotland who invented the laser printer.

There were a few moments of silence. Meanwhile I quickly drew up a mental list of other potential names I would have to use including Tesla, Copernicus and that fellow on the Kentucky Fried Chicken wrappers.

Unfortunately by the time she resumed speaking Gouri had turned into a psychopathic mass murderer like Auto Shankar. She started screaming and wailing and I could even hear her throwing things against the wall.

She called me a fucking fuck-faced fat lying fuck who had no respect for his woman and would blatantly tell horrible lies just to save enough money to buy one toilet paper roll.

Yes I should have corrected her. But she was not even putting semicolons between her sentences. She kept on screaming and kept on screaming and then at one point I put the phone on speaker, placed it on the table and began to flip through an old Time magazine.

Finally when she stopped I told her I was sorry. She said this was also probably a lie and that she could never trust me again. I told her that this was a gross overreaction, and at worst she could never trust me again when it came to museums and similar tourist attractions.

I was able to read Time magazine again for another three minutes.

And then I got fed up and told her about the entire wax statue incident. As a desperate attempt to get sympathy from whatever was left of her female nurturing personality.