I'm a lazy feminist

I can't set right a bulb if it gets loose in its holder. Nor can I do much if a tap starts leaking or its washer takes in too much mud and sediment and allows water through at nothing better than a trickle. Ditto with other aspects of plumbing. Or drive a car, or a bike for that matter. Or trouble-shoot when the laptop is playing truant. Netbanking is another sore point.No points for guessing that I'm pretty much the most useless thing around in the house if you have friends coming over for dinner and some loose ends need to be tied up.The problem is that I see several women around me who do these things perfectly well. And without a fuss or a false sense of achievement. That is where it begins to hurt. Because growing up in as-patriarchal-as-it-comes Bihar (later Jharkhand) the easiest form of any errand was when, as some wisecrack would put it 'yeh to ek ladki bhi kar legi'.I have no idea when patriarchy decreed that these were the kind of errands a man should be able to do as easily as buttoning his shirt. Why did patriarchy, if it has answers to everything else, not know that some people are plain clumsy with their hands, fingers, digits etc. etc. I'm one of them. It takes me time to untie knots, and also to tie them. I was always bad with those rope lessons we were routinely asked to do as part of rudimentary scouts training in school.On a serious note, this conferment of 'manliness' to certain jobs as part of patriarchy creates the 'alpha male'. The type of guy who moves about like a man on a mission at marriages, or the chap who wants to fix everyone's drinks at parties or decides whether the women in the group have had one peg or one cigarette too many. The quintessential 'bade bhaiya' in several Indian families. And as someone who has been laidback all his life, the need to compete with this alpha male to become a better, more iron-fisted version was something that riled me at most social functions while growing up in Bihar.Small mercy however is that I can take it on my chin. So every time something happens that requires expert patriarchy-trained hands, I'm more than willing to step up to the table of equality and give a lady a crack at it. Bigger mercy is that most women are more than willing to go for it.Which, wink-wink, makes me lazier and that is not something I'm complaining about. Which makes me proud to announce that my steady opposition to any form of patriarchy and its logic-less demands and my fight for equality for women of all hues has made me lazy."Come on, you women now fly jets, run trains, drive cars, ride superbikes, so why the hell can't you just fix that without me having to get my hands dirty?" is my favourite contribution to this fight against patriarchy. Thankfully, so far so good because most women believe in my 'noble' cause. Which just means that the next time something needs fixing, I'm going to fall back on the P-word and how all the women need to fight it tooth and nail.

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