'Men are actually good guys'

By Nonita Kalra
The first lesson I learnt about men was taught to me by my father. He told me, quite emphatically, "All men are bastards. How do I know? Because I am one." Just in case I had forgotten to commit this to memory, he made it a point to repeat himself. Many, many times during my rebellious phase, which he believed never ended.

To give him due credit, the man had a tough job cut out for him. This extremely reasonable man had three daughters who hit their teens in quick succession. Which meant his sanity was tested to breaking point. It didn't help that one of his daughters was a rebellious one. The middle child who reacted to authority in a fairly text book manner. I liked the bad boys. Think ganja-smoking ponytailed musician on a motorbike. As long as Dad didn’t approve, he would fit the bill. The minute the parents saw a diamond in the rough he was dumped.

This also meant I broke my heart with alarming regularity. My father would repeat his old pronouncement with greater affirmation, every single time. All men are bastards All men are bastards. I finally asked my father what led to this definitive conclusion? What had he done in the past to deserve this moniker? Seems my father dated a lot before he married my mother. And even though he made his intentions clear, hearts were broken and he laid the blame squarely at his door. Try as I might I could not argue with him that he was a good man actually because he refused to settle until he found the woman he wanted to settle down with.

This incredibly old-fashioned, chivalrous act convinced me that my father was wrong. Men are actually the good guys. They are actually simple creatures who say it like it is. The truth might hurt then but there is no artifice to later show up and stab you in the back. Which is when I decided that when I grow up I want to be one of the boys. I started out by learning how to drink bigger men under the table. Then by swearing like a truck driver. But gender stereotypes aside, I emulated the way men don’t sweat the small stuff. And laughed like a man. Deep, open throated, open hearted guffawing. Trust me, just these two life changes along with many jugs of draught beer held me in good stead.

For a long time, I thought this winning formula was my personal discovery. Something I shared with likeminded friends very specifically in Cafe Mondegar, in Mumbai. But then Twitter exploded that myth.

Last week one of those fact dissipating handles —you know the ones we use now to trot out fun facts at cocktail parties — tweeted that women who had more male friends than female were less stressed out. I figured it was time to put that theory to test and went back to the internet for verification. The first website I came across when I did a Google search was one by Paulo Coelho. In case you have been living under a rock, Coelho is a Brazilian novelist, most famous for The Alchemist, and has sold 165 million copies of his books worldwide.

I think we can consider him a bit of an authority on life, the universe and everything. His blog has a lovely piece on men, where I found incontrovertible reasons to justify this praise of men: We love men because they can never fake orgasms, even if they wanted to. Because they are brave in front of insects and mice. Because they can see beauty in women when women have long ceased to see any in themselves.

(The lifestyle journalist and former ELLE editor-in-chief helps you deal with society’s curveballs)