What women want… Really?

IN Media Practice | 11/11/2002

The cover story of the Outlook magazine 2 weeks ago was ambitious. "What women want - A nation wide opinion poll finds out what Indian women love and loathe about men." Gee. So maybe they finally blew our cover. Stripping us of the one thing that we have kept such a deeply, titillating mystery for centuries and which was perhaps the only reason why we women got to be treated a little better than a spare rib. Because they never could figure out what made us tick. (Not that they didn’t pretend that they did. Saying that 99.65 pre cent of feminine behaviour could be ascribed to PMS, post-natal depression, menopause and the moon. But they knew and we knew that they were talking a whole pile of twaddle.)

But before I comment on whether our fiercely guarded secrets are finally out, let me first tell you a little story about how I got hold - or almost didn’t - of a copy of the magazine. Normally my local newspaperwallah, now fairly housebroken with terrible threats and fates-worse-than-death, delivers. But not this issue of the Outlook, which I didn’t notice had not turned up till I got a mail asking for a response, not just to the cover story but also to the cover. Naturally I was both intrigued and puzzled. Obviously, the subject deserved at least a token sneering feminist diatribe, but what could be on that cover that needed comment?

I nabbed the newspaper delivery boy the next morning. "Where is last week’s Outlook?" I shrieked in my best hysterical-harpy voice. The boy’s eyeballs bulged with fear and he shakily pulled out what looked like the magazine. On the cover, I could see the bodiless heads of Ashok Singhal, Praveen Togadia and Narendra Modi and something about "India’s Loony Right". Nah! Praveen Togadia might be an authority on bitches from Italy, but Indian women? Nah! "Finished, madam, last week’s copy finished," the boy whispered in terror. "Finished?" I shrieked. "Finished? If I don’t have that copy in 24 hours, don’t bother to deliver any newspaper from tomorrow." Tomorrow came and went. Or rather, as we all know, tomorrow never came - well, not at least 4 days later when a dog-eared, well-thumbed copy of the magazine was tremblingly put into my hands by the boy whose eyeballs were now threatening to roll out of their sockets.

"See, did I not tell you that a question like that would definitely have had something about sex in the answers and that’s why the magazine must have got sold out?" said my mum triumphantly as I waved it at her.

Well, strictly speaking, it wasn’t sex but there was a naked woman on the cover. That too, one who was coyly dandling that object of ultimate seduction … no, not a diamante-studded g-string but an apple. Which I guess is about as close to sex as you can get on the cover of a magazine that is one of India’s premier newsmagazines. (I must clarify for those who will never see this issue, that there was no T&A. Okay maybe 1/15^th of the back view of an A, but nothing else that would make that cover even remotely qualify as a Playboy centre spread.)

Which brings me back to the question that not just me but apparently several other puzzled and/or irate readers - male and female - have been asking. Why the naked woman? Was it a sex poll which asked Indian women what they "loathe and love" about men when they are in bed with them, and not with the intention of going to sleep. No, though I’m willing to bet my best apple that a lot of men bought the magazine thinking exactly this because of the cover. So then why is the woman naked? Well, for one, pretty women sell and the more naked they are, the more they sell. Toilet bowls or magazines. This is the First Commandment of Commerce. Dear me. Can we ascribe such a shamelessly commercial intention to the editor of one of India’s premier blah-blah-blah? Dunno really, but can you think of any other reason why the magazine was sold out in a place like Mysore or why the woman should be naked?(Just to set the record straight, Outlook’s special issue on the Indian male didn’t have a naked man on the cover, just a rather battered looking male katputhli.)

But let’s for a moment give poor Vinod Mehta the benefit of the doubt - maybe there was something in the poll results that necessitated the ‘nekkid’ lady. Maybe sex was the Indian woman’s No.1 Preoccupation. Maybe the poll revealed that Indian women spent 72.37 per cent of their time thinking about how, when, why and where they wanted their daily (oh alright, at least weekly) orgasm served up. (Their dil maangey more even while they were getting that aisa-waisa lipstick daag off your favourite

shirt collar with a handy spot of Surf Excel, hai na?) Sorry to disappoint you, but no. Good sex featured number 9 out of the top 10 things that we like most to see in our men. Like, we’d like them to be honest, sensitive, intelligent and someone who treats us like their equal. (The intelligence is mainly to figure out that "equal" does not mean that he no longer needs to open my doors or that he can scratch his genitals or burp beer in my presence, just he does with his other equals - the boys.) After that, we’d like them to help us with the dinner, change nappies, make us laugh and make great conversation. Preferably all at the same time, without even once feeling the tug of his mama’s pallu or the smell of her prawn balchao. And after he’s done all this and after we’ve made sure that he’s got great bod-butt-biceps and is man-sized where it matters - i.e. in his wallet - yes, we also want the "good-lover-good-sex" bit.

