Column

This one is strictly for the men who read. It’s time you had a man to man talk with the guys around you. The ones who don’t read, can’t read, won’t read. At least not this column in this paper. Or they would not need the talk.

All right, let me make myself clear. I was in the mother of all traffic jams today, waiting for a cool (not really) 30 minutes to do a stretch of road that should take 3 minutes to cover. Not pleasant on the nerves. My window is rolled down because I am a conservationist at heart. I save fuel on not so hot days like today by switching off the car engine and the air con dies too, of course.

Well, the man in the contract bus next to me sticks his head out of his high window and sends out a stream of rich red paan juice. I see red. Literally. And I shout to him, Hey! I say; it’s a term he will find familiar and react. He does not. The glass on his window prevents him from connecting the sound to me sitting in the car below. I pull up a little more, and shout again. He looks down. Why did you spit? I ask. It’s against the law, and dirty.

His mouth is full again. So all he can do is stare at me, impervious. If he is ashamed, he hides it well. A centimetre or two of progress and I encounter spitter number two.
Looking distantly out of his Santro while he sends his missile out of a window he furtively rolls down and rolls up again. God bless automatic windows, they go back up in the blink of an eye. And I cannot even be heard by him, as his music system chatters on.

That is one kind of guy I want you to talk to. To tell them that spitting went out with the cobras, and humans are engineered to be able to swallow their saliva, and if they chew tobacco, it’s all more the reason to swallow the stuff, because that’s what they deserve.

Now to type number two: I meet him at meetings, in pretty swank places, sometimes in clubs, or hotel lobbies. I don’t always meet with these guys, but boy can I smell them.

Now, there are two kinds of men who can make the olfactory nerves react violently.

The first kind believes sweat is manly. So he does not care to disguise the fact that he has been running in the gym and has had no time for a shower, and radiates intensely, despite the rarefied air-conditioned air of a five star lounge. Or perhaps he just has overactive sweat glands and is actually proud of the fact.

The second kind believes that the Axe ads are for real. He wears his longing for female company on his chest, his underarms, and behind his collar, and comes in reeking stronger than a skunk on heat. I don’t know if he does manage to turn someone on, but I tend to sneeze, and my eyes water in a purely chemical reaction of the sort he might never have in mind. It reminds me of the times I used to sit in the girls’ common room in college, and sneeze at the vapours that would filter through from the chemistry lab next door.

Please, if you can, dear male reader, tell such men, if you encounter them (and I am sure you do), that this ‘come on’ they imagine is decidedly not so. Ask any woman, and she will agree.

The list is long, as men have so many ways of intruding into other’s private spaces. I shall, for the sake of space, limit myself to one more type. The kind who literally stands on you when they talk. Ask this kind a casual question, like excuse me, which way to the bus stop, and he will walk up, nay stride up and stand on our toes. Move back and he closes the distance instantly. Block his way by going behind a pole or post or partition and he will lean forward like a coconut tree in strong breeze.

Wonder if this is one interpretation some men have of a woman’s magnetic personality!
Please, please tell these chaps, that distance makes the heart beat steady, and closeness of this variety breeds contempt.

And if you come across that species that holds two or more of these qualities as part of his mental makeup, please find a reason to send him on an expedition to Antarctica orTimbuktu or Jhumri Talaya, where they may know what to do with the likes of him.
I, and many others like me, self respecting, serious-minded women living in the Shanghai of tomorrow, Don’t.

Email: ssaran@dnaindia.net