Women: Can't live without them. Can't leave them.

Celebrating Women’s Day

This is what my friends, who happen to be males, say about women. This Women's Day, I am bringing you some facets of women from a male's point of view. If you are a feminist or feminazi, I suggest you stay away from it because it is an unabashed, non-censored and in-your-face view. Nope, it isn't caustic, it is the truth. Why was it needed? Because we have been doing too much in the name of women empowerment and forgetting what it is like to be a man in the times when women, who are educated and have means, are getting away with almost everything, such as blaming men for a harmless push in a crowded bus and calling it an attempt to rape whereas women who aren't educated or don't know their rights, are still where we left them, with no basic rights to live, let alone the freedom of speech.

Anyways, let's come back to our story and having three protagonists-  A, S and M. A has recently started dating a woman who is three years older to him whereas S recently got married and M is meeting with different women so that he could find the perfect one to get married. They all are in their 30s and well, troubled because of women in their lives. While they admit that they are happy too well, you know, why (!), the troublesome part of late has been too much to handle and they are cribbing about it here as they think their women are creating nuisance in their lives for all nonsensical things that don't mean anything in the first place.

Celebrating Women’s Day

A:

She doesn't know how to live in the present. I am leaving for the U.S. for three months and she has already started to cry about the time when I won't be here. For heaven's sake, can we just make some love and have a good conversation while I am here?

Every time she is at my place and we plan to spend a fun weekend, she ruins it all by complaining that how society looks at us as we aren't as per the norms! Bhai, itna problem hai toh bolna tha parents ko to plan you three years later! Since I don’t have any problem, I don’t complain and I have no intention to confront my parents about not giving me birth about three years earlier so that we could be of same age.

And yes, the body issues! The other day, she spoiled it all while we were out in a mall because a helper lady at the counter asked her if she has taken the correct size! Meri waat lag gayi free mein because she asked me if she were fat. Yes, the dreaded question that nobody in my fraternity has been able to answer until now. Can't lie. Can't say the truth. See, if you have so much trouble with how you look, start working out for the body you want to flaunt.  Or accept the fact that I like you the way you are, or otherwise why would I be with you and texting you till 4am while I have 8am flight to catch in the morning? Yes, I have done that.

 

Not so long back, we happened to visit a college and where I just randomly said that item khadi hai wahan!

And I immediately regretted it the moment I said those words but the damage was done. I know it could be just me and my mistake that I still try to find the woman in her I was friends with before we got romantically involved with each other. I didn’t even remember the face of that girl after five minutes but she went on and was totally pissed. She fought with me for this over two weeks and when I encountered that how I have found her staring at bearded men, she had no answer! I don’t ogle but it was a guy thing I just happened to blurt. Why can’t she be happy in the fact that my loyalty lies in her.  There might be women better than her and not-so-better as well.  But for me, she is the perfect one and that’s why we are dating, right?

 

S:

You know what they say about marriages. No, not the heaven part that how it is shaadi ka ladoo jo khaaye wo bhi and blah blah. I didn’t want to get married and she didn’t either. But there was pressure, and we gave in.  She decided to leave her job and that’s when it all became about me and I lost the power to comprehend certain things, especially when we argued and fought over silly things such as a Facebook comment by one of my female friends who told me that I looked handsome in beard.  Yeah, a comment by a female friend who is in the U.S. and is just a friend and married as well!

It is not that she was sitting idle, she had some freelance work to do but it is just that the frustration of not having a job in her hand was freaking her out. She wouldn’t understand if I have a meeting at 8pm and would want me home by 6pm so that we can go out for a dinner during weekdays! Moreover, if I don’t want to do a particular thing that she wants, it becomes all about me and I hit a new low every time.  Yaar, kabhi toh lagne lagta hai, kitna niche girunga main!

Suddenly going to the gym is superficial because I don’t need to tone up now and if I do, I am doing that to impress other ladies! C’mon yaar, I am working 12 hours a day and I eat junk food. I need to be fit! I don’t want to be paunchy in my 30s!

Wait let me tell you one thing, when she doesn’t know how to make a comeback; it all comes down to my mental age and capability of understanding things. After this reply, I guess even nuclear weapon would fail in front of such verbal assault.

I can’t tell you I have slept at least 10 times on the couch in the living room in two months of marriage! Night out has become a rarity and a privilege because I have to wait for her to go to her parents and leave me alone!

 

M:

You don’t know how difficult it is to go out with a woman and I am meeting at least three for dinner every week!  Most of them are blind dates, set by my parents or through app. I have seen them in the pictures but in my case, real have been totally different from the reel, literally! So, this woman I went out with, for a couple of times, was fun and interesting to be with and she would be totally against sharing the bills but madam ko cab book karani ho from Malad to Colaba, then her phone would crash and when it comes to paying the roadside vendors, she would never have the exact change! Not even once!

Yaar women empowerment karni hai toh dhang se karo na. Aadha adhura karke kya ukhad loge!

And there would be sneaky demands like, “OhMiGod! You have latest iPhone? I toh don’t have this much money yaa! If we go strong, I will get one from you ya!” “What are you gifting me for my birthday?” Every ex she had was a loser from her view, which irritated me because I think all of my exes were marvelous and they taught me a lot of things about life and women, in general.

Nope, it is not overreacting because when you get to listen to such things on a daily basis, you get irritated off to the limits.

I remember a lady who had problems with my exes. I asked her if she never had an affair to which she took an offense. Wow! You can judge me for the time I spent with other women but the men you spent time with are off limits! That’s not equality, my friend.  That’s sheer insecurity in women and harassment of men!

women day

What I have to say?

We were talking about women but I was the only woman present there physically and it was difficult to hear such things against them but you know what, I am also guilty of such things in some way or another. While we can just leave it all behind blaming it on womanly traits, do we also accept the manly traits we don’t like much?  Can we stop trying to change them as well? Can we not make all of them lech as they generalize women of not being a good driver and ruining their freedom so much that they can’t have a men’s night out when you are in the same town? Women have body issues and I am grappling with some too but just because somebody has a better body and if your man thinks so, why don’t you work towards it rather than asking him to close his eyes?

Yes, I am going to be lot under fire because of this tirade, but this needed to be said. It had to come out of my system so that we know that while we are celebrating International Women’s Day today, the struggles of men are very real too and not superficial ones. That too when, we haven’t avoided the gloomy aspects and chose to stick to day-to-day mundane stuff. Our duties towards the women don’t end with those wishes on Facebook or Twitter and a ribbon on our shirt but empowerment can never come by leaving a section behind and making it feel despicable.

P.S. While the incidents are real, very real, the names are withheld on request because I don’t want to make these men’s lives any more problematic just because they chose to cry on my frail shoulder. And yes, resemblance to people is not coincidental and the blogger intends to outrage and shake the feeling of people of both genders.