Here’s something I have noticed in my long enough life. Whenever you happen to mention some disagreement or other between two women, any women, the men listening get that knowing look on their face. They then either guffaw, or putting on their best smug expression declare, ‘Women can never get along!’ (Sadly even the very best of them do this.)

Yeah, right. I believe you mister. Not.

For centuries women who are not related by birth or in any way have anything in common have been ‘locked away’ in homes for all their goddamn lives (citing their own good!) and have still got on enough among themselves to run households. But whatever… We gotta believe the menz when they do things like referring to disagreements between women as ‘silly catfights’. They know, right? Also the menz never fight. NEVER EVER. Geddit?

Then there are the women themselves who repeat the age old ‘wisdom’ (Wisdom, my foot!) like the Mallu saying (You others might have your own versions!) ‘Two heads can get along but four b_ _bs cannot.’

Yeah right. You of all people should be saying that vivaram illaatha sthreeye! (Senseless woman)

For once at least stop and think before you speak. Or at least stop repeating nonsense. But how can that come about? Until and unless they understand that its bosh and nonsense it cannot happen. There lies the dilemma. Even if you try to educate them that these are demeaning to women including themselves they refuse to accept it. Age old wisdom, right? Who am I to dismiss it all as stuff and nonsense? I don’t even have any long enough hair, how the heck would I understand sayings of any kind? Gah.

What I am trying to say is….

Whether men or women, and strange as it may seem to some (Yeah ‘some’! There, I said it! Not all! NOT ALL!!!) we are all similar. Men don’t have any upper hand in brotherhood the way they like to crow at every opportunity they get. Sisterhood exists and has been there always as also those who try to ‘disband’ it with all sorts of ‘tricks’. Example, this unwritten code: Wife’s loyalty is to the husband first and foremost, but a husband’s loyalty is to his friends.

So stop your sniggers you men, and bite your tongue to stop that mocking comment from escaping when you see women have disagreements, or even go at it tooth and nail. It’s no laughing matter or the end of the world. Fights and disagreements and dhishoom-dhishooms a la Bollywood, are not your monopoly, they are universal to all of living kind.

As for you women, stop making such atrocious general statements demeaning your own tribe. What are you, some sort of super-support system for the very gender of the ‘specimens’ trying to flatten you to the ground? Shame on you. Baffles me how you cannot see it. Stop being blind to your own life, a stellar example of how four b_ _bs can indeed get along same as or better than two man-heads.

© Shail Mohan 2022