1

Ancient
Chemyst
ery
The Enigma
of
The Human
Condition
 2

A Survivor’s Guide to the Evolutionary

Foundations
of Human Relationships

The ♂♀ Thing – Explained at last!

Subroto Mukerji

Copyright

The author asserts his moral right over the ownership of this book. No part of the
book may be copied, Xeroxed, quoted, or otherwise reproduced without the
express written permission of the author.

Acknowledgements

This book is not a work of fiction, it being an analysis of the hitherto murky
origins of human sexuality and sexual politics. However, in attempting to
illustrate certain concepts, it may depict circumstances that could well tally with
some real-life scenarios, in which case it is clarified that any purported
resemblance to actual characters or situations is – though coincidental – quite
inevitable, given the truth of what has been expounded.

 
Yo I’ll tell you what I want, what I really
really want
so tell me what you want, what you really
really want.

The Spice Girls: ‘Wannabe’ (1996 song,

with Matthew Rowbottom and Richard Stannard)

At last my heart's an open door

and my secret love's no secret anymore.
Calamity Jane

Do you love me because I'm beautiful?

Or am I beautiful because you love me?
 3

Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist (1895-1960)

This book is for

My timeless muse
Enigmatic, enchanting…eternal
 4

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire

goes out. It is then burst into flame by an
encounter with another human being. We should
all be thankful for those people who rekindle the
inner spirit.”

-Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965)

LIST OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Copyright assertion / Acknowledgements…………………….. 2

Dedication ……………………………… …. 3
LIST of CONTENTS ……………………………………………4,5

(i) Introduction ……………………………… 6

(ii) Prologue

Why men and women are attracted to each other

… and yet are ever at War ! ………………………. 7

3. How it All Began ……………………………………… 12

4. The Creation …………………………..………………….. 14

5. In the Beginning was The Egg .………………………….. 15

6. TGP strikes back or The Worm Turns …………………… 23

7. The Egg Fights Back or How The Egg keeps her cake
even after he’s eaten it ! ………………………………… 25

8. Earthbound Aliens or The Battle of the Species ………….. 28

9. On the Trail of TGP ……………………………………… 31

10. Of Cavorting CuTEs and Cavemen or

A Day in the Life of a Cave Couple ……………………….. 34
 5

11. The Element of Emotion or Love, I Love You …………….. 37

12. Of Aphrodisiacs and Engine Additives or

What Do Women Really Want…and Why ? …………….. 42

13. The Moody Blues or Why The Egg gets so

temperamental at times ………………………………….. 44

14. Fine Feathers do a CuTE make or The Plumage

of The Egg rivals TGP’s ………………………….……… 46

15. The ‘Wayward’ CuTE or Girls just wanna have fun …….. 49

16. Spring Cleaning or The CuTE and her Cave …………….. 51

17. The Egg in Confinement or Unhappy Days are Here Again … 53

18. The Middle Muddle or The Egg gets into shape …………. 56

19. The Guest Arrives or Arrival of a Rival ………………… 57

20. The Year in the Wilderness or The Regime of Disinfectants … 59

21. The Other Band of Outlaws or The Egg meets her Match ….. 61

22. The Ant and The Grasshopper or What makes them tick …… 63

23. Twilight of The Egg or CuTE calls it a day ………………… 67

24. Nature meets her nemesis or Built-in Self Destruct ………… 69

25. The Dance of Life or The Eggstacy of Love ……………….. 72

26. What we can feel and know alone is Real … or is it?

Love on the material plane ……………………………….. 77

27. WOMEN !! A little Internet humour ……………………. 82

28. Love Across the Eons or Eggstinction ? ………………….. 85

 6

29. Epilogue …………………………………………………… 91

INTRODUCTION

This book is for all those who are perplexed about

their relationships with the opposite sex. It is an attempt to
expose the organism that lurks unseen—and unsuspected—
beneath the veneer of the modern human. For there could
not be a man or woman on this planet who hasn’t—at some
time or the other—been totally confused or even enraged at
the apparently contrary ways of the opposite sex. They never
seem to see eye to eye. There seems to be an unconscious
appreciation, right from birth, that the two sexes are two
entirely different animals. When things go smoothly between
them, it is more a cause for celebration and fervent
thanksgiving than quiet acceptance.
Are these two apparently immiscible elements—
Man and Woman—compelled forever to labour under the
yoke of a reluctant compromise fashioned merely to
propagate the species? Why hadn’t Nature, in her wisdom,
evolved a better, less acrimonious way of achieving this
objective? Why, for crying out loud, has she thrust two
reluctant (yet strangely eager) adversaries together, if
procreation alone was the ultimate goal? I’m sure she could
easily have devised a simpler, more efficacious solution!
Have you ever wondered why you often cannot
see eye-to-eye with your mate? How on earth you managed
to do so early on in the courtship and mating rituals is a deep
mystery. Whatever happened between the two of you that
led to a cynical realization that you’d been well and truly
gypped by scheming Nature? Are you one of those who
ponder how your perfect mate got transmogrified into your
favourite hate? Many will say that Mars and Venus are to
blame—and put the book down as read. I’m not going to
contest the planetary hypothesis. For all we know, it might
(quite literally) be true! But I think the problem—if it is one—
 7

goes much deeper than that. There are, to my mind, several

angles that need a much closer look than we’ve given them
so far.
You don’t need a degree in molecular biology or a
Ph.D in nuclear physics to understand what this book is all
about. All you need is an open mind. And a curious one. Even
if you disagree with what follows, at least you know what the
problem isn’t! That’s never a bad place to be.
And if you do happen to see some truth (what
seems right to you) in what this book has got to say, you
could stay with that and move on to your own version of
what’s wrong and what’s needed to fix the problem. Gouging
out your mate’s lovely eyes—or disemboweling him—is not
the answer!
I hope you find your own way out of the maze…as
I did. Try and suspend judgement till you’ve read what I have
to say. It could be your ticket to peace and reconciliation. It is
time to declare a truce in the Wars of the Sexes. Let us sue
for peace. Only from understandings can a detente emerge.


PROLOGUE

Why are men and women so fatally attracted to

each other…and yet are ever at War? How can two halves of
a whole be so inimically inclined towards each other, and yet
battle fiercely for their inalienable right to be together? What
immortal hand or eye framed such fearful asymmetry?
Woman is said to be Man’s other half, yet she
remains a mystery to him (not to mention to herself!) In spite
of the explanations of Freud, Jung, Desmond Morris,
Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir, George Bernard Shaw,
Jean Paul Sartre, the Maquis de Sade and a thousand other
psychologists, anthropologists, and avant garde novelists, she
remains an enigma. She’s utterly unpredictable, deliciously
illogical and maddeningly stubborn at times. Many have
called her opportunistic, self-centered, dangerously disloyal,
wayward, promiscuous and completely unscrupulous.
Are these accusations correct? If the answer to
that is ‘yes’, then what is responsible for it? And if the answer
is ‘No’, then it begs the question ‘Why are these accusations
made?’ Are these so-called indictments universally applicable
 8

or are they merely observations confined to isolated

individuals? Has any control experiment been conducted to
spot variations and isolate the factors responsible for them?
Is this the underlying reason for the distrust that usually mars
relations between the sexes? Are there deeper, biological
causes for Man-Woman friction, and the (increasingly bitter)
wars of the sexes that they occasion?
Having experienced the highest highs and the
lowest lows of my life as a direct consequence of my
encounters with members of the opposite sex, I, too, was
confounded by the paradoxical incompatibility of the sexes…
the diametrically opposite motivations that power their
actions…and their continuing fatal attraction for each other.
I was desperate to solve the puzzle. How could two
partners—essential to the procreation of the species—be
fundamentally incompatible? Why were their life objectives
usually irreconcilable? Was it something to do with societal
conditioning? Or was it on account of some a priori
programming, doing its own thing at a deeper – cellular –
level? How and why did the adolescent and youthful affinity
of girls for boys—and vice versa—so frequently change to
bitterness, cynicism and mutual distrust in later life? Had the
time come to peel away the layers and go to the root of the
problem?
What role did marriage have to play in this
destructive transformation? Had the institution of marriage
become an anachronism in the 21st century? Was there a
better alternative that promoted a more harmonious
relationship between the sexes? Or were there programs
within the code of life that no amount of analysis or
diplomacy could ever overcome? Was the evolution of
‘civilized’ society the root cause of the malaise? Could it be
possible that primordial memories—residual baggage from
past millennia, lying locked away deep within the
subconscious mind—had some role to play in precipitating
these traumatic confrontations between the sexes?
Taking the question further, were insights into
Woman’s true nature the keys to a Greater discovery above,
and beyond, our Selves? Would such insights—if at all they
were forthcoming—lead to better understanding and mutual
trust between the (pro/an)tagonists? These—and a hundred
other questions—passed through my mind as the years
passed. And suddenly, one fine day—in a sort of agonized
 9

shriek against the way in which Nature had turned life topsy-
turvy—the answers exploded like a star shell over the bleak
landscape of my consciousness…and congealed into the
printed matter you hold in your hand.
I committed the revelations to paper just in case
they contained some nuggets of truth and held out some
promise of respite from your own peculiar predicaments. The
musings given below could serve to function as catalysts for
further thought. Some of them may even spark off
controversy concerning the vital question of human origin
and evolution.
In the course of setting down my arguments, I
have touched upon age-old questions about the true nature
of Woman (and Man), their origins (for they cannot possibly
have a common origin, given the totally different ways in
which they think, act and react), and the influences that
continue to govern them and their relations with each other.
Of particular interest to me are the mysteries concerning
Woman’s biological and mental make-up, and the vexing
effects they precipitate in the opposite (opposing?) sex. The
sexes can neither live with each other nor without each other.
I looked into the past and—noting what I saw---
turned to the future to see whether it held out promise of
relief. In doing so, I took note of major social, scientific and
psychological ‘discoveries’ that—integrated and extrapolated
—seemed to point at various possible outcomes that could lie
ahead. Even more curiously, after I had embarked on my
quest, I started seeing article after article in the press which
supported many of my thoughts of man’s future destiny,
including new theories and research findings about what may
constitute his ‘mind’, brain, perception of ‘God’, genetic
structure, Man’s future plans concerning his tenure on the
planet Earth and space travel, and even life after death. I
firmly believe that Man has an ultimate destiny, and it may
be more closely linked to the universal one than we now
think. This is why the riddle of the antipathy and concurrent
sympathy between the sexes sometimes kept me awake
nights.
There seems to be more than one acceptable road
map. But one thing was certain—the sexes weren’t about to
fall into each other’s arms in a hurry. It needed drastic
changes, cataclysmic social and psychological upheavals,
before even a lukewarm entente cordiale could be inked! It
 10

was Understanding I was after—the rest was in the hands of

the gods.
The man is rare who has not been tied up into
knots by what appears to him to be woman’s fascinating
illogicality, utter unpredictability, and maddening
inconsistency. To make matters worse, she herself has no
idea why she thinks in such and such a way…woman’s
intuition! She cannot explain why she falls for the most
unlikely man….”Oh! But he has such a darling lisp!” She has
no clue as to which suit she wants to buy…the brown or the
black? And what about that green one with the low neckline?
I present below a statement of what every poor
TGP (to unravel the mystery of what is a TGP, you’ll have to
read on) has to contend with in dealing with the women in his
life.
All TGPs learn, by bitter experience, that if you
praise her beauty / extol her qualities / deify her, she will
accuse you of senility, and of being shallow and hedonistic. If
you stop doing so, however, she’ll flaunt her latest wet-
leather-look innerwear for you to comment upon.
If you admire her brains, she will slap something
abstruse and incomprehensible on you, and before you have
recovered your breath, she will pout that you haven’t noticed
her orange lipstick and new hair-do! Maddening…and utterly
indispensable? Lovable…and totally mind-bending? Read on:

If you kiss her, you are not a gentleman

If you don't, you are not a man
If you praise her, she thinks you are lying
If you don't, you are good for nothing
If you agree to all her likes, you are a wimp
If you don't, you are not understanding
If you visit her often, she thinks it is boring
If you don't, she accuses you of double-
crossing
If you are well dressed, she says you are a
playboy
If you don't, you are a dull boy
If you are jealous, she says it's bad
If you aren't, she thinks you don’t love her
If you attempt a romance, she says you don't
respect her
If you don't, she thinks you do not like her
 11

If you are a minute late, she complains it's

hard
to wait
If she is late, she says that's a girl's way
If you visit another man, you're not putting in
"quality time"
If she is visited by another woman, "oh it's
natural, we are girls!"
If you kiss her once in a while, she professes
you
are cold
If you kiss her often, she yells that you are
taking advantage
If you fail to help her in crossing the street,
you
lack ethics
If you do, she thinks it's just one of men's
tactics for seduction
If you stare at another woman, she accuses
you of
flirting
If she is stared at by other men, she says that
they
are just admiring
If you talk, she wants you to listen
If you listen, she wants you to talk

In short:
So simple, yet so complex
So weak, yet so powerful
So confusing, yet so desirable
So avoidable...yet so indispensable
So damning, yet so wonderful...
WOMEN !!! You can’t live with them...and you
can’t live without them!!! 1

She is forever torn between the urge to dress and

the instinct to undress. So all costumes are a compromise:
they reveal enough to stir the male curiosity and send his
imagination into overdrive, but he can’t touch…it’s only for
show, not for handling. “Look what I’ve got”, she seems to be

1
Thanks are due to the unknown genius who posted the essence of these lines on the Internet
 12

telling us, “but keep your cotton-pickin’ digits to yourself,

Buster!”
She is all ‘come-hither’ one day, ‘couldn’t-care-
less’ the next. For millennia, she has led men to the brink of
lunacy. In speculating on all these areas, I have offered
suggestions that may answer—amid possible howls of protest
—these and other questions about the yet-unresolved man-
woman equation.
It may appear to some, in this New Age and new
century, that in this little book I have mirrored their innermost
thoughts. If that be the case, I shall be delighted, for this is a
new age, although, like past ages, it is a curious mixture of
heathenism and godliness. Preoccupation with baser things
rubs shoulders with deeper truths, and hedonism co-exists
with stoicism.
But what sets this New Age apart from its
predecessors is the willingness of men to open their minds to
fresh ideas, either from the East or from the West, to feel the
complementarity—a oneness—of the two worlds, and to
abandon the superior insularity that was the hallmark of
Edwardian times, of men like Kipling, famous for his assertion
that the twain would never meet.
But meet they have, and meet they further shall,
as men come to a greater realization of their unity, of a
oneness at a hitherto unknown level of spirit and matter.
Here, as we shall see, Western science, stunned by its own
discoveries at the fundamental states of matter (discoveries
that seem to vindicate the utterances of Eastern mystics),
has, wittingly or unwittingly, taken the lead in ushering in a
New Renaissance.
This acceptance of the underlying universality of
things is a kind of watershed in Western thought, which
hitherto divided the world into two discrete halves: those
belonging to the realm of physical phenomena and those that
lie beyond. The reconciliation of these two states flows from
the growing realization that energy is matter and vice versa,
an acceptance as important as any great leap made by
philosophical theory, and one occasioned—ironically—by
science itself!
In doing so—by means of Quantum Theory—it
marks a radical departure (preceded by Relativity Theory)
from the Newtonian model of a mechanistic universe, which
still manages, to a certain extent, to condition and hobble
 13

Western Thought. New Age writings gently lead the reader to

a gradual (even if somewhat) reluctant acceptance of the fact
that the Eastern mystics were not only on the right track but
had—in a way difficult for the Western mind to grasp—
intuitively divined the truth about the final nature of things.
By temporarily abandoning eschatological
doctrines, we may take a breather and look back over a
century of achievement the likes of which Man has never
before witnessed. The combined effect of breakthroughs in
every field of science begins to point towards a distant point
of convergence, a place where everything appears to be
headed and where everything really belongs, or originated.
Infinity is seen to be a circle, endlessly plural yet intrinsically
singular.
As we explore these new discoveries, and couple
them with the deeper insights that have come to the minds of
men, we may be able to extrapolate the lines of force and—
focusing on that point of convergence—try to extract from it
its true meaning. It promises to be a journey of adventure:
and who knows, along the way we may discover the truth, not
only about things but also about our own selves, and our
larger common destiny. Keeping that in mind, let us return to
where the whole Man-Woman thing begins… In The
Beginning !

