WOMEN (by a man)
by habib khan

We were all men.

We were a bunch of men finishing up cappuccinos in an art café behind Lahore's red light area on a winter's night. We were together after five years. We were tastelessly dressed. We were all effortlessly light intellectuals. We were talking about women.

"A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child, but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters." The speaker ducked with arrogantly lithe reflexes at the two napkins hurled at him in disgust. But he continued undaunted. "Hey! That's Lord Chesterfield advising his son, no less. And if you ask me he knew his stuff. Women…" he paused with melodramatic flair, "are there for breeding purposes. Let's not intellectualize it. I have a dream…" his voice rose commandingly and loudly above Nusrat Fateh Ali's on the speakers, "I have a dream that someday the sons of men all over America and beyond shall stand in line at giant breeding farms, choose, and rejoice. And next week choose again." He bowed his head solemnly, "Amen."

When he looked up grinning we were all staring at him pityingly or laughing. He had just gotten back from California and he had always been like this. "You," I said showing our man of opinion my set of teeth, "can be used convincingly as an argument against democracy."

The gauntlet was then picked up by our pal from the East Coast, always a little confused and as is often the case with confused types, very generous of heart and sensitive. "Women…." he said clenching his fists and then unclenching them. "Women…." We looked at him expectantly. "Have you ever heard of Jean Baudrillard?" he countered? We looked at each other. "Isn't he the French center forward?" Lord Chesterfield's devotee ventured hopefully. "No, he is a semiologist. Never mind. But he said that every woman is like a time zone. She is a nocturnal fragment of your journey. She brings you unflaggingly closer to the next night."

A car with a broken silencer went by but somehow the noise fit in. "Heavy," someone said after a moment. "No doubt it goes deeper then even the collective unconsciousness. The need for women and the emotions they evoke in you or the way they get to you. I tell you the best way to figure out this tortuous equation is not to figure it out. And you know that's what most men do in the end isn't it?"

"Heavy" concurred his lordship.

"Ah but I do have them figured out!"

Enter the best-dressed man at the table. He was wearing black and always seemed to have a half smile. He had always been lethal with girls. We had stopped tracking his amorous affairs after a while when it became painfully obvious that the tally was considerably more then that of the rest of us combined. "You see, women regardless of IQ, social background, culture, and inclination have one massive fatal flaw - an Achilles heel the size of Baluchistan. Their endlessly recurring Waterloo. If you know it gentlemen, you can go home every weekend as victorious as the Duke of Wellington. You see…." He paused to sip his coffee, "The way to a conquering a woman lies through her sadness. Women just love being sad. Maybe it is the result of centuries of oppression by us that this has somehow genetically evolved into a universal trait, but give them half a cause and they become victims. So learn their particular sadness. They'll always have one. Take your time, pace yourself. And when you identify it, tell them you understand. And bingo!" He looked into his mug and peered hopefully at mine, "Troy falls!"

I looked at him approvingly as everyone pondered this. "And a word of advice," he continued undaunted. "If you don't want to get serious, there is a sign. The moment she plucks idly at that strand of invisible lint at your coat while you're waiting for your table to get free at the restaurant, I tell you it's time to bail out. Run! THAT is a sure shot sign of the beginnings of ownership."

"You know," we turned to look at the guy with gold rimmed frames who sat at the head of the table, "He is right. And hell he has the notches on his belt to prove it." The friend in black smiled and bowed, "But that is more because women aren't really women anymore, are they? Either they lose themselves to being caricatures of men. Or they get hopelessly lost in the cult of individuality that inevitably comes with a proto-existentialist western education. I don't want to get into that. But I have known women and I tell you don't dismiss them."

There was a reason he was at the head of the table. We always deferred to him and gave him that extra bit of respect given to people who get a 1580 on the SAT with random commitment and have to choose agonisingly between Yale and CalTech. "Women when they seriously think, use both sides of the brain. Men use only one. They are biologically a couple of years ahead of us in maturity. I have met women who have not met their match in men but always men who have met their match in women. I have always been an achiever, but this I know, that as men the maximum we achieve is the naive mastery of the illusion of courage - women, on the other hand, are truly capable of passion, cunning, understanding, boldness and non-conformity. They are so rare it is sad. But they are out there. And hey…." He shrugged " they're prettier then us and less hairy!"

"Bravo!" I laughed and raised a toast to that. On the way out we had to put the Californian in a stranglehold because he was trying to explain to us how he was going to run the breeding farms.

It had been a good night.