Chintito

Oh! How life has changed!

Chintito

We all say life has changed. How rice was available at three paisa (.05 Taka) per sher only some decades ago and today it has become a government's prime task to keep it in the vicinity of Taka twenty per kilogram.

While we were lured into considering market economics and technology as the indices of change, we completely ignored a verity of the past that has changed by furlongs; that is, the position of women in our society. And I do not mean only our society, as the 'gentlemen' of the yesteryears of the so-called enlightened Western civilisation were not particularly kind towards the other gender in their utterances, which shall appear most unkind today.

It is in the above light that I would like to ponder into the darkness of the times of yore, and see how ridiculous the pundits sound.

David Bissonette, frankly I do not even know who he is, said 'When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.' One would be confident to say that women today feel likewise. So here goes the 2009 model: 'When a woman steals your husband, there is no better revenge than to let her keep him.'

Of all the people our beloved (wonder how much after today) Socrates blurted out to his gender mates, 'By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher'. Imagine the cheek of the old fool. Had he been alive today, he would probably have been compelled to pen, 'By all means marry. If you get a good partner, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher'.

Socrates' light-hearted attitude towards life as above become questionable if one examines another quote of the great 'truth seeker' (?): 'Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them'. Well, today it has also to be written, 'Men inspires women to great things, and prevents them from achieving them'.

Dumas, I could not figure out which one, lucky for him, was appeared confused about women. He wrote or said, whatever, 'The great question which I have not been able to answer is, “What does a woman want?” They definitely would not want you, and the phrase has to be for sake of change rephrased to 'What does a woman want?'

Sigmund Freud, Austrian physician, neurologist, and founder of psychoanalysis, would have proved to be such a monkey with the words, 'I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.' Well, some women reputedly talk a lot, but so do the men. Have not the world had more male politicians than women? I rest my case.

James Holt McGavran, yet another person whose id I could not figure out, was a right male chauvinistic pig because he voiced, 'I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me, and the second one didn't.' Today, bhaijan, you would not have one piece of haddi left because both your wives would have teamed up and played 20-20 with you. That's a fast, decisive, and cruel game.

There was this Anonymous guy who said, 'You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.' What a fool, your wife too did everything she wanted to before she got blessed with you. Only she does not brag about it. Actually in a good marriage, both the partners should be able to do everything they want as long as the boundaries of social and religious behaviour are maintained.

Henny Youngman, perhaps the actor, admitted, 'A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.' It's true the other way round too. Just as a cantankerous woman sticks to her point, so does an argumentative man. Otherwise there would not have been so many quarrels and divorces and child claims, etc.

These people always write anonymously when they are afraid to face a situation. An unknown man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: 'Wife wanted'. Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: 'You can have mine.' If the 'Husband wanted' ad is inserted, the response could be quite the surprising such as, 'Go and find your own'. Women today are that much liberated, but a true husband they would like to share.

There is this joke attributed to an Anonymous guy, I told you they had no guts, which goes like this:
First Guy (proudly): 'My wife's an angel!'
Second Guy: 'You're lucky, mine's still alive.'
Let's twist that a bit and say it as:
First lady (proudly): 'My husband's an angel!'
Second lady: 'You're not so lucky, mine's human.'
Man-woman relationship is sanctified in heaven. Let us keep it that way, even though life has changed so much.

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