~*~

How it All Began

 14

About 4.2 billion years ago – or so cosmologists

maintain – the Sun had no planets, and thus there was no
solar system as such. Then a large interplanetary visitor
passed by, in a great, swinging arc that brought it close to the
incandescent fireball, then swung away into the cosmos.
It left in its wake maybe ten planets, whose
substance had been sucked out of the sun by the colossal
gravitational pull of the celestial visitor on its dramatic fly-
past. The smaller planets were at the two ends of the
swinging arc, when the celestial visitor was farthest, while the
larger ones were created when it was closest to the sun.
Thus we find Mercury at one end, and dwarf planet
Pluto at the other, with the gas giants—Jupiter, Saturn, and
Neptune—at the center of the imaginary line-up. This
tapering pattern can be best explained by the theory of the
primordial fly-past.
There are asteroid belts, wandering comets, and
countless large pieces of rock scattered between the planets,
which may be remnants of one or two planets that broke up,
for whatever reason. Or perhaps they may be explained as
splashes of molten solar matter, which cooled into
miscellaneous debris resulting from the gigantic spray of
planetary matter.
All this is of merely passing interest to readers of
this book, for we are more interested right now in the third
orb from the sun, the ‘pale blue dot’ as Carl Sagan preferred
to call it.
We are even more interested in the life forms that
arose on this unlikely little speck of matter circling a minor
yellow sun, itself circling – somewhere on its outer reaches –
the galactic core of the Milky Way system.
In particular, we are interested in our own species,
a biped called Man, which right now happens to be at the end
of the evolutionary chain of planet Earth.
Man has attempted to explain his origins in as
many sagas as there are cultures, from the Biblical version of
Adam and Eve to the Creation myths of the Hopi Indians, to
the Raelians (who say aliens from outer space created Man).
Some ancient legends and myths—the Epic of Gilgamesh
being only one such—raise innumerable questions about how
early tales so accurately portray what are undoubtedly extra-
terrestrial excursions.
 15

But Man—whatever his origins—found himself in

deep trouble as soon as woman appeared on the scene!
Woman is an after-thought in Nature. Even the Bible says
this. In the biblical version of the birth of woman, God thought
that Adam looked kind of lonely. (God only guessed; He did
not realize that Adam was in a state of supreme happiness,
which had induced a sleepy euphoria).
Anyhow, God took out one of Adam’s ribs while he
was fast asleep, and fashioned a woman to keep him
company…and to bear his offspring, share his bank balance,
accuse him of being a lazy good-for-nothing, and generally
make him jump through the hoop thrice a day by way of
improving him. She never had a very high opinion of her
mate, who was an earlier – though fairly roadworthy –
prototype.
Eve came after Man; she has always resented this,
and she is ever on the lookout for an opportunity of asserting
her superiority. That she is a later, better model is obvious
when you see that she’s equipped with a formidable array of
assets that merely serve to make the unequal contest even
more unequal! It’s like pitting T2 against poor old T1.
 16

The Creation
OR
‘The Egg is Fertilized’

How the Earth cooled, over hundreds of thousands

of years, the volcanic activity that spewed elemental matter
across the surface, how the rain lasting centuries washed
salts into the primitive seas that were forming, is stuff with
which we are familiar today.
Bolts of lightning shot through the noxious gases,
the rain cleared the atmosphere of dust and suspended
particles, but more importantly, there formed a nutrient-rich
broth of enormous dimensions just waiting for something
momentous to happen in it. And it did! As the Miller-Urey
experiments proved in the laboratory, the outcome of all this
was that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins—of Life
—were spontaneously created.
And suddenly there was Life: inexplicably,
wondrously, gloriously, in the form of a microscopic
unicellular organism. Did it come from space? Fossil remains
of bacteria have been found on 4-billion year old meteorites
from Mars, embedded in the Antarctic ice. Even more
incredibly, living bacteria have been discovered on
meteorites, in space itself, far from Earth, in the cold vacuum
where we used to think life—in any form—would be
irrevocably extinguished.
Did life form spontaneously on Earth? Or was it
purposefully introduced—for unknown reasons—by extra-
 17

terrestrial intelligences? No one has yet found the answer,

though the hundreds of mysterious artifacts that men like
Erich von Daniken have rubbed the faces of the evolutionists
in, seem to support the latter theory of human origin. To
those with an open mind, it might appear that scientists
prefer not to see the obvious unless it happens to suit them.
But suffice it to say that life arrived on the planet.
The Earth was like an egg, awaiting the seed, and now that
the two had met, there was no going back. Things would
never be the same again.

The Egg comes into her own

OR

Ab Ovo - ‘In The Beginning was The Egg’

If Nature had laid down one law—from the first

single-cellular organism flagellating in the primordial broth,
through the myriad forms of life that thrashed about in the
early seas, and right through the Ages of Plants, and
Dinosaurs to the present day—it was simply this: the species
must survive, even if it meant that it ‘evolve’, whether by a
process of gradual change or by mutation. It is important to
keep this in mind as we proceed.
Having created life, Nature was only interested in
its perpetuation. Everything else took a back seat to this
overriding priority. (Barnum & Bailey adapted/ adopted this
preoccupation with survival and continuity in their famous
slogan ‘The Show must Go On’.)
 18

Initially, reproduction was by means of cell division

(a process retained, as far as growth—cancerous or otherwise
—was concerned, in almost all living beings extant today). It
was simple and foolproof; the double helix DNA code of life
splits in half right down the middle, each of the parts being an
exact replica of the other.
Nature, as we know, is fond of elegant solutions,
the simpler the better. The process increased in complexity
as time went on, on account of the concomitant evolution of
the original unicellular animals into more complex, multi-
cellular creatures, from amoeba to hydra, to quote the best-
known examples we all remember from our school days.
But—to that end—Nature also appreciates
innovation, improvement, and efficiency. Cell division, as a
means of reproduction, severely restricted any chance for
evolution, and the rich environment, pregnant with
possibilities, hollered for a better way. A cell that divides itself
becomes merely two of the same, and mutation is too
haphazard a solution; it can, after all, go either way…and the
results are often unsuccessful. That’s wasteful. Nature prefers
to use mutation in emergencies—when things have either
bogged own or have careened completely out of control. It is
not a strategy that Nature has accepted as a regular part of
its repertoire.
As far as the organisms that evolved from the
early unicellular organisms are concerned, we know that they
lived in a twilight zone between the plant and animal worlds.
Nature saw they were efficient and practically self-contained
blobs of life, generating food through photosynthesis by
combining solar energy with the abundant nutrients that
welled up from the depths of the oceans.
They were drifting masses of energy-rich
comestibles that Nature saw no need of eliminating. Indeed,
they were honoured by being placed right at the bottom of
the pyramidical oceanic food chain, life-support for tiny
baitfish to the giant Blue Whale, and, indirectly, everything in
between.
Meanwhile, there were significant developments
on land. The Age of Plants was in full bloom, living cellulose
having mastered the art of bi-sexual reproduction, a gigantic
step for all species.
While some plants still practiced asexual
reproduction, the majority of them had shifted to propagation
 19

by the commixing of two complementary elements of

opposite sexes, to form a new unit.
This introduced entirely new equations into
reproduction: genetic enhancement by mutation; Nature,
aroused by the vast possibilities inherent in the situation,
played dice with the very fabric of life. For once throwing
caution to the winds, she pulled out all the stops as she
plundered the cornucopia of possibilities that lay within the
crucible of life.
Entire sub-ecosystems evolved to support the
increasingly sophisticated methods of bi-sexual reproduction.
The environment responded favourably to results of the new
incentives offered to the agents who took upon themselves
the responsibility of pollination: insects. Food was the bait
used to lure, and harness, the agents of cross-fertilization.
Insects rapidly filled the myriad evolutionary niches opened
up by the changing order of things, and whole ecosystems
sprang up to meet the challenge.
With the emergence of mollusks, fish, and,
thereafter, to the evolution of amphibians—which finally
paved the way for life to clamber out of the water into a new
world—bi-sexual reproduction entered a phase characterized
by passivity and chance, as in frogs and fish. It worked
because of the numbers involved: but it was, again,
inefficient and therefore wasteful.
But the most momentous development of all must
not be lost sight of: the coming of The Egg. True, in the lower
orders, there was little choice, almost all chance, in the
methodology of procreation. Indiscriminate (within certain
clearly-demarcated physical limits and subject to the
presence of conditions favourable to the event) release of
eggs and their counterparts, the seed, or sperm, was the
norm. But as one complexity followed another, this somewhat
wasteful and inefficient method gave way to better ones.
For Nature had also progressed to the next stage
of her plans; the method of propagation had to be
accompanied by a process that ensured the survival of the
best and the fittest of each species. Besides, if a particular
species performed better in a particular evolutionary niche or
food-gathering role, it gradually pushed out other, less
efficient ones.
Within a species, however, the same held good, so
that if a particular individual had acquired any feature or
 20

ability unique to itself, which gave it an edge over the others

of its clan in the struggle for survival, it was allowed to
become the progenitor of a new, dominant sub-species.
This in no way contradicted Nature’s basic rule:
species must survive, propagate, and perpetuate themselves.
If one, less efficient stream came to an evolutionary dead-end
and vanished, no matter. The ones who had pushed it out of
existence, who followed in its footsteps, took over the flame
of life and carried it forward.
Ever the great experimenter and innovator,
Nature was always interested in getting more results by
involving less energy and resources. The wasteful hit-or-miss
mass release of the complementary particles of life gave way
to a one-to-one system, where a single act of procreation
between two members of complementary sexes practically
ensured fertilization of the ovum.
This had two side effects: it gave rise to a more
stable and meaningful concept of a mate (and mating), as
opposed to mere chance encounters at breeding time
between two individuals of opposite sexes, encounters that
had to be somehow engineered to produce the desired effect
by a complicated system linked to tidal and lunar rhythms, as
in the Grunion.
The other spin-off was—keeping in mind the need
for eugenics and survival of the fittest—a more intricate
system of attraction by display behaviour, which introduced
the factor of choice into selective ‘pollination’, as in the
peacock, the stickleback or the Birds of Paradise.
The pairing-off process itself evolved to a stage
where the female herself chose her mate, based on a certain
combination of ‘attractive’ features she saw (read ‘was
programmed to accept’) in one particular suitor to the
exclusion of all other competitors for her favours.
She accepted the attentions of the one male who
most displayed the characteristics desirable to her, the
swayamvar (self-choice of mate by the female) of the animal
world.
For somewhere down the line, evolution changed
tack. No longer did the dominant male carry off the
submissive prize; the techniques of the bull elephant seal, or
that of the lion in his prime, were left behind. ‘Club-‘em-down-
and-drag-‘em-into-the–cave-by-the-hair’ tactics—cave-man
stuff—suddenly failed to accomplish the desired goal.
 21

Because the female had finally evolved into what Nature had
wanted her to be all along: the Custodian of The Egg!
Take the human female, for example. She carries
in her ovaries a store of about four or five hundred eggs, pre-
programmed to come to maturity after puberty, and released
in parsimonious doses of one egg every lunar month (the
periodicity obviously harking back to a distant age when life
evolved in the primal seas and life-cycles were geared to the
lunar tides).
Released in such a niggardly fashion within the
Custodian’s body, the Egg saves her Custodian from two
obviously avoidable situations: firstly, even if her choice of
mate is inappropriate, only one, or perhaps a maximum of
two eggs will be ‘wasted’.
Secondly, the 28-day gap gives her ample time to
look around for another, more suitable mate, if she feels her
eggs are ‘endangered’ by the earlier choice.
Nature thus ensures that her eggs (the Eggs
belong as much to Nature as they do to the Custodian,
perhaps even more!) cover as much ground as possible: get
the maximum mileage, so to speak. They are too precious to
squander indiscriminately.
In fact, on a cloudy day, I’d even go so far as to
say that Nature is the Egg! For what is the female but The
Custodian of The Egg (CuTE), with bailiff duties but not
ownership rights.
She is unaware that each and every action she
initiates and completes, each and every thought that passes
through her (MCPs would interject here the words ‘pretty,
empty little’) head, originates from The Egg!
In other words, she is controlled by a mechanism
from a dim and misty past. It is little wonder that her
thoughts, words, motivations, and actions are unintelligible
and incomprehensible to the male of the species, whose
evolutionary path—though apparently identical—is actually
vastly different from hers.
This is the underlying reason why male-female
‘encounters’ are so often dissatisfying, fraught with danger,
or even plumb forgettable, for there is nothing in Nature more
insufferable than a Custodian who is obviously aware of her
high post…and flaunts it. Fortunately (for all TGPs), she’s a
rarity.
 22

