Field-Marshal M. and His Mummy-Ji

My darling friend Field-Marshal M., mard-e-awwal, shahenshah-e-mardangi (i.e. Real Man), has Jesustani feminists – along with those back home in des, of course – all atwitter. In a moment, I suspect, of single malt-fuelled candour, Field-Marshal M. claimed that women in des were arranging have themselves raped in order to be able to claim few million rupees in compensation loot and asylum in Canada.

Now, a lot has been said on the subject but no-one has pointed the finger of blame True North: it is all his Mummy-Ji’s fault.

How Now, I Hear You Cry! Fear Not I Shall Reply. Anon. Sabr, little ones, a few minor points of order, first.

To begin with, Field-Marshall M. isn’t right, but he will be, one of these days, if all these NGO types keep at it. As Kerala’s former Chief Minister, that good and great progressive EK Nayanar, once pointed out, women in des are raped with about the same frequency as government employees drink tea, which is all the time. If this is going to happen anyway, you may as well get something out of it. Given that life for desi women is fairly unliveable, the day isn’t far when women have themselves wheeled through Lajpat Nagar market laid out stark naked on vegetable carts, shouting ‘le lo, le lo’.

Second, Field-Marshal M., as his Mummy-Ji will tell you, didn’t mean to be insulting. His remarks reflect, rather, his legitimate resentment that every E-grade churi now has a free pass to Toronto while he, a man of such obvious merit, remains stuck in Islamabad. Its no secret that, what with large hairy Pathans setting off bombs under his buttocks ever third day, the Field-Marshal would love to escape his beloved watan. His problem is that no one will have him unless, of course, he manages to get himself raped, and even the mujahideen aren’t willing to sacrifice quite that much to enter the gates of heaven.

If Field-Marshall M. listened to me, instead of those low-life darbaris he chooses to patronise, I’d have shown him a way out. You see, Bonobo pygmy chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, use sex as a means of social bonding. Arousal isn’t the primary issue; showing gratitude is. Offer a Bonobo a banana and, as a Tanzanian friend who visited a wildlife park near Kinshasa recently found out, it will promptly offer nookie by way of thanks. All the Field-Marshall needs to do is fly to Kinshasa armed with a banana, feed the chimpanzees, and then wiggle his backside suggestively.

Making sure, of course, that there are four male witnesses to witness what will follow – and that the sounds he makes suggest pain, not pleasure.

And there’s the rub: he’ll like it, because it will be his most fevered wish come true.

You see, I’ve been thinking of late about the curious character of desi manhood. My Jesustani friend Ms. P., who is married to my Hindustani friend Mr. M (no relative of the manly-e-kaiser Field-Marshal) recently claimed that eight out of ten hetrosexual desi men are in fact closet homosexuals, and the other two out of ten are confused. I would have offered to put the theory to the test if Ms. P. wasn’t such a hideous majh, but before I could think up another means of empirically testing the proposition, her whining was seconded by a large number of mems.

Truth is, most Hindustani men never recover from being weaned. Mummy-Ji’s humongous tits are an overwhelming, life-long obsession. Try, if you don’t believe me, to refer casually to a desi man’s mother as hideous bitch, and see what happens. Soon after Munna is yanked away screaming from Mummy-Ji’s tits, he gets a pacifier in the form of a khoti. Now, the scheme sometimes falls apart at this point – vanaspati never tastes as good as asli ghee after all, and in the rare cases that it does, the asli ghee usually evicts the vanaspati, taking recourse to the time-tested two-litres-of-kerosene-and-a-nylon-sari method. Most often, though, the vanaspati reconciles itself to a second-class existence, sad but resigned to the fact that Husband-Ji hankers after ghee. Her turn, after all, will come.

Point is, when Munna gets down to putting his penis to use for purposes other than making pee-pee, he is stalked by the spectre of Mummy-Ji. His desire brings with a hideous darkness, guilt and remorse. Some desi men try and hide the scarlet stain on their soul through heavy-duty promiscuity, but this camouflage, like lipstick on a pig, hides nothing. Field-Marshal M. clearly suffers from an advanced form of Mummy-Ji fixation. Note that his mother, known to her friends as Bitch-in-Chief-Ji, tenderly reads the day’s newspapers to him each morning. Note that Mrs. M. does not. Note that Bitch-in-Chief-Ji accompanies him on long trips to New Delhi. Note that Mrs. M. stays at home and dusts the war trophies. Note that Field Marshal M. and Bitch-in-Chief-Ji have long conversations about life and the universe. Short of banging his mommy – like a demented brat in Lucknow was recently reported to have done – he couldn’t be more intimate with her.

Now, the Jesustani Mom might, like Mummy-Ji, also be demented, but her neurosis are of a very, very, very different order. Just last year, Patricia Johnson of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to a prison term after doing a strip-tease act for her thirteen year old son and three of his friends on the occasion of his birthday party. Apparently, the go-carts the kids had planned to take for a spin hadn’t showed up, and Ms. Johnson decided to provide alternate entertainment instead. She claimed it was all the fault of booze and pills, of course, but in vino veritas, as we all know. Point is, drip-fed on pop-psychology and easy-instalments plastic surgery, the Jesustani Mom seeks to make sex normal: to bring it out of the closet, along with the vacuum cleaner and clean sheets. Her enthusiasm for the project might be excessive, but at least it is all out there in the open.

No freedom from the closet for the Field Marshal, then. One of these days, someone is going to have to do the world a favour, and find a large hairy man willing to bugger him violently. The only other escape from Mummy-Ji, I fear, will be nuclear war.