Of Men and Women

Pawan Verma

Life is indeed cruel to men. When they are born, their mothers get compliments and flowers, when they get married, their brides get presents and publicity and when they die; their wives get the sympathy and the insurance money. I sincerely believe that whosoever termed the fair sex as the weaker sex has done an unfair thing since the weaker sex is indeed the stronger sex because of the weakness of the stronger sex for the weaker sex.

The word is full of men who convert this weakness into a life-long bondage, euphemistically called ‘marriage’. Alas, they forget that as bachelors they were very longingly looked upon by the fair sex as ‘a thing of beauty and boy forever’ and they roamed around like a rolling stone that gathers no boss. But, like fools, they rush in into a venture where even angels fear to tread. They are perhaps too innocent to realize that marriage is the name of a game where the man loses his bachelor’s degree and the woman gets her master’s degree.

But different bachelors have different compulsions to walk into this bondage. Sometimes stealing a kiss leads to ‘life imprisonment’ – a perfect example of crime and punishment. Some others walk into this trap after calculating that it is cheaper to marry the girl and keep her home than not to marry and take her out.

But those who marry in haste repent at leisure as well. It is true that marriages are made in heaven but when the couple joins hands on earth, it becomes just another union that defies management. As the resonance of the wedding bells recede into the background the notes of discord start appearing and gradually the ‘better half’ becomes the ‘bitter half’. It does not take long for the man to start wondering what happened to the girl he married and for the girl to wonder what happened to the man she didn’t. But most often the discord happens on account of the average husband’s ambitions to be able to afford what his wife is spending. As it always happens in such cases, the joint account is never over-drawn by the wife; it is always under-deposited by the husband.

Old couples, however, say that such differences between husband and wife are only the spice of conjugal relationships; for, where there is no difference there must be a vast degree of indifference. The harmony arising out of love is the essence that sustains marital happiness. It has certain well-defined secrets. To be happy with a man you must love him a little and understand him a lot. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and understand her a little. Mutual trust and confidence is the other touchstone of marital harmony, as every husband expects himself to be his wife’s first love while every wife hopes herself to be her husband’s last romance.

In the ultimate analysis, however, marriage turns out to be an American cafeteria: you choose what you like, and pay for it later. What you pay and how much you pay depends upon your luck. For, it takes quite a bit of luck to make a wife out of a woman. Remember! God created Woman after Man, and ever since then she has been after man.

Wife-long Affair

Pawan Verma

“Man is born free”, said Rousseau, “but everywhere he is in chains”. The tragedy of man’s eternal bondage, which prompted the French philosopher to utter these words, started with an act of God Himself, when He created Eve out of a rib of Adam, placed her in front of him and said, “Go and choose thy wife”. In recent times, God seems to have delegated His powers to Eve, who now decides everything on behalf of Adam. The other day, in a wedding, as the priest asked the bride if she accepted the groom as her husband, she said, “I do”. When a similar question was put to the groom, she promptly replied, “Yes, he does”.

Yet, it remains a fact that all men are not slaves, some are bachelors also. Those who are lucky in love remain bachelors, realizing that it is better to have loved and lost than to do home work with three children. The ordinary mortal among the men, however, keeps on chasing a woman till she catches him and becomes his WIFE, which is nothing but a euphemistic abbreviation for “Worries Invited For Ever”. It is indeed a pity that while a woman takes 20 years to make a man of her son, another woman makes a fool of him in 20 minutes and hooks him for a husband.

Ideally speaking, all marriages are happy. It is the living together afterwards that causes all the trouble. Before marriage, a girl gets into her fiancé’s wallet as a photo, but after marriage she gets into the wallet herself. As a result, marital life becomes a matter of wife and debt. I know of a friend who didn’t report the theft of his credit card to the police for the simple reason that the thief was spending much less than his wife. Unfortunately, such marriages are doomed to end in divorce. As he loses his capital, she loses her interest.

Yet, there are husbands who profit immensely from their marriage. Their wives, generally speaking, are generally speaking. Quite often, such a husband undergoes considerable intellectual growth after his marriage, as his wife gives him a piece of her mind every day. It is precisely for this reason that King Solomon, backed up by his 100 wives, was considered to be the wisest man on earth. Sure enough, he gave them the best ears of his life.

The essence of marital wisdom lies in the realization that women are always smarter than men : they have figures to prove it. Therefore, any man who thinks that he is smarter than his wife, would indeed be married to a smart woman. Wise husbands discover quite early in their marital career that “man” is only a part of “woman”, that every “madam” has an “Adam” in it, every “she” has a “he” in it and every “lady” contains a ‘lad in it. Such realizations help a man graduate as a “perfect husband” early in life, which in essence means developing a belief that one has got a “perfect wife”.

(First published in Times of India, Edit page, dated 16.05.2001)