As Custodian, she has an instinctive knowledge of

her importance and responsibilities, and woe betide the
foolish male who forgets it. In fact, in her quest for the Ideal
Mate, or, in other words, for the Privileged One who is Chosen
to fertilize the Egg, she is utterly ruthless. The Egg – and, of
course, its Fruit – are of prime importance, and once the male
has accomplished the pollination part of his appointed role,
he has to be suitably bound to his vows to provide for the
Fruit, which are the point of the whole exercise.
The process of selecting the Ideal Mate, far from
being an overtly intellectual exercise, is apparently a totally
whimsical one, defying logic. ‘Love is blind’ we say, as we see
the beautiful damsel with the Beast. “What does she see in
him?” they whisper. Ah! If only they knew: she doesn’t know!
But the Egg does! It scans the scenario through lenses
developed over a time span of two billion years …and
chooses! And that, as they say, is that.
The flaw in this system is obvious. With the
passage of two billion years—even taking into account the
occasional mid-course corrections that might have taken
place—the scheme may not be totally appropriate to the
present time. There is an inevitable time lag between
identification (by the Egg, of course) of the indicated
amendments, and the installation of the new program.
So in the meantime the currently installed
program, which may be as recent as 300,000 years old, i.e.,
of Neanderthal Man or Cro-Magnon Man vintage, has to be
accessed. There is no alternative. Voila! A Brad Pitt becomes
a teenybopper, the heartthrob of millions: and even mature
Custodians swoon over him, leaving the mass of pollinators
puzzled, and mystified. But who ever understood the ways of
an Egg?
An obviously undesirable side-effect of the
program time-lag is that the in-built template may be giving
favourable weightage to a set of factors no longer relevant to
the Egg’s ambitions, i.e., for the security and successful
launching of her brood (read ‘Eggfruit’).
Thus mere brawn—or even the ability to sniff-out a
mountain goat at a hundred paces—can no longer guarantee
the kind of services the Egg is in the market for. Neither are
unkempt hair, nor a scraggly beard, reliable indicators of a
pollinator’s prowess at his appointed tasks of planting the
seed and bringing home the bacon for her brood.
 23

Here—luckily for the Egg—mutation appears to

have stepped in, in a fairly large number of cases (remember,
Nature will do anything to save the Egg, even going to the
extent of breaking the rules), by leap-frogging into the 21st
century.
Thus, it is observed in an increasingly large
number of instances, that older, now-obsolete patterns of
programming have been supplanted by others more likely to
yield results. The Egg may no longer want to give herself to a
stupid brute who, in happier, less-complicated times, was
sure to be adept at hauling the venison up to the cave.
The Egg, having realized that venison is now
represented by little pieces of green paper or magnetically
encoded plastic (or by sleek 400 bhp coupés instead of
snorting chargers, if that imagery appeals more to you) now
realigns her sights accordingly.
It is patently unfair to call the poor Custodian
names like ‘cute little gold digger’. The ‘Fruits of the Egg’
must not only survive, they must be nurtured in comfort,
safety, and so equipped as to excel in the business of life, for
(and here comes the crux of the matter) The Egg Must Go On!
Thus, security assumes prime importance. Security means
steady and reliable shelter, a decent flow of food, and
protection from dangers. Hence the premiums commanded
by potential mates possessing their own housing, good bank
balance, and influence. Abraham Maslow sure knew his stuff.
Mere looks, therefore, often take a back seat where the
eggsceptability of the human male to the opposite sex is
concerned.
As society becomes ever more materialistic and
competitive, one cannot but fail to notice the increasingly
larger percentages of young and nubile Custodians tying the
knot with pollinators who, at one time, would have been
written off as over the hill. ‘Spring’ and ‘autumn’ weddings
have become fairly common, especially in the materialistic
societies (and there are few, if any, that do not, to some
degree, answer to that description).
Aging Custodians of The Sperm (COTS) like Woody
Allen, Michael Douglas, Rod Stewart and Salman Rushdie are
enjoying the surge of juices that accompanies a Second
Spring! It is hardly surprising, therefore, that The Custodian
shoves intellect, aesthetics, ethics or even morals aside in the
search for, and selection of, The Haute Pollinator.
 24

Be that as it may, there are indications that the old

programs, though over-written in many cases, are still not
entirely obliterated. Here one has to only see Custodians
swooning over unkempt rock singers, who project an aura of
sexual invincibility.
These ‘throwbacks’ to a pagan, more sexually
uninhibited society (mortality rates were a basic cause for
this; we call this condition ‘permissiveness’ today) are so
much in demand that they are routinely mobbed and their
clothes are ripped from them in a symbolic act of union. Tufts
of hair are torn from their wigs, and there are instances on
record where women have disrobed entirely before these
Neo-Neanderthals, inviting, even demanding, sex.
In other words The Egg, once enamoured of a
prospective mate (for above-cited reasons), single-mindedly
pursues the matter to its logical conclusion. She can no more
resist such elemental urges than a moth can resist the flame.
What one Custodian can do, another can do better, indeed,
must do better! The future of her eggs demands it. Mass
hysteria, so common at rock ‘concerts’, is the inevitable
outcome.
However, there is a snag. The poor Neo-
Neanderthal with the guitar, who has merely happened to hit
upon a novel way of earning his livelihood, is himself mired in
problems that inhibit sexual performance. The grind of
constant touring, the pressures of a way of life where a band
is only as good as its last recording, take their inevitable toll.
The hapless fellow is forced to take recourse to
hallucinogens and other drugs to maintain the gruelling pace,
and his mental and physical state is rarely that which is
recommended to one who would aspire to attaining even a
modest plateau of sexual fitness. In fact, in bed—Viagra or no
Viagra—he is often a complete washout, and often ends up
between the covers with a friend of the same sex! Or even a
minor!
Then again, in an environment where musical
styles and audience preferences are constantly changing as
fast as the fashions, the useful life span of a pop icon is ever
shrinking. Where the careers of a Bing Crosby, a Frank
Sinatra, or The Beatles would span two or more generations,
the longest span of audience devotion a pop group or
individual artiste today can hope to retain is about six or
seven years.
 25

The resultant fall into obscurity, after scaling the

heights of fame and fortune can destroy an artiste. Elvis
Presley and Jimi Hendrix are two extreme examples; both
died of drug overdoses when they perceived themselves as
over the hill.
It can happen to actors, too; Rock Hudson, one of
Hollywood’s hunkiest hunks, was diagnosed as a homosexual,
and died of AIDS. Garbo went into self-exile as she outlived
her career and age caught up with her. The Ultimate sex
symbols, Marilyn Monroe, is said to have died of a drug
overdose.
Apparently, in the absence of a self-correcting
mechanism, whether it is Arms Control (Charlton Heston),
championing social causes (Cher), or Religion (Sir Cliff
Richard), the dismay of perceiving oneself as no longer being
Cock of the Walk (or Queen of the Screen) can sap the will to
live.
Coming back to the poor Pollinator, he finds
himself redundant once the acceptable number of Pollinations
is over. He is lucky; unlike the hapless male of a certain
species of South American spider, he is not eaten alive! His
office nose-dives sharply from that of ‘The Great Pollinator’ to
that of ‘The Great Provider’. The mystery of the term ‘TGP’ is
finally laid bare!
In subtle (and often not-so-subtle) ways, his
behaviour is brought around--‘corrected’--to conform to a
pattern pre-determined by The Egg, one that (according to
The Egg) ensures the maximum feed for the growing embryos
and chicks. No more Friday-evenings at the wharf-side bar
with the Boys: he is ‘encouraged’ to join Self-Improvement
Groups, stay late at the office, learn a foreign language, or
simply enhance his qualifications. Productivity must be
upped, commands The Egg, taking over the reins.
‘Do you want to be a salesman all your life?’ the
Egg asks incredulously of her TGP. ‘Don’t you want to become
Somebody, like your brother John?’ are familiar words in
many a home across the length and breadth of the country,
indeed, the globe. For, behind every successful Pollinator,
there is a pushy Egg!
From comparisons with another, well-corrected
Pollinator, to the need to keep up with the Jones’ Eggplant
next door, the harried male is gently but inexorably steered,
by titanic forces he cannot hope to counter, into a groove of
 26

grinding monotony and mindless monogamy that rob him of

his hobbies, his health, the hair on his head, his peace of
mind, and, if he doesn’t watch out, his libido as well. He is
‘Egged on’ to excel!
A NOTE OF CAUTION HERE: It is not in the Egg’s
interest that the Late Great Pollinator (now relegated to the
lowlier post of TGB – ‘The Great Breadwinner’, aka ‘The Great
Provider’) should now extend his pollinating activities into
other nests and, confronted later with Cuckoos planted there,
endanger the home brood. Anything but that, shudders the
Egg.
And thus The Egg proceeds to weave a silken rope
of emotional entanglement that is long enough to create the
illusion of freedom, yet is short enough to deny the reality
thereof. The Egg knows it cannot physically restrain the Great
Provider from going Happy Pollinating…but by getting into his
mind, it can hog-tie and brand him just as effectively.
The Egg has done The Great Favour to the
pollinator: she has given him Herself! It is the Congressional
Medal of Honour, the Victoria Cross, and TIME magazine’s
‘Man of the Year’ award all rolled into one. And God help the
TGB who doesn’t acknowledge it at frequent intervals with
flowers and chocolates! He is given the distinct impression
that he has reached Valhalla in the flesh, found the Holy
Grail! It is the ultimate sacrifice of The Egg.
The pollinator will be wise to appear suitably
bowled over, as though overwhelmed by his immense good
fortune. Suitably awed and humbled by the Custodian’s
unimaginable generosity, he is now a domesticated bull with
a nose-ring, ready to be led wherever duty calls. The Egg, in
the person of the Custodian, climbs into the saddle. For The
Egg is the world’s first psychologist… and still the best by far!
However, there is something to cheer about...for
TGP. The Late Lamented Pollinator is not eaten alive, nor is
he discarded. Nature has learned her lessons well. Humans
are expensive and time-consuming to design and
manufacture; she has to confer as extended a product-life to
the commodity as is possible…again, in the interests of the
Eggfruit.
Man, aka ‘The Great Pollinator’, is not a South
American spider. And so Nature, the ultimate economiser,
arranges for the Custodian (of course acting under the aegis
 27

of the Egg) to recycle her mate once she has got what she
wanted (Eggfruit and security).
Thus is TGP resurrected in a new avatar. He is
resurrected as the above-mentioned ‘The Great Provider’
(even the initials are the same: there is a wonderful sense of
continuity).
And always is he made to feel proud and
privileged to be given this key role in the new drama. It’s his
karma.
 28

TGP Strikes Back

OR

‘The Worm Turns’

But just as The Custodian has reworked her game

plan, so has TGP, and the outcome is easily observable; for
us, who have seen it often enough to consciously look for it, it
has become almost predictable. TGP may find himself longing
for the ‘good old days’ (a warning bell for any alert Custodian
that large doses of ‘wedding anniversary’ reminiscences and
flimsy lingerie are urgently called for), and the past beckons
alluringly.
TGP may revert to earlier habits, like cards and
beer with The Boys, or take a different—but respectable—
tack, such as golf, or hunting. The result is the same; the gap
between the two widens as TGP ventures into territory where
CuTE cannot easily follow. He is again the Predator on the
lookout for meat...er...flesh. Nightclubs are a great solace.
Then again, the urge for some extra-curricular
activity may go far beyond golf and hunting. TGPs with
attractive colleagues or secretaries may take the shortest
route from the boardroom to the bedroom. It’s all on account
of an unconsciously felt need for being appreciated, really
appreciated, as a person rather than a mere
reproductive/productive resource.
The years of keeping his nose to the grindstone
are starting to back up, awakening the rebel lying dormant in
his subconscious. If the feelings are reciprocated (by the new
Custodian on the scene), the whole cycle of events from TGP
1 to TGP 2 may be repeated.
TGP is usually smarter on this second lap; he
doesn’t leave an awful lot of loose ends lying around, unless,
of course, he happens to be the President of the United Sates,
sorry ‘States’, in which case he is always under observation,
and is sex-posed sooner or later.
TGP’s rebellion usually comes at the most
inconvenient time for the Custodian: when her own tenure (of
duty to The Egg) is practically over. Any moment now, the
hormonal signals from the program may be released to halt
 29

egg-release, and shut down the plant, laying off a goodly

portion of her hitherto-invaluable internal plumbing.
Since this process is usually accompanied by the
unmistakable signs of the onset of middle-age and the
departure of youth and beauty (TGP’s nectar), PoM(enstrual)S
drives another nail into the coffin of what could have been an
enduring bond based on emotional rather than material
considerations.
It may be suddenly and forcefully borne in on the
Custodian that she has been guided by skewed priorities all
along, that her inner programming has let her down.
Realisation dawns that ‘Offspring-Oriented Automatons’ do
not stable and long-lasting marriages make. But by then, it is
often too late.
Had the bond been forged in the first flush of love
and lust, and allowed to cool gradually, naturally, and wisely,
the pairing-off would have survived the strongest stresses
and strains the years would inevitably subject it to. But in the
absence of such deep-rooted feelings and personal
commitments—which alone can ensure that the Custodian
and her brood receive the same respect and regard as in
days of yore—TGP strikes back and goes Happy Pollinating.
The yoke is thrown off, at last! In modern times,
with the severe pressures of merely surviving in a rapidly
changing world where competition for a shrinking portion of
the pie is getting fiercer and fiercer, the average pair bond—
rarely worth writing home about—takes a mauling from which
it usually never recovers.
 30

The Egg Fights Back

OR

‘How the Egg Keeps her Cake Even After He’s

Eaten It !’

