Ladies, here is a gripe I have, settle it if you may. You want us to call you, not once, not twice, but all the time. The way you expect us to keep you posted would make BBC’s ‘on the hour, every hour’ seem like a rare occurrence.
It’s pretty obvious that I am talking about men and women in a relationship, for we all know that when a man is in the early stages of courtship, his fertility dance auto-engages the requisite circuitry to make him chase the lady incessantly. Call, text, email, (and back in the day, fax) a man trying to woo a girl is a possessed soul, one who shows no resemblance to his original self. Ask your friends guys, they will testify.
But once we are in a relationship, we slip back into being ourselves. Much like the male tiger who has just brought home a hunt, and then proceeds to eat his share before going off to sleep, while the family gets to graciously graze over his leftovers. Sigh, what a life and we have the audacity to call them animals! But in a somewhat similar display of pride through victory, once a man manages to win the heart of his beloved, he returns to his position of social slumber.
If we were to comb through history, we’d find that even though a lot of contributions in the field of communications came from men, it isn’t something that was utterly close to the male of our species. Even after inventing the telephone, all Mr Graham Bell could think of saying on his first trans-Atlantic call was a one-word, ‘Hello’. Even before that in ancient Greece, a man ran 26 miles to deliver a message after which he promptly died, giving rise to a massively popular sporting activity — the marathon — but nobody remembers what the message was. Why? Because it was probably men writing that bit of history.
So the long and short of it is that men can communicate to the point a message that needs to be conveyed. But beyond that, to indulge in chatter for the sake of it, or to merely call, because one can simply escapes us as even a possibility. And this is where the rouse lies for women who think that men, if left to themselves, would either crash a system or wreck a civilisation.
Somehow, I can relate with that feeling; I feel the same way towards Juno, my (I mean, our) pup (she’s quite the feisty beagle) and any two minutes of silence mostly mean that she is up to something, usually not good. And so it is with men; women expect no better from us and hence require us to keep them ‘in the loop’. Then they expect us to sugarcoat these calls with sweet nothings. Honestly, if every average guy could come up with that much candy-talk, he’d sooner out write Shakespeare at sonnets!
Add to our general genetic disinterest with calling the other inherent trait of not remembering and you have quite the explosive combination. I know, I am still in the doghouse for my recent phone fiascos. I am trying to make it up but the lady is diffident with only distant signs of acquiescing.
And so continues the vicious cycle; we men don’t comply with the rules set and when pulled up, we proffer our own logical set to replace the existing set which only further serves to exasperate matters. The result is endless fights and disagreements and a general sense of familial disarray. Women, for one last time, for the sake of my masculine ilk and at the risk of ending up in the doghouse for an indefinitely prolonged period of time, here is my request: would it really hurt you to ease up a bit and not expect us men to keep in touch as efficiently as you would like us to?
As for fellow men, here is some advice in the meantime — don’t mind if you forget to call and are being lashed out at for it. The most important thing to do is to not react and just take it gently, or as we like to euphemistically state, like a gentleman. As a long-married soul and also my best friend Akshay Sethi (after being inspired by the Hulk) taught me, the trick is to remember that as men we are always in the doghouse. From that point, it’s all way up.
