26 Jun 2025 / Shooting the Breeze

lADYLOVE

My relationship with women has forever been this: ambivalent, awkward, irritating, frustrating, befuddling. I have never been able to fathom them, never related to their mannerisms. Worse, had zero interest or desire to. Even worse on occasion I have been too dumb to respond to rizz. The only woman I have truly loved has been my mother but there were flashes of irritation with her as well. I have never chased women. Fleetingly desired them in a bloodrush, yes, chased never. My narcissism, loner type of nature, chance and fear of rejection and being absolutely petrified of shrill clinginess (they all have it, it is intrinsic) ensured self-preservation and precluded any thought of even mild flirtation. On more banal, pedestrian planes, I must also tell you – I cross my heart and say this with absolute truth and nothing except the clear, unalloyed truth -- women are inherently, therefore consummately far more twisted than men. Their worlds are hyper-active, multi-pronged. I’ll attempt an illustration: imagine a play which is an elongatd edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear, Medea of Euripides, Hedda Gabler, and Ghosts of Ibsen superimposed by Chekhov’s The Seagull, and Three Sisters. A crushing state overlaid with incessant recitals by Bianca Castafiore. Terrible. Unbearable. As I gain greater traction on the runway of life I realize it is just that in very great measure we are wired very differently. That women run the world and that the universe is female {if there could be a gender to the universe, that is}. I think deep down I have been afraid of them and I remain so to a degree. I am afraid because of reasons I don’t know, but I am. Naturally, I undersand that they are neiter madonna nor whore, just defined by the caution: arium et mutabile semper femina {woman is ever a fickle and changeable thing}. Womanly wiles are a minefield. Behind reticent coyness and feigned vulnerability, they are the engine of the Greek concept best articulated in Latin: “Sic mundus creatus est” {This is how the world is created}. By sleight, by manipulation, by entrapment, by descent.

None of this is blatantly wrong, none of this is unnatural and none of this should be held against them. It should simply be understood as true. Caution and caveat, therefore. As for the world, I have neither felt nice about the world (save very few aspects) and have never belonged. While I have always feigned engagement, it has been with a view of self-preservation by force and way of economics, nothing more than that. I have no friends, I do not seek them. Of relatives, I have a remaining few, entirely inconsequential and irrelevant. The majority held me in disdain – I was never their class and I never believed in kissing arse. There are none I am connected with or care about. I live in an intensely island universe ---- in the head, in the heart and in this city. My world is solitude, my library, my animals, my carefully cultivated biophilia. Not everything is grey or mottled in any way, it is just that I prefer my laughter and sunshine drawn from in-parallel and clearly other sources. For a man seeking non-being or if that’s impossible from this vantage, to settle for the golden ratio – 1.618 Phi. I am on an impossibly long and extractive trudge; hopeless most of the time. And one that can certainly do away with disruptions.

To return to the female gender, women are more than just the world, they are creation and state of being. To my continual misfortune, even terminating once mutually beneficial, close to symbiotic relationships with them have always been fraught with a great deal of wear-tear. I recall one such with a teacher of English literature I had seduced in high school. Not a hollow claim – I was young (obviously), good looking (girls endorsed it), had a gift of the gab and used my wits (I have lived by my wits), was very well read (early habits) and capable of striking engaging conversations as equally as flying under the radar. More, I was not the awkward, gawky, pimply, schoolboy on hormones. I kept my impulses in control, practised sight disdain even. Now that you have reasonable context, let me return to the incident of jettisoning sugar mommy. I remember this too well, the slap as answer to my recital for redundancy of amour and interest: “afterall, my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished, must we say it wasn’t love, just because it perished ?” Impulse was to wack her hard but I liked to consider myself a gentleman early on. Going further back, my earliest memory of the opposite side would be the closing year of 1960s. Two classmates at General Raj’s School in the days New Delhi’s Green Park colony was still vast open land and one could walk short-cuts right up to the Safdarjung Aerodrome fording the beautiful stream {Kushak nala}. Reena was sweet to me and Baxi, was sweet on me. I don’t recall anything much about the two except that Reena would cry when Baxi would appropriate me, that Baxi was a towering amazonian who force-fed me horrible tasting banana chips cooked in coconut oil which is a Kerala staple. And that Reena’s kohl rimmed eyes would streak the kohl on her cheeks as she bawled. She looked scary then. I tried to avoid them both unsuccessfully until I befriended a senior girl from the second standard who allowed me to hang out with her in exchange for my lunch. Around the same time, was my ayah, she lasted a brief period because she’d scare me and lock me up in a room. These early unfortunate misadventures were succeeded by complete indifference to the oppoosite sex for the remainder of my life until my mid-teens. A sucession of crushes then, which never fructified. At 16 a girlfriend -- I fell for her breasts rather than her. She had an excellent pair, bettered much later in life by a steady who continues to age rather well. After that, a blur of bodies laced with sex. Now, I have miniscule appetite for sex, primarily because of the aftermath of release – they want to snuggle, you want to turn your back. They want to cling, you want to flee. They try hard to make you feel beholden, you just want to begone. I can only commiserate with those who are controlled by lust.

So, the aspect of women in my life is nothing remarkable, except for common denominators – they tried to (succeeded to degrees) get under my skin, influence my life, got me to indulge and pamper them, suffer their tantrums,waste money, time, energy and then out-grow them. Many of them, as time went along, wanted entrapment of marriage. I narrowly escaped by the skin-of-my-teeth. There were rings and pre-nuptial bands and dates and promises. I realised/wriggled out of all…I survived them all. Only to fall into marriage at age 47. Now, I consider myself a very fortunate man ----- I live with the Goldilocks Effect {neither too close nor too far}. So at the end of it, I am left with my steady, with a wife {dear God’s mercy, no children} and my own groove. Fingers crossed. Lesson learnt, insight gained, I move. Notions of Forever mortify me. I have sought and I have affected escape from it all my life. Forever binds a man irrevocably, for all eternity. Only imbeciles covet Forever…there’s no Forever…Forever is hell. Besides, and then, if I ever even chose a lease instead of free-hold version of Forever, I’d not be my own man anymore…. I shall never, never ever, not ever, trade that freedom.