The Egg is nothing if not adaptable. And an alert

Egg (managing through its Custodian, of course), with its
crown battened down right, will evolve strategies to swim
with the trend.
As the institution of marriage, having taken a
heavy pounding from various socio-economic factors (some of
which have been mentioned above) begins to crumble and
decay, the position of the CuTE becomes ever more
precarious. Worse, the implications for the Eggfruit are not
good.
In an arrangement without guaranteed support for
CuTE and her progeny (alimony is not universally applicable),
if not for a lifetime, at least for a respectably long span of
time that will ensure that the offspring are launched in life,
the Egg starts getting nervous. This phenomenon, strongly
manifesting itself in recent times, is known as ‘insecurity’. Its
usual companion is ‘depression’.
 31

Insecurity can accelerate the Egg’s fall from power

(yes, she is not invincible) because it tends to move her into a
closed loop of action and reaction that tends to backfire
against her. The more she curbs her man and keeps tabs on
him, the more vicious and rebellious does he get.
Soon, a stage may be reached when he begins to
consciously conceal his plans and even whereabouts, and
communication between the pair is the first casualty after the
initial, acrimonious, round of recriminations. Having learnt
lessons from the experiences of other Eggs, therefore, a
clued-up CuTE shifts gears.
She has noticed that no matter how ‘liberated’ a
COTS claims to be, he is still, in many ways a hard-core
traditionalist. He will fight to the death to safeguard his
freedom to ‘circulate’, but hates it when his CuTE tries to
adopt the same behaviour. In short, he has double standards;
he will want the freedom to spend the night away at an
undisclosed location, but will yell blue murder if CuTE does
the same.
Again, this is entirely on account of his having
taken a different evolutionary path, and social mores
(installed by dominant TGPs) going back thousands of years.
Parents have always looked upon a son’s ‘sowing of wild oats’
indulgently, as a natural and even accepted behaviour at a
particular age. Conversely, female offspring, nubile and of
fruit-bearing age, are kept on a tight leash. If she manages to
go ‘seed-collecting’, all hell will break loose, especially if she
gets pollinated by a wild-oater.
The advent, popularity, and ready availability of
latex contraceptives, however, have brought about a subtle
change even in this very delicate area of parental control
over progeny. But the fact remains that, whether she gets
pollinated or not, pre-marital sex is still frowned upon by an
older generation unable to entirely shed an ages-old mindset
about young females of marriageable age indulging their
basic instincts, with or without ‘protection’.
And while ‘inadvertent’ pollination of the unwed
female Eggfruit is the second-most calamitous occurrence
within the nest, the top spot for ‘The Most Calamitous Event’
is still held by the pollination of a CuTE by a wild-card Happy
Pollinator.
Taking all these developments into account, CuTE
modifies her strategies. The first, and most logical place to
 32

start is the realization that she cannot change a trend in

society overnight. She has to flow with the stream, at least
for the time being.
She therefore gets her act together and
acknowledges that she will have to continue to function as
effectively as possible within the new dispensation, keeping
in mind the basic goal (‘The Egg must Go On’). She finally
relinquishes her most cherished, and hard-and-fast rule:
“Thou Shalt Marry before Pollination and Eggfruit bearing”.
But here too, she reveals her deep intuitive insight
into TGP’s nature; rare is the TGP who will abandon, for no
rime or reason, a CuTE he has managed to pollinate without
the marriage license or church ceremony. There are elements
of medieval chivalry in his mental make-up: it only needs a
smart CuTE to bring them into the open.
He never begins to realize that he has been ‘read’
and adroitly manipulated. CuTE’s faith in her judgement is
usually rewarded: the couple walks the aisle accompanied by
either a very visible in-the-womb fetus or even a walking,
talking Eggfruit. The day has finally dawned when people will
be able to say that they enjoyed their parents’ wedding!
Another dimension of the new ‘rapprochement’ is
the mutual realization (and here even TGP shows remarkable
flexibility, helped no doubt by Zen inputs) that a successful
pair bonding today needs to allow room for both the CuTE as
well as TGP. Crowding each other, in today’s pressure-cooker
living environment, can cause the uneasy union to bulge at
the seams.
There also seems to be a trend towards creating
room for mutual ‘indiscretions’. Liz Hurley’s wild-oats
escapades during her nesting episode with Hugh Grant and
her single-mother pregnancy, the unlamented demise of
Nicole Kidman’s fairly long-lived (by Hollywood standards)
marriage with Tom Cruise (who, after a two-year sleep-in, has
decided he doesn’t want to marry Penelope Cruz after all, and
has settled down in cosy unmatrimony with Katie Holmes),
and Jennifer Aniston’s admission that her obsession with a
certain fifty-plus rock musician had caused ex-husband Brad
Pitt to reluctantly give his advance acquiescence to the affair,
should it happen, in the interests of preserving the pair-bond,
all are straws in the wind for the sociologist. Inevitably, the
Pitt-Aniston pair bond has snapped. We hate to say it, but: we
told you so!
 33

But the Egg is not licked, not by a long chalk. It is

merely lying low for the time being. Here is where she intuits
Nature’s First Law (one even more important than ‘The Egg
Must Go On’): ‘Life Must Go On’! The coming of in vitro
fertilization has opened the doors to the possibility of reviving
the dream of practicable eugenics. A brave new breed of
surrogate mothers has cleared a path for working CuTEs who
prefer the status of single motherhood to the perils of
matrimony.
It is no longer difficult for an unwed CuTE to walk
into a sperm bank and arrange to be pollinated by the seed of
a famous TGP, thus enabling her to bear Eggfruit, yet side-
step all the disadvantages associated with a real relationship.
True, she will have to rear the resultant Eggfruit all
on her own, but if she is financially stable, she may well
prefer it to be this way, even by adoption, a la former Miss
Universe Sushmita Sen. In so doing, the CuTE—operating at
the cutting edge of reproductive medicine—opts out of the
‘Wars of the Sexes’. If she shows enough initiative, she also
takes a fig leaf from the sperm donor’s book and keeps some
of her own eggs in deep-freeze.
Should she feel like having a second, or even third
round, of Eggfruit to rear in her twilight years—by which time
Nature has long since blown the whistle on her reproductive
phase—she can access that route courtesy a surrogate
mother, a womb-on-hire. It is a sort of immortality, a life
without the additional complications resulting from
interaction with the world of TGPs, and the modern,
emancipated CuTE is very interested.
 34

Earthbound Aliens

OR

‘The Battle of The Species’

With devilish cunning, Nature has sidestepped any

easy solution to the problem of effortless, economical, and
efficient pairing-off and reproduction, which could easily have
been done by perpetuating the old policy of asexual
reproduction.
Perhaps she sensed that two competing sexes,
each possessing one incomplete half of the components
needed for the formation of a zygote, would add an element
of mystery, suspense, and possible quality-enhancing
features to both process as well as product.
It reminds one of the Coca-Cola formula which,
divided in half, is held by two people totally independent of,
and (corporately/functionally speaking) at loggerheads with,
each other. So it is with humankind. Like the British in pre-
partition India, Nature divides in order to rule.
As we shall see, the two halves, grappling for
hegemony over each other, are now (the use of the word
‘now’, of course, here denotes that there was a time, not so
long ago, when the CuTE and her female progeny were kept
subjugated by TGPs) evenly matched in spite of completely
different strengths and weaknesses.
They are compelled to strike an uneasy truce.
They do not particularly like each other. Given half a chance,
they would rather spend quality time with their own kind.
 35

Voila! Homosexuality steps in to ease the ache. But alas! As

far as the bulk of the populace is concerned, they have to
come together to mate and procreate. Each possesses the
missing half of the apparatus that, as a unit, makes progeny
possible (in the normal, sexual-satisfaction-guaranteed way
of old). And in-built programs draw them together.
In an earlier chapter, we have dwelt upon the
origins of the motivations that drive The Custodian of The
Egg, or CuTE, for short. We have attempted to penetrate (le
mot juste, as we shall soon see) the seeming mystery behind
her decision-making (if at all the human female is capable of
such conscious activity), apparently illogical actions, and
inconstant and unpredictable behaviour.
There is, as we have seen, no mystery at all to
this: if one can so refer to a situation where a lifeform is
controlled by an invisible, non-palpable intelligence from 2
billion BC. As every school child knows, a human fetus in
various stages of development temporarily assumes the
appearance of—in different stages of its journey to maturity—
all the major evolutionary forms, including unicellular
organism, (gilled) fish, tailed reptile, mammal, to Homo
Sapiens.
Vestigially residing within the psyches of both
COTS as well as CuTE are the ill-fitting and diametrically
opposed traces of each stage of evolution. It is this hodge-
podge combination of factors that is responsible for ninety
percent of all the friction and acrimony between the sexes.
Knowing this, Nature has spared no effort to make
the two models complementary to each other. The two halves
of Human Being are radically different from each other:
where one has bumps, the other has hollows, in a manner
more than just of speaking. In fact, it is almost literally true,
all else being equal; men love their women with large,
smooth bosoms, while women prefer well-endowed men with
flat, well-muscled, hairy chests with ‘gladiator’ pectorals.
While she is generally smooth, he is usually hairy.
No, we don’t really believe they come from Mars or
Venus, do we? Both are Earthlings. But we must always
remember that our so-called planet ‘Earth’ is ¾ths water! The
woman is of the water, and her body is soft, delicate, and
bruises easily. She is all rounded, flowing curves, adaptable,
operating on a lunar cycle, waxing and waning. The man is all
straight lines or sharp angles, aggressive as harsh sunlight.
 36

He thrives on light, fresh air and loves combat: a worthy son

of the soil. I’d say Men are from Earth, Women are from the
Moon!
The man is therefore earthy, built with heavier
bones and harder, denser muscle. His musculature is well
developed, to provide the speed, power and endurance that
used to be needed to spear or shoot game, and even run it
down (today, its main uses are moving furniture around,
changing a flat tire, and opening cans of beer). The woman is
soft, yielding, with huge reserves of energy hidden in her
subcutaneous fat that serve her well in post-partum breast
feeding and bringing up her Eggfruit.
Man is blessed with strength, stamina, daring, and
resourcefulness, yet, strangely, he can sometimes sicken and
fall prey to life-threatening maladies when the female of his
choice rejects him. Tough, yes, but vulnerable also, yes. He
tends to live fast and furiously, and usually wears out at a
faster rate, mentally, physically, and emotionally. He usually
dies earlier, normally leaving a widow to curse or praise him,
depending upon how much substance he bequeaths to her.
But in spite of all the sets of opposites, Nature has
bound the two sexes together by the Law of Attraction. In
what is referred to as ‘normal’ individuals, the opposite
features of one exert a strong, practically irresistible pull on
the other.
There could be said to be two kinds of attraction:
one purely physical, the other non-physical, by which is
usually meant the influence of another, mysterious plane, call
it ‘mental’, spiritual, or what have you. Only the Egg knows
for sure just what is the exact combination of factors that
releases the hormones and juices that go into attraction,
emotional bonding, lust, and, ultimately, pollination.
But it appears that there are an infinite number of
individual programs, and each Egg has one. Unfortunately for
all of us, no two programs are quite the same.
The problem arises when the Egg, acting under
compulsions of her resident program, chooses a TGP. But
since the probability of a chosen TGP exactly matching the
template contained within a given program (which will have
at least a hundred or more factors, either atavistically or
individually acquired) is fifty billion to one, the chances of the
TGP coming up to expectations @100%, are bleak.
 37

The same holds good for TGP’s CuTE. She may

come close to his installed template (called the ‘anima’ by
psychologists), but a gap will invariably exist between
demand and materials supplied. Unless a compromise is
possible, friction will rapidly destroy the bond.
This is why we so often hear that her Prince
Charming turned out to be such a damp squib, or we hear
him complaining that his Goddess turned out to have ‘feet of
clay’ and was prudish and frigid to boot. No TGP will tolerate
a lousy lay, after all his assiduous wooing...or even a lousy
cook, for that matter.
Since enlightened compromise appears to be the
key to smoothing the ruffled feathers of either of the two
embattled yet mutually attracted combatants, it may be
worthwhile to explore, in a little more depth, the factors that
make a TGP tick.

On The Trail of TGP

 38

The Man, aka the Great Pollinator/ the Great

Provider (TGP 1/ TGP 2)/ the ‘Curator Of The Sperm’, COTS for
short—he loves hitting the sack after a hard day’s hunting,
either without, but preferably with, the CuTE of his choice—
evolved independently of CuTE (Custodian of The Egg).
Prima facie, they took concurrent and identical
evolutionary paths. In actual fact, COTS came to flower by
passing through an entirely different evolutionary channel.
More or less concurrently with the evolution of the Egg was
the seed—or sperm—also brought into existence by Nature.
As explained earlier, this system aimed at adding
a little competitive zest and spice to the process of
procreation, in order to revitalize of the entire ritual. The
fiendishly inventive process—installed by Nature to ensure
that the two essential components of Life come together to
produce a zygote—was so devious, that nothing short of an
extra-terrestrial or ‘divine’ source, with Eternity as its
playground, could possibly have devised it.
The sperm made its appearance the moment
asexual reproduction in early lifeforms was poised to advance
to the bi-sexual level. At first, it was part of a passive process
of ‘pollination’, ejected at random near the possible vicinity of
eggs. Fertilization was a chancy process on paper, but the
sperm and the eggs were both released in such profusion—in
their countless millions—that the chances of contact were
actually very good.
The results were invariably quite satisfactory. But
the method was inelegant, somewhat wasteful (especially of
the more precious eggs), and entirely unsuited for installation
in the higher orders of creatures that subsequently emerged
on land. It was an acceptable water-based process, and still
very much in vogue as far as fish, amphibians and certain
insects are concerned.
But when life climbed out of the water, this
process became redundant. Dry land, being a very different
sort of medium, was inappropriate to the earlier ‘random’
process. It lacked the conductivity offered by water, and
could not per se ensure that the two components of life would
come together. In water, they had floated around near each
other, and sooner or later most of the milky clouds of
complementary materials met and individually fused into
millions of zygotes.
 39

If the same method were to be applied to the

terrestrial environment, however, it does not need much
imagination to foresee the end result. Each forlorn little clump
of male genetic emission would lie on the hard earth, pinned
where it lay by gravity. In the absence of a liquid medium like
water, which had enabled the two clouds to disperse in each
other’s vicinity till fusion occurred, the precious protein-rich
cargoes would soak away into the soil, to be consumed by
small insects or bacteria, or merely decompose into organic
by-products.
A better method was needed, and here Nature
came up with an amazing innovation: she came up with the
simplest, most elegant system to meet her ends. She went
straight to the heart of the issue and evolved a mechanism
whereby the seed was directly injected into the canal leading
to the chamber containing the eggs.
Here, she bowed to evolutionary precedent (a
proven one) by taking the precaution of ensuring the
presence of moisture—the good old liquid medium that had
done such a fine job all these millennia), a warm, comfortable
flow by which the sperm could easily navigate to its
destination. By flagellating their tiny tails by way of
propulsion, sperm made their way up the inlet canal to the
chamber where the egg(s) waited.
Stiff competition among the sperm ensues until
one—more able than his peers—penetrates the Egg’s tough
outer casing and voila! We have conception! All that the Egg
(now a zygote, or fertilized Egg) has to do now is to grow and
ripen into an Eggfruit.

