Have you heard men crib about how women are after them to put back everything in their place, or leave those dirty shoes out and not muddy the just mopped floor, or pick up after themselves and not just throw their wet towels or sweaty clothes on the bed?

This is a hot topic on social media and in groups where men and women gather. Men state that they are ‘like that only’(!) and women simply have to deal with it and leave them alone. Who cares if the wet towel is on the bed or even on the floor? They don’t, they declare with obvious pride. So why ever should the wife/mother/sister/grandma/aunt or whoever of the female species around be complaining?

Sound logic on the face of it, right? Also, women DO complain of their menfolk’s lack of hygiene and messy habits.

Just the other day a friend of mine was telling me how she HATED peanuts and would never want any in her house. No, this is not some kind of new phobia. The dislike stemmed from the fact that her husband would let the peanut skin fall all around him while eating peanuts, in the drawing room too! Then it would be HER job to do the cleaning up. Why can’t he keep a plate for collecting the peanut skin, or even a newspaper, she wailed.

I get her. I have seen many like her husband. These meny are, as they grandly proclaim while sniggering derisively, exercising their freedom in their own home. Where else could they be free enough to scatter peanut skins all over, they ask cheekily. After all this is a free country and the last they heard messing up their own home was in the list of things allowed under the constitution or whatever, they say, roaring with laughter at the expense of the poor wife. If any of their male friends are around they wink at them and together they guffaw adding insult to injury.

Did you feel that urge to take the nearest heavy object and club the guys about whom I am talking? Believe me, the feeling is universal among women who labour hard to keep their homes clean while the men go around literally distributing sheets of newspaper to all available chairs and tables in the house, also their underwear which hang from all sorts of ridiculous places. I remember hearing from next door, a sister scream seeing one belonging to her brother hanging from the shower. True story, as told by her mother. She, the sister that is, then took a pole and poked the hanging underwear, wet to boot, and sent it right into her brother’s smirking face. Attagirl!

The mother thought it was all funny, a fight between siblings, that’s all. But I felt anger rising inside me. Remember these were college going adults, not little kids. No sister should be expected to deal with a grown up brother’s underwear hanging from shower-heads. Well, I won’t blame the mother alone. Where was the father and what was he doing to inculcate some respect to other members of the household in his son? Oh well, in all probability he was eating peanuts and dropping the skin all over the sofa while staring at the television.

Once a newly acquired ‘friend’ (He wasn’t one for long, you will see why) while chatting remarked how his wife was such a nuisance, always asking him not to dirty the bathroom floor by walking in with muddy shoes. Gah, he said, she and her clean bathroom. Can’t I wear my shoes where I like? Hearing him, or rather, reading his messages popping up on screen, I ground my teeth. Tell me, who wouldn’t like a clean bathroom? Didn’t he, the big shot corporate guy that he was? What if his wife had just let it be and he came home everyday to a muddy and unclean bathroom? Talk of ungratefulness!

What would this man’s, or any man’s boastful talk that they don’t care about clean homes, or of things being in their place, or wet towels being on mattresses etc be when they actually have to deal with dirt caked floors, not finding anything where it should be and/or smelly mould covered towels? What if they were served food in plates not washed properly? What when they bring their fancy friends home to proudly show off their clean well kept homes and find their own shoe imprints all over the home and the smelly vest they threw on the sofa the previous night still there, along with the peanut skins (never forget the peanuts, every woman’s nightmare!) all over the floor?

More importantly WHAT IF a man’s partner herself lacks hygiene and says ‘I am like this only’ right back at him?

It is so easy to mock the person who keeps everything in its place, and the house clean. Hello! You find everything you want easily ONLY because someone took the trouble to do all the work. You sleep in a bed with clean sheets instead of one filled with sloughed off dead skin cells because someone took the trouble to change them for you. How difficult is that to understand? Instead of appreciating the people who make life easier and healthier for you, they are mocked as if they are some kind of freaks out to destroy your life. The irony!

You know what I think? The luxury of bragging that such men indulge in, that they prefer to live wild and dirty, also blaming women for wanting them to be tidy in their habits is ONLY when they know there is someone to pick up and clean after them. Go figure.

Disclaimer: India specific. Not all men. But certainly way too many of them to justify writing this.

©️ Shail Mohan 2024