Today is being celebrated as World Women's Day. From the movie Gulaab Gang featuring a tough woman fighting the injustice of the world, to a million other things including special restaurant menus and all women discounts, the whole world is a noisy celebration put up to put down man.
All I can say is Bah. Yes. Bah. Like in Mis'Bah ul Haq the Pakistani captain who roundly lost the Asia Cup to a better side. Similarly we men feel an utter emptiness and the cruel injustice of this world when women have these celebrations.
You see, history is a total conspiracy to malign man. I think the trouble started with Eve. When it was read out from the scripture that Eve caused Adam's downfall, the story-teller felt a big whack on his head. It was the nearest woman with a blackened cooking pan. That story-teller breathed his last even without as much as a Bah. Ever since then, women hold a grouse against mankind. Note that they call it mankind. When they could very well have called it womankind. Perhaps they felt woman and kind don't go together.
Now look at the 21st century man. He is comprehensively screwed by society.
1. He is blamed for all the economic ills.
2. He is blamed for all the wars.
3. He is blamed for the traffic jams, he is pulled up for coming home late after being stuck in jams.
4. He is measured and reported to be spending only 18 minutes a day on house work. When his boss, the woman has all the time to do it! Bah. Rather she wants to spend her time rankling that man is goofing off outside. When all that he is doing is some bumbling job and then starting and getting stuck in traffic jams.
In Bombay I was introduced to a series of bars that litter the commuter route home. I believe the men get so depressed about the thanklessness of it all that they go get drunk and then go home.
It's not only Bombay. Even in Tokyo, men (and even women, bless them) go to bars and drinking sessions every day after work. To forget the hopelessness of life before they reach their beds at night. So Japanese colleagues are always together, 6 days a week.
And the women? They fuss over their children. To make them strong, efficient men. Forget the girls. Nobody cares. Everyone knows they are privileged. It's the men who have to join the race and become rats.
I also don't understand this whole business of house work. If you psychoanalyse any man, you will find out that he is ALWAYS thinking about house work. He is full of ideas and alternatives. And so much so that it is a case of analysis paralysis.
And don't let the man come into the kitchen. He will burn the food, mess up everywhere, and leave the kitchen such a ruin that the woman will have all eternity to remind him of how he messed up the kitchen.
Talking of eternity, this famous Thinking Man by Rodin is a wonderful metaphor. I think it shows the quintessential feeling of emptiness that man is feeling, as he contemplates his condition. Dennis the Menace explains to Joey who asks, "what's the man thinking about?" "He's trying to remember where he left his clothes."
I bet there will never be a sculpture of a woman who was wondering where she left her jewellery or fancy clothes or whatever. Because she will head to the nearest fancy store and get replacements. After all it's Women's Day!