In the lower orders, Nature rarely declared an

open breeding season; apart from some primates, and
exceptions like the porcupine, mating was confined to a
particular time of year. The environment, as well as the
gestation period of the species concerned, determined this
season.
At an appropriate time, fertilization was effected,
and gestation occurred when the female could rest up (as in
the hibernating female polar bear) or when food supplies
were not scarce. Birthing time was crucial: the weather had to
be pleasant, or at least not too harsh for the newborn young,
 40

in order to improve their chances of survival. To illustrate,

early spring is lambing time.
The timing of the mass matings of such lower
orders was triggered by simple hormonal activity, which
signaled to the male that he should ‘spring’ into action.
Glands in the female begin to secrete scents that telegraph to
the males of the herd or flock that they compete for the
privilege of covering her. And fierce (and often fatal) is the
competition for her favours, until the victorious male, having
driven away rival suitors, partakes of his hard-won reward.
In some animals, the male also comes into heat
(as the process is called). For example, the bull elephant
comes into ‘musth’, a condition when glands near the eyes
release a mucous discharge, and when the creature is not
quite in his right senses, sometimes even going berserk and
running amok, turning into a ‘rogue’ shunned by the whole
herd.
The point of this apparent digression is to illustrate
that although Nature had solved the problem of conveyance
and aiming of the seed towards the egg(s), she had
nevertheless not neglected to take all precautions in
maximizing the chances of successful coitus, i.e., one that
ended with the formation of a zygote.
While ensuring the receptivity of the female by
built-in incentives like the ability to achieve multiple orgasms
(as often observed in the CuTE; her clitoris is four times more
sensitive than the male’s glans), she simultaneously imbued
the male with the ability to mate several times in a day. His
reproductive apparatus was capable of producing and storing
sperms by the million, and though each act of coitus results
in a single orgasm for him, his recovery time is fast enough to
enable him to repeat the act after brief intervals.
Nature has spared herself no pains in enabling the
gonads of a healthy TGP to regularly produce sperms in vast
numbers. Unlike the Egg, the sperm has no timetable for
release; they can be ejaculated (by means of a powerful
muscular pump activated by his orgasm) many times a day,
without him suffering any adverse side effects.
This is possibly one of the factors responsible for
his tendency to go Happy Pollinating. Another reason for his
tendency to ‘stray’ is a hangover from his evolutionary past:
the dangerous life-style that went with being an Early Human
necessitated frequent mating, possibly with many CuTEs. This
 41

ensured that—the mortality rate among active males being

high—procreation itself did not suffer. The Egg got her sperm
(and Eggfruit), and all was well. The tribe would support her
till she found another TGP.
This ability to produce high quantities of seed, to
eject them almost at random (in what was to him a
marvelous form of recreation), and the preoccupations of his
mate(s) with the offspring that ensued, left the field wide
open for him to explore fresh avenues for entertainment.
The situation in those early formative years of the
human race was hardly conducive to marital fidelity, neither
was it, in fact, Nature’s intention to impose such a condition
at that particular point of time. But the repercussions of these
early behavioural patterns are observable even today.
In several cultures—well into historic times—we
observe that polygamy as well as polyandry were
commonplace, reflecting not merely the prevailing social
mores but also the realities of survival in those times and
circumstances.
For example, in the Mahabharata, the quasi-
religious epic featuring Krishna, an avatar of the Hindu god
Vishnu, the five Pandava brothers share a common wife,
Draupadi. Such is the love and unity between the brothers,
however, that nowhere in the epic is there any hint of any
dissatisfaction with the arrangement: it is a non-issue.
All this is by way of expanding our position on the
origins of the so-called wayward ways of TGPs, normally
described in such disparaging terms as ‘philandering ways’ or
‘roving eye’ or even ‘dirty old man’, by Custodians unaware
of the origins and powerful roots of these instincts in the
human male.
They are vestigial hangovers, atavistic tendencies
from an evolutionary dawn-time when these very qualities
may have ensured the survival of the human race in a hostile
and violent world when seed-carriers, the primal TGPs,
suffered high mortality rates in connection with keeping the
Egg and Eggfruit alive...as they still continue to do!

Of Cavorting CuTEs and Cavemen

 42

OR

‘A Day in the Life of a Cave Couple’

Nature must indeed have been very excited with

the results of her experiments thus far, because she was,
apparently, taking no chances on failure down the line.
Thus, in addition to all the incentives attached to
the successful culmination of the process whereby TGP went
out and bagged his CuTE, Nature broke her golden rule: she
made the CuTE really cute! Nature broke her rule in the case
of human beings. In every other species, the female was a
drab, nondescript creature as compared to the resplendent
male. But woman was a glittering thing, next to which a man
looked dull and colourless.
So cute did she make her that now, in all of
Creation, this was the only instance where the female rivaled
—and easily surpassed—the male in terms of beauty. To
illustrate, let us recreate, in passing, the outlines of a
hypothetical early-in-the-mating-ritual screenplay.
To her bedazzled would-be mate, she was spring,
warm drizzles, and rainbows, she was running deer, leaping
salmon, a fiery dawn, and the aurora borealis all rolled into
one. She was a curvaceous, wiggling nymph with an
irresistible come-hither look in her eye. Her skin was softer
than rose petals, her voice was as the tinkling of little bells—
sweeter than that of a nightingale in love—and her
locomotion was sheer poetry. It was if she floated over, rather
than trod upon, the earth.
Her hair reminded him of the thick, swirling black
clouds that passed over the landscape, her lips were like two
strawberries, pouting with passion, and her eyes were so
deep he felt he could drown in them. Lower down, where his
glazing eyes sometimes dared to stray, a swan-like neck
dipped to the dizzying cleft of a deep valley that seemed to
invite his urgent attentions.
Poor TGP! He was zapped like never before! He
never knew what hit him: just the effect Nature wanted, for
TGPs / Happy Freelance Pollinators do not easily walk into the
honey trap. The bait has to be very, very good. Nature
surpassed herself when she designed CuTE.
 43

Unknown to him (for CuTE made it a point,

normally, to conceal her feelings, at least for the time being),
she too, was not exactly uninterested (for reasons she
couldn’t quite understand) in the large, awkward, and hairy
ape that had been following her around like Mary’s lost little
lamb.
This creature of distinctly simian structure was
strangely imbued with the power to make her heart beat a
little faster. True, he did not appear to have a tongue in his
head, he kept dropping things, he tripped over his large feet,
and to all outward appearances he hadn’t bathed for a week.
There always seemed to be something stuck in his
throat that made him emit strangled noises, which were,
presumably, his sole mode of communication (which was a
little disappointing, because conversation was something she
was very fond of), and his eyes focused and defocused with
alarming regularity.
Moreover, he seemed to be afflicted with some
weird disease that caused him to reflexively turn his head
whenever another CuTE passed by, and his keen interest in
keeping up with developments inside his nose and in the
region where his fig leaf was stationed, were rather
disconcerting.
Nevertheless, for some odd reason, whenever the
hulking creature stood before her, giving her the glad eye,
the blood rushed to her flaming cheeks, and her knees
seemed to turn to jelly.
In the end, she had to put him out of his misery by
gently talking to him, patting him like he was a big, shaggy
dog that wanted a bone, until his tongue loosened up a little
and speech—human and intelligible—issued from his mouth.
In next to no time, he was eating out of her dainty
little hand (she was a great cook), and the food seemed to go
straight to his heart, for he now adopted the practice of
dropping to his knees at frequent intervals during the day, to
propose to her.
One day, after the mandatory three giggles, she
had finally given in, only to be scooped up like a baby and
rushed to his cave, where he went on to demonstrate that, in
certain areas at least, he was not as clumsy as he looked.
Everything was different, looked different, was
different now. The sun always shone brightly out of a
cloudless sky of the most incredible shade of blue. Everything
 44

looked fresh and green, the air seemed to be full of strange,

intoxicating scents, food tasted better, the world was a
beautiful, wonderful place, and they were young, crazily in
love, and nothing else mattered.
They hardly noticed other people. True, there were
shadowy figures with whom they seemed to live and move,
but these hazy perceptions had an unreal, dreamlike quality.
Only they seemed real, everything else was vague,
insubstantial. They lived, in short, in a blissful, dream world of
their own. Their blood surged in them, and all Creation
seemed to be in harmony with their heightened awareness of
each other, of the perfection of their being together.
It was the call of youth to youth, it was what they
had been born for, and it was their time, their turn. The
others looked at them and smiled secret smiles, knowing
what it felt like, and remembering with nostalgia their own
good times.
In due course, the cave was full of little simian
creatures that were smaller versions of him, and she lost all
interest in everything other than cooking, washing, feeding
and otherwise caring for her brood. Now and then, she would
catch him looking at her in a puzzled and wistful manner, as if
didn’t quite understand why she never found time for him any
more, but she put it down to an upset stomach and cut his
rations accordingly.
In course of time, he started coming back to the
cave from his day’s hunting long after the moon was up, and
she had to cook by firelight. They now quarreled daily, with
her tongue outrunning his effortlessly, till the time came
when he would not talk for days. One day, he went hunting
and never came back.
And so the pattern was set, and so the pattern
remains right up to the present day. Nature sure suckered us
but good, you see that, don’t you?
But into every dreary life a little happiness doth
fall, every now and then a little ray of sunshine penetrates
the gloom, and if some get more and some get less, it hardly
matters in the end. Only Nature wins, everyone else merely
participates, and nothing is ever going to change that:
nothing.
We are all still cave people under our sophisticated
urbane exteriors; scratch the surface just a little and you
have Early Man, preoccupied with survival, and his mate
 45

desperately struggling to ensure that her Eggfruit reach

maturity, when they can go out and participate in the divine
comedy all by themselves. It is her dearest wish that they,
too, get their turn in the sun. Somewhere deep inside her, she
knows that Nature wants that to happen just as badly as she
does. Nothing has really changed.

The Element of Emotion

OR

‘Love, I Love You’

An important element in the choice of mate has

intentionally been omitted, in order that we could examine it
in isolation (if such a thing were at all possible to do). We are,
 46

of course, referring to the mysterious factor called ‘love’. In

the vignette above, entitled ‘Cavorting CuTEs and Cavemen’,
it has received only passing mention, and there. too, by
implication.
The mere perception of physical beauty alone
cannot account for love, leave alone the heart-stopping
amazement of love at first sight. Even when a relationship
flowers into a realization that the other person is the chosen
one, what are the exact roots of the feeling (or bunch of
feelings and emotions) that we refer to under the omnibus
word ‘love’?
In many cultures, love has been acknowledged as
a factor indispensable to the mating process. The pairing
process usually starts with this hitherto-unidentified,
inexplicable input. The pair is ‘enamored’ of each other, and
one thing leads to another. Nature, as we are told, will have
her way. Exactly! Here again, we see the ingenious hand of
Nature behind the scenes…or do we? As usual, we argue in
favour of the motion.
As we have seen, implanted in each human
individual is a personalized program which—for the
concerned egg or sperm—determines the exact combination
of a hundred or more factors that reside in his or her ideal
mate. This program sets up the selection, pursuit, and end
game.
But since it is very unlikely (but not impossible)
that all the factors will be found resident in a prospect, Nature
in her wisdom has also given us the ability to compromise.
Some vital factor (high cheekbones, a sense of humor,
beautiful hands, luscious lips, a pair of stunning blue eyes,
hair like ripened wheat, large, well-rounded breasts: it could
be anything) may so predominate or be so very desirable that
it out-weighs the absence of some others.
But these determining factors are short-lived
unless they are brought together by, and cemented with, the
adhesive of an emotional bond.
It is important to remember that Man, the tangible,
is a product of physics and chemistry, first and foremost. His
body, including his brain, is composed of physical elements
meticulously harmonized by chemical controllers called
hormones. Not for nothing do we talk about the ‘chemistry’
that might exist between two people.
 47

And we have all experienced the ‘negative

chemistry’ that makes some people put our backs up. They
may be, to all intents and purposes, perfectly presentable,
affable, and capable persons, yet we feel an inexplicable
constraint in interacting with them. We try to avoid them as
far as is practicable.
Does the release of hormones also go hand in
hand with chemical receptors reporting to the brain, based on
the original programs that that have been installed and which
have evolved over the years, to detect ‘unfavourable’
elements exuded by the sweat glands in the skin of others?
When primitive organisms such as fish have just
these very receptors (arranged along what is known as the
‘lateral line’ in ichthyology), warning them of the presence or
approach of hostile predators like sharks, why cannot we, too
—who, in an evolutionary sense, are descended from them—
also have such mechanisms? The chances are that we
certainly do, and if research can identify and isolate the
physical elements of ‘gut feelings’ that we have about some
people, it will be a major breakthrough in human relations as
a laboratory science.
The perfume industry, which probably predates
historic times, knows that ‘scent’ makes people more
favourably inclined towards the wearer: but only to some, not
to all. Here, too, the personal programs, which determine
personal choices, are at work. One person may hate lavender
scent, another may love it.
The perfumers have yet to discover a universal
scent, but many brands have come close. We know that when
we smell a particular up-market scent, we immediately
associate the wearer with wealth and luxury. It is the
ingrained ability to sense a ‘quality’—an olfactory aura if you
please—in a person, embedded long ago in our subconscious
mind, a mysterious zone from where the programs operate
and where primal memories are stored.
The particular way a person smells can play an
important role in determining whether (a) we dislike him (b)
we are neutral towards her (c) we are wary of them, or (d) we
are powerfully attracted.
The perfumers have long been aware of this, and
have even gone beyond (aided, undoubtedly, by effective
advertising) these frontiers by creating ‘life-style’ perfumes
that appear to project a person’s way of life, or even his or
 48

her predilections. In other words, Nature’s original idea has

been hijacked: accessing primal memory to create the
illusion that something is desirable.
A ‘smoky’ pine-based after-shave will signal to
those standing in the lift that the wearer is not really an 8 am
to 5 pm wage earner, but is actually an adventurous outdoors
type. The sense of smell, in all its subtle manifestations, is a
powerful determinant of our likes and dislikes.
The preceding analysis has been presented to
prepare the ground for the acceptance of an idea that may be
worth considering; is the emotion of love linked to our (known
as well as unknown) chemical receptors? Do these receptors,
on receiving the long-awaited signals which they were
designed and installed to capture, then proceed to trigger off
behaviour prescribed in the inherited internal program that
contains a template of the future mate? Everything points in
that direction.
For example, it has been proved by laboratory
findings that pheromones—secreted in appreciable quantities
by women who are sexually active—can render them
attractive to other males. And everyone knows that
testosterone in perspiration works as a powerful aphrodisiac
for some women. The responses are, to a certain extent,
program-based.

