The Rediff Special
Surviving Men
Ashwina Vakil
It requires guts for any woman who claims to be happily married,
even Shobha De, to dismiss men as only good for one thing (and
not even very good at that if she is to be believed)! Shobha, of
course, has never lacked the gumption to tell it like it is but
even she might have gone too far this time. Her latest shocker,
is called Surviving Men: The
Smart Woman's Guide to Staying on Top, and to put it mildly,
it makes mincemeat of the male sex.
So how did husband Dilip take this ruthless butchering of all
that his sex has always, mistakenly we presume stood for? In a
few hundred inclusively written and amazingly perceptive pages,
Shobha has managed to deflate the fragile male ego and all its
attendant myths, reducing men to brainless jerks with a one point
agenda. Does she still have a marriage?
Amazingly, it seems as if she does, which says a lot for Dilip
De's sense of humour. Or else he loves her dearly. "He says
if you really think you're going to make apple sauce of all us
men, you'd better think again! He's prepared for battle and I'm
looking forward to that, it should be fun," exclaims Shobha
drolly, mischief evident in her eyes as she rolls them in anticipation.
Which sort of sets the mood for the immediate future, and all
the reaction her new book is bound to provoke. "I'm feeling
like Schwarzenegger, I can handle anything that comes my way,"
she warns. "I'm in Arnie mode, I feel very much on top of
things. I believe strongly in what I've said in the book and I
stand by every word of it. I feel feisty enough to take whatever
comes with the territory and whatever comes with the territory
and whatever the book unleashes, I'm perfectly prepared.'
And doubtless the book is going to unleash a storm. In her first
attempt at non-fiction. Shobha has taken the poor average man
(which Dilip is not, she assures, even though unwittingly he's
contributed much to the book in terms of insights) and put him
through the wringer, till he comes out looking like nothing on
earth, and feeling worse doubtless. The women are going to love
the book, it puts down in brazen black and white what they've
probably fantasised about doing for years. The men are going to
want to curl up and die. Or else they're going to demand a ban
on the book!
Kind courtesy: Society
Shobha De will appear on the Rediff Chat on Wednesday, February 19, 2000 hours IST
(0930 hours ET), to discuss her bestseller. Be there!
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