Al Ngullie
International Women’s Day always reminds me of my own limitations as a man: every time Mom leaves for Kohima, you can be sure cooking my own dinner also means my kitchen would later be standing solemnly half-razed to the ground.; or my bacteria-rich clothes piled up at the doorway for the reason that I don’t know which washing detergent brand should be used – so often I have no option but to wear to office dirt-happy shirts which at best looks like they would bear a rich harvest of mushrooms at any given time; getting home from work after a mind-numbing day late midnight, find the house dark, no dinner and no caring words and hugs waiting at the door, isn’t the best of moments when Mom’s not around. No wonder with all these limitations we the guys stood disqualified from being bestowed so great a designated day as International women’s Day.
But no, don’t misunderstand me. Just because I cited instances based on domesticity it doesn’t mean I’m closeting women as being expected to conform only to domesticity and nothing else. For me women are the greatest things that ever happened since Eve walked down Eden with a designer fig leaf and billions of ages later, walk corporate power corridors, man administrative systems, head nations and wallop men in the scientific field et al. Not forgetting to be fair to men folks, men like me of course are no less capable of achieving such heights – we are intelligent and strong enough to make our own decisions and…er… regret it later too. Anyway, forget that small miscalculation and let’s just concentrate on women.
For me women are the ultimate embodiment of mystery and beauty – inscrutable and full of Avon make-up. However one thing that really gets me is that how could so petite a form as a woman’s or in the context of my age… girls, could contain so much complexity ranging from deliberate stupidity to inherent ingenuity, confounding inscrutability to irritating naivety, warm buffoonery to witch-like temperament et al. For instances, you kiss your girl and she’ll probably shout at you for ‘wanting’ to have a bout of pillow-and-bed sheet-adventure but if you don’t kiss her, she’ll demand of you whether or not you have found another girl; they punch out your assets when you don’t call them up and when you do, they accuse of looking for attention all the time; she’ll cry if her childhood teddy bear falls of the table but remains calm should someone dear pass away; they know how to soothe when you are down but turns into a Draculian witch should you smudge her fingernail polish; Don’t you wonder? Well, don’t wonder unless you want to have the solar system’s entire population of feminists screeching for your blood.
Ever since staring my writing career, I have had a couple of memorable run-ins with some females of the species, who according to old jungle saying are deadlier than a flock of hyperactive witches who’d just had their make-up kits stolen. The encounters were serious: many readers labeled me a feminist-hater and some sections a woman-hater, Fortunately, I still haven’t gotten around to differentiating the two. How I wish they also knew that guys had also launched campaigns to have my two much-beloved front teeth shoved out for writing ‘against men.’ Now that leaves me half-way up near the ‘It’ factor. It never pays to be walking the middle path. Maybe that’s why I’m trying to secure a Swiss citizenship.
Anyway, to err is human and to forgive, unthinkable. But it’s only natural the positive sides of women be discussed too. Women have been associated with infinite philanthropist contribution to the world. Their outreach is simply amazing. They sustain beauty business employees: womankind will always be beautiful in the eyes of creation as long as Avon stays in business. They also keep husbands/boyfriends/men active and healthy by forcing them to do the dishes and mob the house; justify the purpose of flowers particularly roses.
Women have also shaped history in many a way: Troy was reduced to ashes because of Helen; Cleopatra in her quest for eternal beauty nearly wiped out every possible milk-giving donkey in Egypt etc. In the modern times too new scientific areas have been charted like Cosmetology, Liposuctlogy, Silicon and in literature How-to-bash-your-boyfriend manuals and handbooks; in politics, how to pressurized Laloo Prasad to make his wife Babri, as Bihar Chief Minister again; in Atomic research, new discoveries about different ways to destroy the kitchen with that particularly deadly recipe given by magazines like Femina or New Woman ; in space research and aeronautics, how to make men fly all over the solar system with a particularly heady, eyes-goggling kiss and in the field of media, encouraging journalists to write about women in a fresh way and then get ready for the brickbats to come crashing through the glass etc etc.
But what’s the greatest gift of women to women kind? Beauty, joy, hope, company, friendship? Yes all, but more than that, Life. Yes, Life. Beautiful life.
