Men in Shorts - warning - nothing to do with Cricket

Men in shorts do something for me.

And before you get any ideas, I am not talking about lithe limbs encased in skimpy gear challenging my modesty, you know the type. No, those don't do anything for me.

I am talking about something quite special, and weird. If you know me by now, these two adjectives are irrevocably linked.

Sometimes when I am coming back from office, all a-fluster about some or the other traffic nightmare, or cabbie or auto-wallah, or getting home at 10 pm instead of 9.30 as planned, I catch a glimpse of a man or two, maybe in-between forty and forty-five years of age, flecks of gray starting to show, wearing a colorful half-sleeved shirt, with Hawaiian prints or something. You know. And shoes without socks. And of course, those shorts.

He is usually up to something mundane - walking the dog, picking up groceries, kicking up the scooty. 

It fills me with a strange longing. To have a life. Where I can come back home by 7.30, still early evening, with the hope of doing something productive and useful and fun with the rest of it. To have a home, to be able to get chores done on a weekday too. To keep work where it belongs. The way I have seen my father do it for as long as I can remember. In shorts.