The era of fragile reasoning

There is a email forward going around mostly sent by females to men in India about the ‘era of the fragile man being over’ from the advertising industry head honcho,Mr. Alllick Padamzee.

Ad honchos have a tendency to pass off their myopic and parochial views as an extrapolation to the entire Indian psyche. Nothing would be backed by research and an opinion will become an insight. Their opinions would be largely be shaped by what is seen in some parties of South Mumbai and pubs of Bangalore. They will call Lower Parel as Upper Worli just to feel cool. I sometimes wonder the reason ad agencies took donkeys years to make really locally relevant ads like Coke’s 5 or Fevicol or Alpenliebe is because of their lack of understanding of the true Indian consumer.

Coming to the views, lets just look at a few statements made by him.

The young Indian male is in danger of losing his manhood, because of the tremendous advancement of young women who top all the exams and are entering the workforce at breakneck speed.

Well the statistics show that women have a higher pass % than men. Topping all exams is completely different. So if you look at the top quartile you will still find a greater % of men.

Not only are the young women beautiful, well-groomed and intelligent, but also can hold forth on any topic under the sun.

Yes, women in corporate offices are extremely smart and confident and really carry off themselves well especially in some functions like marketing and HR. The woman power of ICICI also shows that they have conquered so called men’s domains like finance.

But if you read some of the press articles, you would be made to believe these women have trounced several odds to reach there. Well if you look at the relevant demographics, these women were not the ones who were trudging 10 km to fetch water in Gujarat or ill-treated by men in the wastelands of Bihar. They are part of the equal access generation who grew up in cities, were taught with as much attention and resources as the men. So is equality of output due to equality of inputs such a great feat ? You can compare rural Rajasthan with Kenya but Bombay will be compared with Shanghai.

Unfortunately, the young male's priorities are still job, marriage and children. However, both men and women are being rushed off their feet by pressures of work. Eventually, all of us will turn into the American prototype: either hen-pecked or serial killers! .

Why is a young male’s priority still a job? ( Most men run away from marriage and children in any case). When this generation was growing up in secondary school, India was a lost cause with more ration lines and few telephone lines. The priority of educating oneself was to get a job and be the guy to share daddy’s burden as a breadwinner. Although girls had equal excess to education, in most middle class families there was no equality of expectations to breadwinning. Nobody minded a girl taking Arts as a career, for a man that meant he was good for nothing. And the state of the job market was that way during that time.
So men growing up in India have a huge pressure of balancing their parents aspirations and their woman’s shopping bag. So there is a learning curve which is going to take time.

Stop yakking about yourself and your achievements, and above all, drop the latest cricket scores. She wants to tell you about her life, her dream. Open your ears and shut your mouth

Unka khoon khoon , aur hamara khoon paani. Maybe men have achievements which they can talk about , women are still dreaming about their achievements. And listening to their dreams is as entertaining as beauty contestants’ answers about Mother Teresa. Latest handbags from Prada are as mundane as Sehwag’s ducks.

Learn how to dance.

Even Abhishek Bachchan’s dancing a remix version of Govinda’s dancing. So we can be ‘like this’ only. There is no point even trying to dance to Himessh (Even the best pubs don’t get attendance if they don’t play him). His songs don’t require grace only momentum.

Yes, I agree the era of the abala nari (fragile woman) is over. The era of the abala purush has begun. The 'able' nari is about to untie the nara (pyjama strings) of the abala purush!

Men have shifted to boxers. Jab na raha nada, nariyon ke chahiye ek nayi ada.