The Scent of a Woman…and the Element of

Love:

It is extremely likely that, built into the program

that governs the choice of a mate, is the ideal way he or she
should smell. Recent researches have all but confirmed this.
Scent is merely a symbol, a signal if you please, of qualities,
characteristics, or proclivities. In a subtle way, our olfactory
sensors may be working in tandem with all the others
participating in the program, in narrowing down the field of
choice of a mate.
In support of this, recent researches also suggest
that virile men are strongly attracted to women who are
having plenty of sex, the fact being telegraphed by subtle
odours released by these women’s sebaceous glands in
response to the hormones responsible for triggering sexual
activity. No sweat?
 49

The British weekly New has published the news

Scientist (reported in The Times of India, 28th January 2005)
that a scent exuded by young women as a subconscious sex
attractant has been synthesized for post-menopausal women,
who want a larger slice of the action. Forty-four women took
part in the experiment, where pheromones were added to
their regular perfume. 41% of the pheromone users
experienced more petting, kissing and affection with
partners, as compared to 14% of the women from the
placebo (control) group. Overall, a full 68% reported
increases in sexual encounters, against only 41% in the
placebo group.
The report is based on a study aired in a specialist
publication, the Journal of Sex Research. The researchers
were Harvard University’s Joan Friebely and a Massachusetts
doctor, Susan Rako. The pheromone’s discover, biologist
Winnifred Cutler, is keeping the formula under tight wraps
until patents are granted to her organisation, fittingly called
the Athena Institute for Women’s Wellness Research located
at Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. If and when synthesized
versions of the pheromones hit the market, the new, hi-
octane perfumes are going to give the leading perfumers a
run for their money! And pssssssttttt!!!! The secret odours did
not come from exotic blooms or musk deer, but were
extracted from a young woman’s armpit sweat.
And so – sweatily or otherwise – we fall in love. But
this leaves unexplained the quality of love. Just what is it?
We do not find it hard to explain hate, or the other, common
garden variety of love, akin to affection but much stronger.
So is ‘romantic’ love to the lesser (though very important)
form of love.
The two are distinct and separate. We love our
mothers, but we love our chosen one in a very different way,
which encompasses the lesser love, then soars into realms
we never knew existed. It elevates the soul and revitalizes
both body and mind. It transcends the material world to lift us
to a plane where things insubstantial hold sway. It unleashes
incredible quanta of energy; lovers often surpass themselves
in creative pursuit. Love is the mysterious catalyst in artistic
endeavour, and creation is the precipitate.
Or is this merely another way of saying that two
primal programs overlap? That they mesh together in some
sort of predetermined, predestined way? In fact, love can
 50

exist even when only one of the two (protagonist’s) programs

coincide; the other does not experience the same elation.
Then there is disappointment, heartbreak, and breakdown,
from which recovery is a lengthy and painful process.
There may be another important factor involved in
the process of falling in love, linked to the inner program. It is
a known fact that Man loves himself more than anyone else, a
consequence of the basic instinct of self-preservation, which
is even more basic than the urge to procreate, at least under
normal circumstances of everyday life. I wonder if you’ve
ever noticed—as I have—that lovers (quite often) strongly
resemble each other?
Could the love of self, of seeing the self in the
other, lead to this over-powering emotion to unite with the
other person? Would this explain why lovers make such
heroic sacrifices for each other? It would certainly satisfy the
inner urge to love oneself, no doubt a fallback to the age of
asexual reproduction.
I have also had occasion to observe cases where a
child dotes on the parent of the opposite sex. The
psychologists call such behaviour ‘electra’ and ‘oedipus’
complexes as they relate to girls and boys, respectively.
Here, the complex may overwrite the internal program, and
unless a mate matching this very clear-cut template is found,
bachelorhood or spinsterhood is likely to be in store for the
parent-enamored offspring.
But when Egg and sperm ‘recognize’ in each other
their long-awaited soul mates, they sense the coming
fulfilment of Nature’s designs. This is what they were made
for, the goal of Creation, and this giddy euphoria, this
extravagant joy, is seen as originating from, and directly
traceable to, the chosen one.
Worship, adulation, submergence of one’s own
needs, desires, and personality in those of the loved one, are
natural—indeed inevitable—consequences of this upwelling of
the spirit. It elevates both the lover as well as the loved.
When both love each other equally, it is akin to an atomic
chain reaction, taking both to dizzy heights of existence.
Extraordinary results often flow from this inspired
state; mind and body, galvanized into action by this inner,
superhuman glow, react with output that is far beyond the
normal limits of achievement.
 51

Unfortunately, the reverse is also true.

Disappointment in love, or betrayal by the other, may sound
a death-knell to hopes, ambitions, and even the desire to live.
Love is like a double-edged sword; it cuts hard and deep
either way.
Beyond this, it is pointless, from the viewpoint of
this exposition, to dwell further on the description of the
shattering symptoms and side effects of this powerful
emotion. Poets, writers, and bards have waxed eloquent on
the subject for centuries. It is merely our endeavor to argue
for the motion that this phenomenon is nothing but a process
that has evolved to overcome obstacles coming in the way of
the propagation of the species.
Here again, Nature, interested only in the
continuity and betterment of the Egg, has ensured that when
the Egg/sperm find a counterpart—by means of mechanisms
she has provided—they will go to almost any lengths to
achieve their goal, i.e., reproduction. When Egg and sperm
are willin’, as was Barkis about Peggotty, they should be so
strongly motivated to take things to their logical conclusions
that they should be ready for any sacrifice, be willing to
surmount any hurdle that stands in the way of fulfilment of
the goal.
The emotion of love, viewed from this perspective,
stands revealed as yet another chimerical game plan planted
inside us by Nature to harness our feelings, senses,
sensibilities, ambitions, and urges to the task of renewing
ourselves. Love is a trump card in the hands of Nature to tilt
the odds firmly in her favour.
 52

Of Aphrodisiacs and Engine Additives

OR

‘What Do Women Really Want ?’

Sigmund Freud is said to have often repeated this

question to himself in despair at ever finding the answer, and
Mel Gibson has starred in a Hollywood motion picture called,
if I remember right, ‘What Women Want’. Armed as we are
with the foregoing body of knowledge, an appreciation of the
origins and development of CuTE herself is likely to reveal the
answers to us.
CuTE wants what the Egg wants, and that, as we
have already seen, boils down to the best possible breaks for
her fertilized ova, for the Eggfruit that will grow to maturity.
Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of ‘The Grand
Design’—not CuTE’s intelligence, her education, her looks,
her values, her sentiments, or even her ‘morals’. Nature has
thus made her an amoral creature guided by an instinct two
billion years old, a drive to get for her eggs the best deal
going around. This is her First Law.
The Second Law says that no sacrifice is too great
when it comes to obeying the first Law. She is an offspring-
oriented automaton, dedicated to serving her COTS and
regarding him as Lord and Master (thus obeying The Laws) as
 53

long as his actions promote her goals. But if the safety,

security and prospects of her Eggfruit are threatened by any
shift in his approach or abilities, she will take instant remedial
action.
This is where the Third Law comes into the picture:
she must ‘egg’ her COTS on to enhance his earning power,
the only thing that really matters as far the Primary Objective
is concerned (the welfare of her brood). In order to enhance
their chances in the race of life, she must prod her mate into
providing increasing quantities of the appropriate life-
enabling substance (‘money’, in our times) to not only
enhance her Eggfruits’ well-being, but also to equip them as
best as possible to cope with life.
Not at all an unreasonable stand, it must be
admitted, but sometimes the CuTE, in her anxiety to perform,
goes just a little too far. She forgets that the COTS is run by
an entirely different program, and, beyond a certain stage, is
likely to react unfavourably to her constantly increasing
demands.
He translates her egging-on as a lack of
satisfaction with him as a mate, the quality of their lives
together, and his fragile ego is badly bruised. They come
from different places and speak different languages,
remember?
His reaction, not unpredictably, is usually one of
sullen rebellion (which may lead to his coldly withdrawing to
haunt the neighborhood bars, or to reverting to his old
pastime of going Happy Pollinating). This, of course, only
makes things worse, and the final result may be a severely
strained or snapped pair bond.
This is when the CuTE normally realizes her error,
but by then it is usually too late. She has to start all over
again, to locate another COTs fast, but this time her appeal is
greatly dimmed; she is older, and ‘encumbered’. She has, in
her over-eagerness, gone and accomplished just the opposite
of her intentions. She has endangered the very survival of her
Eggfruit.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that, for no fault of
her own, CuTE is basically a materialistic animal guided by an
internal navigational system that homes in on the moolah.
While her COTS may resort to ‘.303’, ‘30-Plus’, Spanish Fly, or
any of the other so-called proprietary libido/performance
enhancers such as Viagra to boost his sexual abilities (which
 54

can fall into abeyance or slide downhill on account of the

tension at home) her performance enhancer is simple to
identify but not always simple to obtain: money !
Wealth is CuTE’s greatest aphrodisiac. Any COTS
who has made it (or, for that matter, has not made it,
materially speaking) in life, will know the truth of this.
In or out of bed, CuTE is a highly motivated
individual when she has succeeded in egging her COTS on to
make her private vision of El Dorado come true. Greenbacks
omitted, all the voyage of their lives (has anyone ever found
a man who has a better way of putting things than
Shakespeare?) is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Unfortunately, CuTE sometimes jumps the gun.
Some men flower late, as a middle-aged Mrs. Abraham
Lincoln realized when she moved into the White House.
Undue pressure on them in advance of the overriding dictates
of their personal programs can severely strain their engines
and cause premature seizure and burnout.

The Moody Blues

OR

‘Why The Egg gets so temperamental

at times’
 55

As mentioned earlier, one egg is released every

lunar monthly cycle of about twenty-eight days. This is a
great occasion for that particular egg. It is like a girl’s first
prom, her ‘coming out’ party. She is a debutante, poised, like
a champion 100 meters sprinter representing her country at
the Olympics, to take the title and the gold medal. She is the
current hot favourite.
She is also like the new bride, all decked out in her
wedding finery, waiting for her husband to step into the
honeymoon suite and initiate the nuptials. There is an air of
tense expectancy. But alas, there is no guarantee of
conception; consummation does not invariably result in a
zygote.
Chance, sperm count, and a host of other factors
come in the way, not the least of them being contraceptives.
Spermicides inserted in the female body are lethal to sperm,
and—horror of horrors—there are pills and even adhesive
patches that prevent ovulation itself!
For the poor egg, it is a nerve-wracking wait: will
she strike lucky? Will Rapunzel’s lover find his way to her ivy-
tower and climb up with the aid of her flowing tresses? As the
days flash by and nothing happens, she starts to panic: she
has a limited amount of time in which to perform her
appointed task.
She has no conception of any barriers, natural or
man-made, that could stand in the way of her sole, over-
riding ambition. But it is not to be. Due to some reason, no
hardy seed could reach The Egg and effect fertilization. The
show’s over. It is time for her to say goodbye; she’s missed
the bus. Again.
Disappointment turns to frustration, then rage, as
she is flushed down the tube by the timer-operated device in
the Custodian’s plumbing. The Egg’s mood infects the
Custodian, who, though quite innocent of the causes for
failure, takes the blame upon herself (subconsciously, of
course). In a way, of course, she is to blame: if she had taken
steps to see that the egg was fertilized, this disaster would
never have happened!
In the outside world, the imminent calamity
manifests itself as mood swings, irritability, headaches, and
gloom, aka Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS). TGP fears PMS
like he fears nothing else of earth.
 56

Some Eggs take the setback so badly that their

custodians report sick at the office, lying in bed with a
splitting headache or nausea. Many of those who report to
work snap at their colleagues, are rude to supervisors and
send most of their output to the recycle bin! The flushing out
of her system has meant a lot of wasted resources including a
wasted egg, all precipitated by hormonal activity which has
temporary, but unnerving (especially to her mate)
repercussions…and she’s pretty peeved.
But CuTE recovers fast. She is a great survivor.
She reaches into her vaults and unleashes another egg.
Maybe this time…? The Egg is an eternal optimist. Countless
zillions of conceptions from The Beginning give her the
confidence to go forward. Her system is time-tested: it works.
Tomorrow is hers.
 57

Fine Feathers Do a CuTE Make!

OR

‘The Plumage of the Egg rivals TGP’s’

We have seen that, in a radical departure from

what is almost a rule in the animal kingdom, the human CuTE
surpasses her mate in terms of physical beauty. It is possible
that I, a COTS well past my prime, am biased here, but I have
tried to be as objective as possible while making this
assessment.
I really don’t think—Brad Pitt or no Brad Pitt—that
men are better physical specimens than women from an
aesthetic point of view. I stick to my guns when I go on to
assert that this is as it should be: CuTE has to face enormous
wear and tear in the performance of her appointed role, i.e.,
child bearing and rearing, and her head-start over her mate
in the looks department evens out the odds against her as
time goes on.
Nevertheless, she wants to stay ahead in the
game as long as she can: it was her physical beauty and
odour that attracted her mate to her in the first place—the
pair bonding, with the matching of all the other template
criteria, followed later—and she wants to retain both the
beauty and the bond, and even enhance them if possible.
There are three basic reasons for this. Firstly, the
CuTE is congenitally paranoid about another CuTE getting her
claws into her COTS. We can hardly blame her for this:
 58

survival in the days when Man had recently evolved was a

tenuous process, taking a heavy toll of the male species who
had the bear the brunt of the harsh environmental factors
that needed to be overcome.
The number of males with useful mileage and
performance left in them was limited, and this band of hardy
survivors was bitterly fought over by CuTEs as much for the
benefits of bonding with them as for the simple fact that, as
survivors, they had proved their genetic superiority in an
evolutionary sense.
This vestigial attitude has persisted into modern
times. It is the rare CuTE (she should be weighed in gold,
when found, and her statue should replace Nelson’s at
Trafalgar Square) who has a heart so generous and
sympathetic heart as to voluntarily share her mate with
another CuTE, even in a polygamous society.
Then she has to bow to convention and to the
demands of a male-dominated society. In her heart of hearts,
she is always violently opposed to sharing her in-house sperm
bank with others. This is not merely born of a dog-in-the-
manger attitude or on grounds of personal hygiene. She
wants that her clutch of eggs retains its advantage over other
CuTEs not, so far, blessed with a captive COTS, and she wants
to widen her lead. It’s all part of natural selection and survival
of the fittest.
Secondly—and this is an equally weighty matter—
she knows that her COTS—all COTS in fact—have ‘the roving
eye’ (an inherent, naturally-developed tendency in TGP, as
we have already seen earlier, to pollinate as many CuTEs as
possible).
In order to reduce the chances of this happening,
she has to retain her hold on her mate for as long as she can,
and if she maintains her physical attractiveness, this is
unlikely to happen till he himself has reached an age where
the (potential) demand for his services have depreciated to a
point where there are few, if any, takers. It is in her interest—
and in those of her eggs—that she shuts out competition.
Lastly, it is plain simple vanity that drives her to
enhance her appeal, which is a human weakness more
associated with the COTS who, though severely handicapped
in the looks department, nevertheless thinks he is God’s gift
to woman.
 59

This attitude, again, is a hangover from cave-man

days when CuTEs fought over his services, and has resulted
in an over-appreciation of his own looks and services. The
vanity of woman is based more on practical considerations of
attraction, aimed at first attracting and then retaining /
monopolizing her mate to the exclusion of other CuTEs.
This is evolutionarily and socially acceptable, and
there are men who appreciate this basic need in CuTE, even if
only from the point of view of pushing a good thing when they
find it (for which COTS wants a haggard, ill-kempt drudge
around the house).
The cosmetic enhancement (in which silicone and
BOTOX injections often play key roles) brings with it a
downstream bonus; other COTS now start glad-eyeing the
finely plumaged CuTE, arousing a defensive response in her
COTS!
He demonstrates symptoms of jealousy, and
becomes extra attentive to his mate. She loves jealousy and
a proprietorial attitude in her man, and she is satisfied:
reassured both of the durability of her appeal as well as her
tightened hold over COTS. As far as she is concerned, the
returns on investment justify the outlay.
Still, it is with difficulty that he stifles a sigh as he
reaches for his wallet to pay her beautician’s bill. The beauty
business thrives on women’s insecurity (and, in modern
times, on men’s vanity as well). Cosmetics, of one kind or
another, are probably as old as the story of CuTE and COTS,
and were highly developed by the time of Cleopatra (who
seems to have made devastating use of them, by all
accounts).
The variety of perfumes, creams, rouges, lotions,
moisturizers, sprays, lipsticks, blush-ons, depilators, waxes,
hair dyes, and eye-liners (to name but a few in an ever-
expanding array of product categories) available today
boggles the imagination, and makes a heavy dent in the
family budget. CuTE laps it all up; they are weapons in her
arsenal against her ancient enemy, Time.
Equally important in her arsenal are the items of
jewellery she so treasures. They are the feathers from the
bird part of her genetic material. No one can argue with this;
plumage is to the bird, (feathered or non-feathered) as scent
is to a flower. It adds a wallop to the package, tantalizing
enough though it is already.
 60

Here, she enjoys a distinct advantage over her

feathered forebears; she can change plumage at will! Women
are keen on turning over everyday trinkets, taking full
advantage of exchange and re-make offers. The jewellery
stores encash what is a windfall business for them; they make
such a killing on this subsidiary business that many
goldsmiths specialize in executing remodeling orders from
the retailers.
Shakespeare was perhaps referring to this
tendency (as well as others) of the CuTE when he noted that
time cannot stale her infinite variety. The plumage suppliers
like to make sure it stays that way.
 61

The ‘Wayward’ CuTE

OR

‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!’

