O! What a Mess.

The other woman.

You would want to claw her eyes out. Curse the heavens for handing you a lemon so bitter. Life will feel sooooooooo unfair and it would be impossible to move on. Why did it have to happen to you?

You have been such a good girl all your life . . . WHY GOD WHY?? You would constantly ask Him and there would be no rest and no way to come to terms with it until you have had your sweet REVENGE.

Well, I too am plotting a sweet revenge but not against any of the fairer sex. Its one of the unfair sex that has put me in such a dilemma. Don’t get the wrong picture, its nothing physical, but this guy is definitely psyching me out mentally. Before revealing his identity here’s a conversation I have with him everyday. I am not kidding. Everyday that I have been on the ship and that’s 69 days now, he creeps up to me and rhetorically declares the same opinion -

Him: You know madam, you should try your hand at cooking for all of us someday, so the cook and me can have some rest.

Me: I told you I don’t know how to cook

Him: Then what, how is that? Do you not feed the chief officer? How does he eat at home?

Me: We have a cook at home.

Him: Then you should make something for us.

Me: I said I don’t know how to cook.

Him: Then, Chief Officer must be hungry all the time at home as his wife cant cook.

I stomp off exasperatedly.

I am not kidding. 69 days means I have had this same talk with him 69 times now but he relentlessly perseveres to hunt me down everyday and pounce the same bogglers. So my proclamation of being mentally psyched is not overrated. For those of you who have not guessed it by now, he is this ship’s old and very irritating messman.

Apart from chiding me on my cooking skills, he also informs what time my husband comes back to the cabin. Like DUHHHHHHHHH! I am his wife who lives in the same cabin and I am very much capable of telling time. When the big needle is on 12 , and the small one is on . . . . Anyways that’s not the point. He supervises anything I make for my husband, even a sandwich, and proceeds to tell me how the chief prefers it. He considers my husband his dear Chief Officer, and that’s how the chief likes his tea, he proudly announces.

He desperately tries to rope in the cook as well to prove his non existent point. But the cook, being Lord’s good man keeps his mouth safely shut. Maybe also, to save his sanity as he has to work with this slightly loony man all day who truly believes and exploits ‘Freedom of Speech’.

The other day he innocently let me know that one of the mates’ wife on his previous ship had got him fired off the ship . I certainly don’t blame her. It gives me hope. There is a God after all!

Just as I am finishing this piece there is a knock on the door and I go to open it. Well, the devil himself. He hands me our monthly ration of soaps which we are allotted. Then he gives me an extra one, smiling brightly. I said I don’t need an extra one. He looks at me squarely in the eye, and lets me know.

" I am not giving you, its for my Chief Officer"

I rest my case.

P.S. Just for the record I can make very good egg, pasta salad, cakes, chicken curry, chapatti and tea. But I was not going to let him have any of it. My revenge. Also, my husband couldn’t care less for the extra soap as he is fine with anything that lathers and cleans him. I could give him a detergent bar and he would happily bathe with that. So I win, you bonky messman! HA HA.

The Rule of the Mane

It’s evening. And I am leaving office. A well known voice calls out to me and starts chatting. Well OK, I have some time for a little bit of this and a tiny bit of that, so I stop. After some perfunctory conversation, the voice casually mentions the dryness of my hair and puts an enormous effort in giving some well-meaning suggestions to smooth and silky (dandruff-free!) hair. I wouldn’t deny that it is an unruly mane only pacified by tons of deep conditioning and tedious brushing. But it’s not that which I take offence to. In fact, I don’t take offence at all. I only think.

It may or may not come as a surprise to you but the owner of the voice is of the male species. Now, I am only in my mid-twenties and it is not a scandalous revelation. It is not, as a friend of mine often propagates – A Haw (Hindi) Factor. I know about the metro sexual man, his awareness of beauty and the means of achieving it. His feminine side and various unfeminine ones do not faze me. So, I gulp down my lack of the inherent modernism and take it in my stride.

Coming from a background of co-education, snide remarks from boys about unwaxed arms and hints about the impending trips to the parlour were the order of the day. But those were naïve times and anything went. But now I am driven to wonder if it’s me who is outdated? Another instance where a colleague wanted to catch a movie with me produced comical results. This male expected me to do the groundwork that is find out the movie timings, arrange tickets for the most convenient time (For Him!!) and take a deep breath here, drop him back to his place too!! And I hadn’t even asked him out!! Don’t get me wrong here, I am not counting male buddies which I have loads of and share an ultra cool relation with. This is something different. I can feel the current. The modern man is not only getting in touch with his feminine side, but now, quite imposing it on the hapless females around him, who actually have no idea what’s hit them! By the way, I never went for the movie. Couldn’t bring myself to it!

But is it me then, who is stagnant amidst the rising tide of change? Who despite shrieking out desperate cries of feminism to the slightest slip of male chauvinism, wants to hold on to the comfortable dated values because they make me feel special and terribly feminine? Will I be able to adapt to the increasing demands of the gradual morphing of gender roles?

Maybe I will, or maybe I’ll just let the next generation make sense of the chaos. They already have, I think. Meanwhile for me, the only hope is to find a likeminded companion, who doesn’t mind being chivalrous and dropping me for a change.