Column

One of the best email forwards I have ever received lists out popular aphorisms and a perfectly equal and opposite counterpart for each of them.

One of my favourites is “You’re never too old to learn” which is in exact juxtaposition to “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Recent revelations have just made me coin another one (hopefully an original!). “A woman is a woman’s worst enemy” is as true as “A woman is a woman’s best friend.”

I am currently occupied with the most dreaded of all life activities in Mumbai; moving house! Anyone who has been through it, (or reads horror headlines like Can’t Buy Can’t Rent in DNA!) knows what an ordeal it is.

Along with the usual suspects like sky-high rents, society NOCs and oily brokers, are the million smaller concerns of throwing out old favourite shorts due to space shortage, packing perfume bottles carefully so that the favourite Mitsouko bottle doesn’t break and the vital importance of yellow lighting in the house as a mood enhancer as opposed to the dull hospital sheen of tube lights that adorn many rented apartments.

And no one gets the nuances of these seemingly innocuous things like the gals do. The minute my girlfriends heard about the move, they all just rolled up their sleeves and jumped in to help. Be it flying into town to help me pack, accompanying me to brokers, offering to let me stay with them (no matter how small their homes) or simply easing my anxiety by dressing up as a Zulu princess to make me laugh, they are all chipping in.

And these are not even all people who I meet or speak with on a daily basis. But when the shit hits the fan they are there because on a very basic level they understand and empathise.

As opposed to this, most of the men in my life are either reluctant hands-off helpers or have vamoosed altogether. I’d like to think this is not because they are heartless and cold but simply because they don’t understand our irrational fears.

And more importantly as I learned, deep down they resent women who are in control of their lives. Maybe it makes them feel redundant or powerless, who knows? After all a large part of the male identity is centred around being a material provider, and therefore calling the shots. Once they are not in the driver’s seat, they don’t know what to do.

As my grizzly editor (who also happens to be a storehouse of some very original truisms) said once, “Deep down my dear, when all the socially sanctioned emotions and relations are done away with, men don’t really like women and that’s the truth of the man-woman equation”.

And to think that world over, women dream, wait and trip other women up in their march towards that one Mr. Right who will ‘be there’ for them! Maybe that’s why the smartest of them keep him by their side by playing the helpless damsel role to Oscar-worthy perfection throughout their lives.

But for some of us Scarlett O’Haras, there is no time or leisure to play the coquette once it’s a question of survival. We just get in the saddle and get going. Of course it would be nice to have a man hold our hand and soothe our fears along the way. But nonetheless we do get by with a little help from our friends!
deblina@dnaindia.net