I know - a loaded plate. Which brings me to my next point. Why the heck does India need this poll? As far as we women go, we already know - and guess what, we’ve known for ages - what we want. The only problem is that there haven’t been too many men who’ve asked or even if they did, who were willing to listen. And why should they, because after all, what is a woman without a man but a wanton, predatory Jezebel also known as a single woman, stalking our poor innocent men who would otherwise be quietly coming home to us, bless their cast-iron zippers? (And we admit this openly - almost 80 per cent of the women in the poll said that men are necessary. For what we reserve to tell you in the next poll.) Besides, given what’s available to most of us in the market, we aren’t very picky and most of us would probably have a greater say in the design of the mangalsutra than the man. Because where in Eden’s name are we going to find these men - a sort of a cross between Purushottam Ram, Brad Pitt (or Mel Gibson, depending on how old you are), your girl friend, your microwave oven, Jay Leno and Bill Gates, no?

As my mother very pithily and dryly put - and I will attempt a loose translation of the original Kannada - "you will have to go to Devalok to find such a man!" (And even then, who knows how Indra will measure up!) I mean let’s face it. If the choice is between Mr. Nice-boring-safe-beer-belly who falls asleep over the 9 o’clock news and Mr. Electrifying Conversationalist with bedroom eyes whose credo as far as women was one’s for sorrow and at least two for joy, who would you choose? And about that sensitive, caring bit - just have a look at the average powder puff that passes off as hero in prime time soaps, those Bibles of everything you wanted to know about the Indian woman but were too afraid to know. Can you find even one who doesn’t make you gag and whose cheeks are not more googly-woogly-whoosh than yours, whose lip-gloss isn’t more Lovely Lilac and who doesn’t boo-hoos at the drop of a pallu - his mama’s.

So, who cares what Indian women really want in men. We know that model is constantly out of stock. So we’ll make do with a man as long as he doesn’t drink, brings home the bacon (at least the rinds), won’t hit us and won’t bore us till death do us part. And that’s according to, not just me, but the poll as well. Like I said, we Indian women aren’t a picky lot.

But frivolity apart, Indian women have always been quietly, patiently and mostly uncomplainingly waiting in the wings making do with the leftovers of everyone else’s dreams and desires. And yet, now more than at any other time, so many of use feel that at last, maybe we have a chance to write our own songs, dance to our own tunes, blossom in colours which no man needs to tells us whether they suit us or not. That we are, at last, frighteningly but exhilaratingly, teetering at the edge of new beginnings. The "Special Women’s issue" of the Outlook had 12 articles on the Indian woman, apart from the poll. Did any of them attempt to get a nano-second flash into the other side your average Sita (or Gita or Manju)? The side of long suppressed desires and dreams now daring to risk the light of day? Alas, only a few. Farah Baria’s story on older women daring to risk relationships with younger men (a happy trend maybe?), Harinder Baweja’s touching piece on daughters increasingly becoming to their aging parents what was till recently only a son’s prerogative. But most of all, Naboneeta Sen’s evocative chronicling of the Other Sita found in traditional women’s work songs - the Sita who dares to, not only to have her own wants but also to express them. The songs of a million mute Sitas all over the land…

"What sort of a woman am I?

I was given to Rama when I was five years old…Dear plum tree, dear babul tree, Sita is telling you

The story of her life, please listen… I was born at the tip of a plough

I don’t know who my parents are

Like moss in a stream

I float…."

For the rest - ah, well! There’s a rambling article by Deepak Chopra who declares quite unequivocally that God is not a woman - at least not an Indian woman, but we can’t say about Madonna. And he should know, being a New Age guru and everything. Then there’s Tarun Tahiliani on what Indian woman wants to wear - and he should know since he routinely dresses average Indian women like Aishwarya Rai in regulation Indian woman mufti, like a "vamp lycra jewel halter blouse". And if even after reading Simran Bhargava’s "G-Spotting", you still haven’t figured out where is an Indian woman’s G-spot and what sets it on fire, check out Nikhil Khanna’s Nifty Guide and take your pick of the modern Bharatiya Nari from a wide variety of models, ranging from It Girl to the Dehati Politician, complete with survival ratings.

Sigh! Like I said, we Indian women aren’t asking for much, if anything at all, but surely we deserve a little better than this "Special Woman’s Issue"?