Dayanand Mandrekar's unbearable weariness shows his wife married a misogynistic loser
The inimitable Goa minister of art and culture, Dayand Mandrekar, has spoken as only he can. This time around, it sounds as though he is speaking out of personal distress; a flippant cry, if you like.
What are Dayanand’s woes? Women, he complains, are addicted to serials. Result? Their men don't get their cereals. Now, can you deny that it is a problem?
A man comes back home, says Dayanand, dog-tired and bone-weary from work. He is not received into the soothing lap of motherly care. His patriarchal rights are slighted. His weariness increases. He waits. And waits. His conjugal rights and feudal luxuries stay frozen in front of the idiot box!
He is far better off in the office, where a train of latter-day serfs and lackeys dance attention on him. You judge, after all, only by the norms and entitlements you’ve got used to.
There are a couple of serious issues here that we should not, in the heat of likely indignation, lose sight of.
I hope Dayanand would forgive me if I, for a change, am non-partisan in the matter.
If women as wives continue to sit glued to TVs,even after the earth-shaking home-coming of their masterly husbands, it could mean either of the two things.
First, the serial, the sort in which Smriti Irani used to act, are enthralling entertainment. Second, the TV is a refuge. The poor lady could well be hiding from the approaching pestilence!
Dayanand provides a valuable clue. He says men come home weary and tired. Surely he knows, being the Minister of Art and Culture, that weary men are extremely wearisome. Tired men are insufferably tiresome!
Women are, compared to men, more intuitive and sentient. They sense pestilences from a distance. Especially such as those that they suffer from routinely.
So you can imagine the scene in progress. Our hero is returning after a day of tiring and tiresome work. His wife knows, more or less, when to expect him. At the appointed hour, her antennas of apprehension rise. Her telepathic intuition enables her to see him even before he appears. Her harried ears and sore cochlea hear the footfall a few paces away from the doorstep.
She senses a sinister aura approaching the house.
What does she do? She looks for a hiding place. The safest places to hide are the open places. That is what your TV is. It is not the programme – serials or talk-shows that matters. It is the approaching pestilence and the desperate need to hide.
No one seems to have told the Hon’ble (“H” not silent) minister that there can be a way out of this unenviable plight. Become at least a tepidly interesting person. A tall order? All right, at least try and not be a blundering pestilence. Surely, if you try hard enough you can cease to be a bored and boring imposition.
What Dayanand has highlighted is not just a personal tragedy, or a vexation confined to a small number of our men folk. Most men are in this predicament. But they do not know that they lose the affection of their wives to TVs because they are hollower than the tube with which TVs used to be built in olden days.
Dayanand says, with disarming candour, that he comes home tired and weary. How is his woman, or any woman, responsible for it? Weariness at work, as Modi will surely tell him, is a tell-tale sign of incompetence.
Work is, otherwise, a stimulant. A man who is wearied by the work he does is sure to be a wearying oppression on everyone, especially his hapless wife.
But what the minister does not seem to realise is that he is a few decades behind the calendar. Women are no longer waiting, lamp-in-hand, for the Lord of the house to return just to begin massaging his feet. They are, on an average, superior to men in every respect. And, what's worse, they know it.
I’d respectfully suggest that the Hon’ble minister try making a cup of tea for his wife. Then he will know how incompetent he is! (By the way, that’s what I do, whenever I feel that I am sinking in my wife’s esteem. I make a refreshing, exotic cup of coffee and serve it artistically to her. The message is never lost! Let the minister give it a try. But I'd advise him against this experiment when he is weary.)
I write as one seriously concerned about the decline in the stock of the Indian male. Thanks to the serious roadblocks and handicaps we inflicted on our women, they remained lacklustre till recently.
Now that those nervous nooses are broken, they are excelling! Soul-for-soul, men have lost it. They are left grumbling, like bad losers.
The greatest curse on our men folk is Indian parenting. Sons are brought up privileged and spoilt in soulless indulgence. Parents consign their sons to lifelong incompetence and flabby insensitivity.
Young parents of India, wake up, lest your darling sons get demonetised. It is up to you to ensure that they do not grow up, or bloat up, as human sponges aware only of rights and are illiterate on the worth of others.
May your daughters-in-law not have to duck your darling sons and hide behind their TVs. Please listen to the message hidden in Dayanand Mandrekar’s cry of pain and panic. Let his anguish not go in vain!