Species

Preface: This piece was written by me in September 2002. The trigger was some news about the marriage plans of one of my friends. Even though it has been a while, let me reiterate that I still stand by the views expressed below. I am adding this piece to the blog now so as to let it finally have a permanent resting place. Peace be with you!

I have great regard for Charles Darwin. He came up with the idea of “Survival of the fittest”. I am actually very happy that nature has relaxed this policy since. Otherwise, I would not have stood much of a chance. Darwin also told us about the process of natural selection. Come to think of it, the nature somehow had a funny way of selecting who should survive and who should not. It would have been better off selecting dinosaurs rather than human beings. Maybe it thought, with our size, we could not possibly create much damage.

Anyway, it is not my intention to enlighten you on Darwin’s theory. As a humble student of evolution, let me tell you about some hidden truths of evolution. I sincerely believe that this truth has not received enough attention because I see the damages caused by it all around me. Let me make myself clear before I start. What I shall write below is for the common good of my fellow male species. To any female who may happen to read this, I am not blaming you. I know it comes “naturally” to you.

My brethren, if you have ever cared to think about it and I am sure you have not, you will realize how much choice you have in deciding how the next generations will evolve; or to make it simple, how much choice you have in selecting your life partner if you decide to go about doing it yourselves. Believe me, you just don’t have a choice. The call is always made by the female of the species. I have seen many people who have tried to exercise their choice. But it always lasted only as long as the first female coming and telling him that he is a special chap. We don’t seem to have that part of the brain to hold out against such attacks, and this is probably one of the most prominent parts of a female brain. Maybe we do not use our brains at all in such crunch situations, we just surrender.

Now don’t think that this is a problem with our generation. It has been like this all along. Not many of the male species have stood up against the female. Forget us, the mortals. Even the immortal gods could not do it. Think about Lord Siva. He was a confirmed bachelor. To avoid any trouble, he decided to go and sit on top of mount Kailasam. He surrounded himself with quite a large number of handsome looking bhootas or ghosts. You should hand it to him; he just did not want to take a chance. But what happened? All this lasted only till the moment Sati decided to marry him. He was a sitting duck. Just could not handle the pressure. Then he went freaking mad after Sati got that brilliant idea of entering fire. After he became normal, he decided that was it. He had had enough. But again, he lasted only till Parvathi came along. Now, the point I am making is the effect of all this on evolution. You can always expect something to go wrong when the choice is made by a female. Let us take the case of the same gods. The end result of the association between Siva and Parvathi was another god called Ganapathy, who was a cross between an elephant and man. This chap could think of nothing else other than food. But fortunately, Lord Siva sensed the danger here. He decided that he would not let Ganapathy marry so as to avoid more such genetic confusions.

By now, I guess you may have got a wind of what I am trying to tell you. I talked about that part of the brain that enables you to tell “no” to members of the other species. This part is really developed in the female species. I have seen this part in action many times. There was this friend of mine who somehow got it into his head that he was desperately in love with this female. He had decided to exercise his choice. Emboldened by the free advises of his friends, he decided to go and talk to the female in question. He was feeling pretty confident when he called her to the corner of a room.

“I wanted to tell you something”, he said.

There was no response. Her brain had started to analyze the situation. As there was no response, he continued.

“I love you”

“So what should I do?”, came the prompt answer.

That was a pretty logical question. He had to admit that. Still he had never thought about it. The reason is he was not “thinking” at all while she was. So he could not still see that things were going wrong here. He had to continue.

“Don’t you like me?”

“NO”

That was the end of it and she walked out. Our chap could not believe it. His brain got hung and had to be rebooted. The male brains cannot take such loads usually. The difference here is that she was able to think and reason out of the situation in which a male brain would typically freeze.

Now there was this another chap, a colleague of mine. After many unsuccessful attempts on his part, his parents decided to take the matter into their hands and duly married the guy off in good time. I was curious and asked the chap later how he managed to select the girl.

“I used to like every girl I saw”

was his answer. So obviously the choice was not with him. He just could not say the word “no” or his brain used to go cold when he sees every female.

There is this story about the famous G B Shaw. I think it was G B Shaw and I believe it is only a story. It seems one beautiful female once approached him and told him that she wanted to marry him.

“Think of our child who will inherit my beauty and your brains”, she said.

“What will happen if it became the other way around?”

Shaw is supposed to have asked. I told you that I still believe that this is just a story. No male in his right senses could have come up with such a logical question in that situation. So I prefer to believe that it was just a story or Shaw was out of his senses. But if the story is true, then he is my superhero, a real superman.

The purpose of my telling you all this is to let you know of the danger. Probably there is nothing that you can do about it. That is just the way we are all built. I just wanted to enlighten you about a point that probably Darwin had missed. You have been warned and probably it is too late. There is nothing more I can do about it because even I am not a superhero.