Thanksgiving shopping for your lady love ain't easy..!!!

I have no intention to counter Freud when he says that the toughest thing in this world is to understand women. However, I want to contend that shopping for dresses for your girlfriend is no less. All the women in various stores in Gilroy, the huge shopping complex in California, who I pakaoed endlessly to help me get the right fit are witnesses.

First of all, you have to contend with the fact that she is not there with you when you are shopping and every time you walk into a ladies section, at least some people do get swayed by how closely you resemble Daku Malkhan Singh and wonder what are you upto in a ladies section. I know, most of them would be saying, "This bugger, he looks like no sane girl would even want to be caught dead with him, what is he doing with girls' dresses all around. I am sure he is a transvestite, didn't you see the weird grin on his face".

Then comes the fit hurdle. I know I need to get a trousers with waist size 28. Now, how on earth am I supposed to know which American size means waist 28, esp if I have never bought women's clothing in the land of milk and honey. The resourceful bugger that I am, I walk upto the nearest lady and ask her to help me out with locating what size means waist 28. She was a well meaning lady, middle aged sweet auntie. She tried hard to understand what my problem was and I tried hard to understand what was so complicated about it. Ultimately, she summoned her teenaged daughter and asked her if she would know whether waist 28 meant size 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 or 8. The daughter was a sweet kid and as usual, sweet kids are nice to talk, they may even solve your profound, existential problems but this one was a bit too concrete. She too, could only laugh at my predicament.

I then approcahed a pretty, young, smart woman who I thought would be too much into buying trousers and would know. She was a flat, "No clue" and I was like, "What the hell do you do in such stores then?"

Undaunted, I went to the shopfloor assistant. She was like, "Probably 6 or 8 or....ummmmmm...". I scratched my head, thanked her and went out to have a smoke.

But then, men in love die hard. I came back again. This time, I caught another salesgirl. She referred me to the woman near the trial rooms who supposedly had a conversion chart. I went and saw the chart, ok, its size 8. Cool. Triumphant.

Size 8 didn't have anything quite upto my high standards in the Lee showroom. So I tried another.

Again those, "I know he is a cross-dresser" and "Ahh, here comes the newest rapist cum serial killer" looks which I ostensibly ignored and walked unfazed through the ladies section. Somehow, I wasn't convinced by the size 8 theory and there was a sales guy around. I told him I needed a lady's pants which would fit this waist size. He came up with a gem of a respone.

"Hmmmm.....is it for a boy or a girl?".

I gave up, "Can you get me a measuring tape"

"Yeah but 28 is different for boys and girls"

"I know, but the measuring tape is the same, right. I'll take a size 5, 6, and 7 and see which one would fit waist 28."

Somehow, he understood. In two minutes, he came back with a big grin, "We don't have a tape, but I enquired with the store manager and she says it should be size 1"

My jaw dropped. Size 8 and size 1, how can both of them correspond to waist 28?

But then, in the true Americans-are-great-sales-men tradition, he got a jeans whose waist was 28, matched seam to seam with the pants I was holding and convinced me that the correct size was 1. I quickly unlearnt all that I had learnt in the Lee store.

Then came a pretty sales girl asking if she could help me. I caught her and narrated my tale of how I was hopelessly in love with a girl back home in India and how I hopelessly wanted to buy her a pair of trousers and how I just knew the waist size. She smiled, one of the sweetest smiles you'd ever see.

"Mine is 25 and I wear size 0, so 28 should be 3".

My jaw dropped again. "Munde munde matirbhinna", "Many heads, many opinions", as they say in Sanskrit.

But she was a charming girl. So I again told her how she was making my life difficult by once again confusing me. From 8 to 1 to now 3. I had been convinced of 8, had seen it in the chart; re-oriented and got convinced of 1, had seen it match the waist of jeans for 28 waist size and now 3!!!

I even told her that she ought to know as some of her friends would definitely be waist 28 but she thought I was flirting with her and again gave me her sweetest smile. However, there was some ferver in her insistence that 3 was the right size. In the meantime, her male colleague even went to a lady customer who, he thought had a waist size of 28 and asked her about her size. He came back saying that probably 3 was the right one.

In part due to a looming sense of a give-up, in part due to the salesgirl's sweet smile and in part due to effort of the sales guy, I decided that 3 was the right size and went ahead and got some of them.

Now I pray to the Lord Almighty that 3 was indeed, the correct size. As it is, with my aesthtically impaired tastes in dresses, I am not too well poised to be a great gifter and now, if I don't even get the fit right, I wonder for how long will the mother of my prospective children continue playing the gracious recepient of gifts which would only serve to increase junk in her room.

God, save me and Jaan, please bear with me.

I love you.