In spite of her serious approach to the business of

life, burdened as she is with the heavy responsibility of
bearing life and ensuring that it is carried forward, some girls
opt out of the race. To be quite candid, girls and boys all want
to have fun. It’s just that girls have to be much more careful
having their fun, because in a society that can mercilessly
tarnish a reputation over a single misdemeanour, it takes a
lot of guts to do your own thing and the devil take the
hindmost.
They just want to have a good time, and no one
can really blame them. In fact, there is a section of COTS
cheering them on. For them, it is a welcome development.
Such CuTEs add a much-valued spice to what is, or can
become, a dull and dreary process of being egged on by the
resident Custodian.
Nature, for her part, looks on tolerantly at this
female version of sowing wild oats. These happy-go-lucky fun
seekers serve the dual purpose of not only keeping CuTEs
from complacency, but also test the whole package of pair
bonding and reproduction. The added competition is
invariably good for all concerned. It encourages the CuTE to
shed over-sobriety in favour of a certain amount of light-
heartedness and aggressive spontaneity between the covers.
And even fun-loving girls sometimes settle down
to the security of marriage, or at least a live-in arrangement
in step with the times and the dictates of common sense.
Some of these fun-loving girls (after all, they are
women) are subject to the same inner compulsions and
standards in their choice of COTS as are all CuTEs. The
yardstick of wealth as an indication of achievement and
status remains the same. They, being single and obviously
out to have a good time, attract such well-endowed COTS by
the bucketful. And sooner or later, some of the money, like
honey, sticks to their hands.
 62

They may find they like it, and turn pro. Like Mae
West, they may encourage well-heeled male friends to ‘come
up and see them sometime.’
Thus they perform a useful service to a society
where sexual favours are a commodity for sale and purchase.
There is no moral judgment to be made here; it is an entirely
personal decision, and the rest is up to her. For all we know,
she may end up more satisfied and fulfilled than many of her
so-called ‘respectably married’ sisters, free from the burdens
and traumas that many of them will surely encounter in their
lives.
Being daring and unconventional by nature, it is
hardly surprising that the maximum number of beauty
queens, models, rock stars, and actresses are drawn from
their ranks. Their extroverted natures give them the chance
to earn big money on their own, without owning it second-
hand through a COTS.
Examples of such icons abound, though the name
of Madonna stands head and shoulders above the rest. By her
sheer talent, tenacity, and toughness, she survived and
triumphed over all odds, in a male-dominated industry. Now
she is beyond all yardsticks, having become a yardstick
herself, and a mother three times over!
 63

Spring cleaning

OR

‘The CuTE and her Cave’

Even the most unobservant COTS could hardly

have failed to notice the sudden change that comes over
cave-keepers in the spring. It triggers off a behavioural
pattern going back hundreds of thousands of years, when ice
ages had come and gone. Springtime is ‘when the glaciers
have receded again, and it’s time to get down to some
dusting, cleaning, and polishing’.
Life couldn’t have been very hygienic when a
family was practically confined to a cave, as shelter from the
freezing cold outside, when modern plumbing was non-
existent. Spring heralded freedom, better food, fresher air…
and a welcome change of surroundings.
Everyone thrives on a little variety, and men get a
better crack at that because of the compulsions of food
procurement. They have to go out in order to bring home the
bacon, and each day brings with it its own challenges.
Women, on the other hand, house-bound (read ‘cave-bound’)
and bored, dearly love and crave change, and every man who
 64

has dated a woman knows the keen delight she takes in

being escorted to a movie, followed by dinner in a fine
restaurant where she is plied with good food, drink and
oodles of attention.
Besides, there is no washing up to attend to
afterwards. Apart from the refueling, the situation marks out
the host as a man of generous sensibilities who appreciates
the finer things of life (read ‘good provider’, a well-heeled,
prosperous type whose eggfruit will thrive under such
nurturing). The shortest route to a woman’s heart is through
her stomach!
The cave CuTE must have discovered, over the
millennia, that keeping a cave neat and clean meant better
survival rates for her eggfruit. This valuable piece of
experience came to embed itself, in due course, in her
program. Much like a dog, who turns round and round at a
selected spot before settling down to sleep (as early canines
did, to smooth down their bed of grass and leaves), she
follows the pattern of ancient habit by sweeping and dusting
out her modern flat as she was wont to do in days of yore.
She is a compulsive duster, however, and here the
impact of spring has diffused itself to cover all seasons. Good
news for carpet brush, vacuum cleaner, and feather duster
salesmen. They know that, given the advent of spring (and
even other times, especially the end of the holiday season),
they can score heavily over door-to-door peddlers purveying
other items.
As beams of spring sunshine infiltrate the ‘cave’
and highlight the specks of dust in the air, CuTEs go berserk
in trying to eliminate them, often completely exhausting
themselves in this futile exercise. Shifting the furniture
around and rearranging the cave are but minor variations on
this grand theme. Their respective COTS’ look on, initially
with amusement, then with concern and finally with
consternation, as the annual ritual is played out.
But they know better than to interfere; might as
well try to stop a tidal wave. They are still learning to cope
with the inevitable tears, frustrations, and self-recriminations
that follow this atavistic activity. Next to Time, Dust is CuTE’s
biggest enemy.
 65

The Egg in Confinement

OR

‘Unhappy Days are Here Again’

 66

We have now reached, in our semi-voyeuristic

voyage with CuTE and her COTS, the stage where CuTE has
made it to first base: she has successfully passed the hurdle
of pollination. A new life, as it were, opens up before her,
pregnant with possibilities.
The Egg, in her, is overjoyed: the mission is going
according to plan, a two billion year old plan. CuTE has
attracted a mate, COTS has fallen in love with her and
married her, and now she is pregnant! As the romantic novels
say, she is in love with the man she married and is carrying
his baby. What more could she want? Aha! The 64 million
dollar question, at last! The answer: lots and lots!
But before we go into that, let us allow the scene
to shift, for a change, to the proud COTS. After his mate, her
cheeks flushing rosily, has broken the happy news to him that
he is soon to be a proud father, and after the news has sunk
in, he goes off to ruminate. He has suddenly developed cold
feet; an age-old instinct seems to be trying to tell him
something.
He knows his world is going to change, that things
will never be the same again. He seems to sense that a
scaling-down of his office is about to take place. In spite of all
the cigars and free drinks all around, an icy hand seems to
clutch at his heart. He breaks out in goose bumps, as if
someone just walked over his grave. A vague foreboding, a
premonition that happy days are gone forever, seems to dog
his footsteps.
Some sixth sense tells him that a drastic reversal
in roles and authority structures is in the offing. Although he
tries to be brave and project an outward appearance of
pleasure at the development, in his heart of hearts he knows,
with a sinking feeling, that there grows in his mate’s womb a
rival to her affections, a rival that will best him at every turn
and influence each and every decision to be taken
henceforth, decisions that will cost him heavily, financially,
emotionally, and in every other way possible. In short, his
days as a freeman are just about over.
Since this book is an attempt to, inter alia, explore
the biological and psychological foundations that govern
human relationships, we will not touch upon medical matters.
That is better left to the gynecologists and to experts in baby
and childcare in the tradition of Dr. Benjamin Spock. We have
 67

reached that crucial stage in our journey of exploration where

the would-be parents of the zygote, now multiplying its cells
at a dizzy rate and growing rapidly within the Custodian’s
body, now re-adjust their life-styles to cope with a major
change that has taken place.
The pair bond has succeeded in producing a
zygote, just as Nature intended they should, and now they
have to gear themselves up to rear it to full maturity. Since it
takes—in modern times—a minimum of twenty-two years for
that to happen, it is hardly surprising that the couple of
would-be parents (the COTS in particular) is apprehensive.
The trials and tribulations of the COTS start with
his mate’s ‘morning sickness’. He is unused to have a
nauseated female lying next to him, rushing to the bathroom
and regurgitating at unnervingly frequent intervals. There is
an alien organism growing within her, and her body will take
time to reconcile itself to it.
For alien it certainly is; it is hardly, at this stage of
its development, anything more than a blob of primordial
protoplasm going way back. Only when her body recognizes it
for what it really is will it cease its unconscious upheavals to
eject it from her system, which the bouts of vomiting
symbolically represent. She can hardly hold down any food; it
is as if her body is trying to starve the alien out of existence.
After about a month, these symptoms subside. Her
body has started growing used to the idea that the intruder is
not unfriendly. Now, it even senses that giving it proper
nutrition is vital. This is manifest by the CuTE’s sudden
craving for exotic foods.
She will start asking for the oddest combinations
of comestibles, at the most inopportune times of day or night.
She who never cared much for sushi now slavers for it, and
she can’t get enough of pickles and assorted salted
crunchies, or peanut-butter and ketchup sandwiches!
Poor COTS goes half-crazy trying to keep supplies
flowing, in pace with the demand for them. Their variety and
possible sources of supply keep him criss-crossing the town in
their pursuit. He often gets the feeling that he is a hapless
participant in some crazy theatre of the absurd.
The craving that pregnant women have for exotic
foods has, to the best of my knowledge, never been
satisfactorily explained. To one who knows the history,
compulsions, and stages of the zygote’s development, I
 68

venture to suggest that the answer lies in the history of

evolution itself.
As the zygote changes into a recognizable human
fetus, it passes through the various evolutionary stages that
life on Earth passed through, including that of fish,
amphibian, reptile, and finally ape-like mammal. Since the
concerned organism, as it stood on the evolutionary ladder,
had a certain diet based on, not only availability but also
bodily requirements, the fetus, too, needs those very same
elements in its diet.
Again, the roots of inexplicable behaviour are to
be found 2 billion years in the past! The fetus demands of its
mother – demands made known to her in an elemental,
placental sort of way – a diet that contains those very
elements, salts, and other nutrients it needs to develop
normally, and make a successful transition to the next stage
of its development.
That is why, with the crossing of such phases of
transition in its growth, the mother’s dietary preferences
change. What was subject matter of humor is seen to be a
very normal and rational nutritional requirement of the
growing child within her body. The fact that all this drama
drives the poor COTS to the brink of insanity is quite another
matter.
 69

The Middle Muddle

OR

‘The Egg gets into shape’

Irrespective of what people say in a genteel

society, the pregnant CuTE is cute no longer, as she
resembles an egg more and more with each passing day. As
she eats for two, tucking into quantities of food the equal of
which her mate never managed to consume even in his days
as an athlete, she starts to bulge. It is not simply her waistline
that bloats. Everything does so.
As she gets heavier, as her belly takes on the
appearance of a large pumpkin, her harried husband gets
lighter… and sometimes tighter (both financially as well as,
sometimes, alcoholically!). He has forgotten how to sleep
without her beside him. Now he has to relearn the art of
sleeping alone. It is the first big shock. Besides, she has lost
 70

the urge for sex, which, in any case, is no longer advisable

since penetration might harm the fetus.
Not that COTS is too keen on coitus with her right
now. She doesn’t look right, she doesn’t look well, she is not
in the mood, and she is so unwieldy and out of shape that
even if he wanted to have sex with her—presuming he was
allowed to—he couldn’t possibly find the perfect position.
Having once taken a good look, out of sheer curiosity at her
naked body in its pregnant condition, the desire to couple
with her wanes.
Female readers are going to scream “How cruel!”
but it’s the truth, and that’s all that concerns us: the truth.
But we, who have learnt the knack of looking at things from a
2 billion B.C. perspective, know and understand that this is
exactly the response Nature wants from COTS.
In no way does she want this large, clumsy, self-
centered clod poking around inside her and dislodging her
precious fetus. She has accommodated CuTE, COTS, and
fetus, all in one fell swoop!

The Guest Arrives

OR

‘Arrival of A Rival’

Let us fast-forward to the last day of the ninth

month of gestation. There is a flurry of activity as CuTE’s
water-bag (amniotic sac) bursts and she is rushed to hospital.
 71

The labor pains have started hitting her with increasing

frequency and force, leaving her white with pain and
exhaustion.
The rest of the event has been portrayed a million
times in comic books, carton strips, and fiction, so we’ll skip
it, if you have no objections. COTS comes to know of the
happy event after it’s all over (although in modern times, we
have noticed a fad where the father is in at the birth). I
strongly feel that men should stay away from such an event;
it is for stomachs stronger than theirs. Incidentally, this is
where I get to address the question as to why women make
better nurses, to wit, why they do not pass out at the sight of
blood.
It is simply because they are creatures designed
by Nature to be mothers. They are nurses by birth (bless
them), and nursing a baby is only part of the larger picture.
This necessitates the complicated internal plumbing referred
to earlier, with its 28-day lunar changeover cycle. The Egg-
change that this process incorporates, results in the rejection
of the entire (sadly for the Egg, unutilized) placental material,
accompanied by fairly large quantities of blood.
Menstruating every 28 days, women get
desensitized to the sight of blood. This is the real reason why
women are left unaffected by the sight of gore, while a man,
that rough, tough, go-getter, may feel the need to sit down
quickly at the sight of crimson spurting from a cut forefinger.
Yet the idea of menstruation doesn’t exactly repel COTS; he
finds it fascinating, in a very caveman, primitive kind of way.
It underlines the physiological and psychological differences
between him and his mate, and harks back to a distant time
when a ‘fertile’ woman was a good investment by way of
returns, viz., heirs.
Anyway, the baby comes home with the mother,
and COTS again has another violent encounter with reality.
He finds himself redundant! Well, not quite redundant; he is
still needed to look after sundry house-hold chores, shopping,
medical purchases, drives (as chauffeur) to the clinic for the
post-natal check-ups, inoculations, taking out the garbage,
and for making appreciative “Ooooooh!” and “Aaaaaaahhhh!”
noises about the baby when the in-laws are around to note
his ‘enthusiasm’.
In actual fact, he thinks he could not have found a
more unprepossessing object than the one expelled by his
 72

mate’s innards, if he had hunted high and low for one. But
some instinct tells him to hold his peace, to refrain from
adding that the noisy, leaky bundle reminds him strongly of
his last visit to the zoo (for reasons unknown), when, he
vaguely recollects, he spent a lot of time gaping at gorillas.
Living arrangements, he notices with resignation,
have been drastically altered. The master bedroom, his pride
and joy, his Battle Command Center, has been transformed
into a nursery. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and other
assorted Disney and Hanna-Barbera characters adorn the
walls. There are a lot of posters, mostly of the ‘rising sun’ and
‘Who killed Cock Robin?’ variety (he feels he can answer the
last query). He now sleeps on the chaise longue in the
drawing room, good for a Saturday afternoon nap, but… …
night after night? The outlaws have commandeered the other
bedroom.
This is very dangerous territory: no comments,
adverse or otherwise, are acceptable regarding this hallowed
pair that comes free with the nuptial package. At the slightest
opportunity (read: minor head cold), this pair of storm
troopers comes trooping in to administer first aid to their
darling daughter.
They take their time when it comes to departure.
They are always underfoot. He has to be on his best
behaviour at all times. They have experience on their side:
after all, they brought up his mate, where would he be
without her (and, by extension, them?). He is put firmly in his
place, an accessory to the ‘crime’ but expendable thereafter.
From Lord and Master, he has been relegated to hanger on, a
spectator. From the Mighty TGP1, his position has plummeted
to that of the Lowly TGP2. It all takes a bit of getting-used-to.
Trouble is, he doesn’t get used to it; he’s getting
used, period. Somewhere at the back of his head (the
hypothalamus, maybe?), the pressure starts to build.
 73

The Year in The Wilderness

OR

‘The Regime of Disinfectants’

And so the days pass. The days become weeks,

the weeks become months. Any move towards the nursery,
the scene of the action, is blocked by either one or the other
outlaw running interference. His natural curiosity as to the
new family member he is supporting finds no outlet. He is
regarded as a source of virulent infections, a germ carrier, an
agent provocateur, and a minion of unfriendly foreign powers
from across the disinfectant border, an expert in
bacteriological warfare sneaking across the lines with a batch
of viruses with the aim of spreading them around.
Empty 5 liter cans of Dettol start piling up in the
loft. The antiseptic atmosphere extends to a radius of 50
yards around the house; no germ may cross the Line of
Actual Control and live to tell the tale. COTS is too big to be
exterminated by Dettol fumes, but he senses an undercurrent
of opinion about the need to try something considerably more
powerful. The fact of his utter expendability begins to sink in.
This is when he begins to wonder whether it was
all worth it. But he is determined not to go down without a
fight. One day he manages, by means of some fancy
footwork, to get well within milady’s boudoir, the no-no place
called the nursery, to try and get a glimpse of his mate-that-
once-was, and her hatchling.
 74

He catches sight of a cherub, and his heart leaps

within him. “It’s human!” he thinks deliriously. “In fact, it
looks pretty decent, a fine specimen!” Then his elbow is
caught in a vice-like grip and he is firmly steered out of the
sanctum sanctorum. That night at the bar, he declares that
the drinks are on him, and passes around the cigars once
again, this time with feeling. He is finally a father. But he has
had enough; a little rebellion is called for.
He starts staying late at office, and he becomes a
wonderful networker. His boss sits up and takes notice of his
sudden appetite for work, and his newfound sociability makes
him popular with the secretaries, one or two of whom he now
occasionally dates. Finally, the crew at home begins to notice
his absence…when shopping has to be done or if a visit to the
clinic is scheduled. He persistently bucks the establishment,
pleading a heavy workload and the need of a promotion to
earn more to keep the home fires burning. His market value
rises marginally. Again, good old economics comes to the
rescue: to increase demand, first whittle down supplies!
The Eggfruit has taken its first hesitant steps
when, at last, the outlaws finally decide to return to their
outpost. COTS (now a lowly TGP2) cannot believe his good
fortune. He again has the run of the house. The Regime of
Disinfectants is over!
Quarantine controls have been relaxed to the point
of being practically withdrawn. But he conceals his elation,
coming home late that evening, eating his dinner from the
hot-case as usual, then changing into his night-suit and
stretching out on the chaise longue as if preparing to call it
day.
A whiff of Chanel No.5 reaches his nostrils; she
had worn it on their wedding night. He decides not to react,
and turns over on his side, facing the wall. A faint rustle—as
that of flimsy and costly raiment sliding to the carpet—
reaches his straining ears. Then a soft body is pressed to
his…and all the hurt, all the pain is temporarily forgotten as
he turns to her desperately, hungrily.

You see it, of course, how Nature stage-managed

the whole thing? Yes, I sort of knew you would.
Congratulations! It means you are beginning to get her range.
 75

Naturally, the outlaws play a crucial role in her

plans: they keep the COTS as far from his CuTE as possible.
This is meant to dampen his ardor so that he will not join her
in the nursery, where she keeps waking up every half-hour to
feed her eggfruit. It would prevent him from getting any
sleep, and his work would suffer (and thereby endanger the
brood).
Besides, he may try and prematurely revert to his
bedroom instincts, which might result in another pregnancy,
and that is something to be avoided at all costs right now. It
would adversely affect the health of both CuTE as well as her
eggfruit. Yes, it cost COTS plenty, but he has also learnt a
valuable, if slightly unpalatable lesson (CuTE’s Second Law of
Emotion); no sacrifice is too great when the interests of the
eggfruit are at stake.
Nature did not set up only the meeting and mating
part of the game; she worked out the entire screenplay.
Translated into everyday plainspeak, we begin to see her
ingenuity and appreciate her thoroughness. Not a single trick
is missed; those who flout the rules do so at their peril. Their
lives, and those of their progeny, are forfeit. Such is her
harshness.
But wouldn’t you be just as savage, as ruthless, if
the work of a lifetime were at stake? Those who do not fall in
line with her plans go to the wall. It’s as simple as that. She
never does anything without a purpose, and we are pawns in
her Great New Game: The Further Evolution of The Egg!

The Other Band of Outlaws

OR

‘The Egg meets her Match’

 76

With the departure of the first set of outlaws,

another—equally fearsome—band of invaders crosses
unbidden into the nest, to terrorize, pillage, and vandalize.
They are, of course, the parents of COTS.
For CuTE, somewhat spoilt by her mother, the
shock is all the more difficult to take. For a mother-in-law,
that terrible figure (pun intended) of power and authority,
who gives the impression that she is coming from Central
Asia post haste after erecting her latest tower of skulls, a
daughter-in-law is dead meat… or so she would like to think.
What lies behind this ancient antipathy between
CuTE and MIL? I like to think of it is as the War of the Eggs!
The reason’s simple… MIL nurses a subconscious grudge
against CuTE for having cornered and bagged her precious
eggfruit, her darling boy.
All the sacrifices, all the tears, all the sleepless
nights that went into rearing him… and suddenly, out of the
blue, comes this buxom, nubile young witch: and there goes
her boy, running, panting after her with his tongue hanging
out of his mouth. After everything she’s done for him, the
instant this Circe…this Medusa, fluttered her eyelashes at
him, he was off, baying at her heels. It’s disgraceful! Patently
unfair!
So this is what lies at the root of MIL’s animosity.
She has no grudge against CuTE, per se, what has really hurt
is the fact that, all of a sudden, her hand-reared, hand-fed
eggfruit has gone cross-eyed over a little bit of fluff he didn’t
even know three weeks ago. ‘Ingratitude, more strong than
traitor’s arms quite vanquished him’: Shakespeare said it
before this, although in a somewhat different context.
Mother feels let down, abandoned at short notice.
By some quirk of memory, she cannot remember that when
she married Father, her MIL always thought of her as a
scheming child-lifter, an unprincipled cradle-snatcher who
had done a Pied Piper of Hamelin on her little boy.
She cannot recall how she had agonized over what
was, to her (then), such an obvious and simple thing: her
MIL’s little boy was no longer a ‘little boy’ but a grown man,
with all the rights, needs, and feelings of a man. He was
earning a good wage in a steady job, was well liked and
respected in the town, and that their marriage was
considered by most to be an ideal one. All MIL recalls now is
 77

that she gave everything up for her boy, and now an

interloper has lured him away.
There may be one more (alas! human) reason: the
Green-eyed Monster! MIL was accustomed to thinking that
her model of Egg was about the last word in eggery. Now,
along has come another Egg, better, faster, sweeter,
smarter…and that is why her boy has crossed sides.
Age is usually such a hard thing to come to terms
with, and for so many of us, it is a painful capitulation. It is a
rare soul that sees the body—winding down slowly day-by-
day as age asserts itself—in the right perspective, accepting
the process while rejoicing in the reciprocal upward climb of
the spirit.
Unfortunately, MILs are rarely made of such
sterling stuff. If you have agreed with what you have read so
far, you will appreciate why. And since today’s CuTE is
tomorrow’s MIL, the story extends back to the mists of time
and fades away, on the opposite side into a distant future, as
far as the mind’s eye can see.
It is a story as old as the hills, and will only end
when the Egg is no more. Or when Hell freezes over—
whichever is later!
 78

The Ant and the Grasshopper

OR

‘What Makes them tick’

Two billion years is not a short period of time, but,

on the evolutionary time-scale, it is a mere prelude. We can
be quite sure that Nature has many things still in store for us.
But before we go into all that, let us sum up what the Egg and
the Sperm, the two protagonists in the drama of life, have
evolved into, as far as being human beings are concerned.
This may serve to throw up clues about the future course that
events are likely to take, in the continuing saga of these two.
The CuTE, by virtue of the Main Program installed
in the Egg, is a domestic animal at heart, dedicated to the
task of attracting a mate, getting pollinated, proceeding to
dispense with The Great Pollinator (in a manner of speaking:
he is recycled as TGP2) concentrating (with a frightening
intensity, we may add) on the task of raising her brood to
maturity (she is an ‘offspring-oriented automaton’) and,
finally, facing all the consequences, good or bad, of her
actions.
She realizes that spring doesn’t last forever, that
she has limited chances (she doesn’t want to muff them), and
she keeps her options open till the last moment before
deciding on her particular TGP.
This is why it is rightly said that ‘indecision, thy
name is woman’. The habit of vacillating, of sitting on the
fence, of playing for time, of creating an air of mystery and
suspense, all these attributes are a direct consequence of her
wish to wait to see if a better looking (the looks will go to the
 79

eggfruit, remember), smarter (cerebrally-oriented offspring),

wealthier (the progeny will be spared the bumps and shocks
that life doles out to the less-well-endowed) TGP can be
snared. She is the practical procrastinator personified. The
‘better deal’ draws her like a magnet.
It is only when instinct tells her that this is as good
as things are going to get, that she takes the plunge.
Sometimes, she delays just a bit too long, and that is when
Time, her Enemy No.1, goes for the jugular. She is no longer
in demand: a younger, sexier, more up-rated batch with the
latest Modcons has arrived in the ‘market’, and her value may
fall drastically.
She might play the waiting game to the bitter end
and wind up as a spinster, in which case her delay might
mean elimination from the gene pool, for Nature doesn’t
tolerate losers. Or she may hastily grab the best of the
rapidly dwindling pack at her disposal, and heave a sigh of
relief at the close call… and live to rue it the rest of her life.
However, she never lets TGP forget that she
picked him from the pack, and that he’d better live up to
expectations born of the decision she made. If, for some
reason, he falls short of her projections, he isn’t going to hear
the last of it. He will be relentlessly egged-on to improve his
performance in providing for her and her eggfruit; he will be
single-mindedly ‘corrected’, till he either throws in the towel
or reaches the desired performance indicators. We must not
take this approach of hers otherwise than in the spirit in
which it is enforced: it’s all for the Egg and the joint fruit of
their loins.
This instinct to go for a better deal is so powerful
that it colors all her thought processes, all her decisions. It
affects each and every thought and action of hers, from
shopping (the marketmen know this and are constantly
driving her crazy with impossible ‘sale’ and ‘bargain’ offers).
For the Pharisees, she is Target No.1; women
make 80% of the household purchases, including buying
personal items of underwear and toiletries for their mates and
offspring, and quite understandably, most of the advertising
campaigns on the media are aimed at her.
Naturally, she is brand-conscious, and once a
particular brand has been perceived as offering value
(economy + substance), she will remain loyal to it (unless
swayed by another segment: the ‘class’ offers).
 80

For she is also a great social climber, loving to be

seen in good society, eating at fancy restaurants, and driving
a better car. She is aware that a good image is good for her
eggfruits’ chances, too, on social and other planes. She is
very image, class and caste conscious (in a materialistic
sense). If she is not one of the Brahmins of the Better Part of
Town, it rankles…she takes it out on TGP 2, who has to
redouble his efforts to earn the wherewithal to empower the
shift to a better neighborhood.
The underlying reason is that, in her subconscious
mind, she is aware of the beneficial effects a shift of
residence is going to make. The health, education, social
success (read ‘better chances of latching onto a Good Deal,
pairing-off wise’) of her eggfruit will be considerably
enhanced.
TGP, on the other hand, was designed and built by
Nature to be a hunter-gatherer. His primary duty was to use
his enormous (and continuously replenishible) stock of sperm
in ‘pollinating’ the Egg. Any Egg! His hunting instincts
enabled him to track and secure a suitable mate, whom he
fertilized as soon as opportunity presented itself.
If circumstances allowed, he was also programmed
to pollinate other females as well, the idea being to make
fullest use of his pollinating abilities. Carried over into
‘civilized’ times, this makes him a predator who, in most
cases, will seek to have multiple mates, and it is a fact that
those TGPs who have risen to their top in their professions
have a powerful sex drive. It goes with the territory. Most
men, especially those with wealth and power have, have
always had, and always will have, more than one affection,
and this ties in well with their powerful inner compulsions,
instincts and inclinations. There cannot be any moralistic
judgements about this program built into TGP by Nature.
As we have already seen, COTS is more than
willing and able to mate with many CuTEs, who, in turn are
internally driven to liaisons with such icons for the benefits
they see as coming to them and to their eggfruit. Even the
glare of an ephemeral publicity can bring handsome
monetary returns in the form of interviews, book and movie
rights, and fashion spinoffs a la Monica Lewinsky.
As a hunter born and bred, COTS will select a
target and single-mindedly go after it till he either connects
or abandons the chase as being a futile endeavour. He is
 81

used to making quick decisions in the field, and his hunter’s

instincts, somewhat dulled by civilization, usually help him
form what he calls a ‘hunch’. He tends to scoff at the so-
called woman’s intuition, but here he should tread warily; he
is dealing with something that goes way back to the
Beginning, something that has its own ancient logic.
It is said that women lack logic; in fact, they are
the more practical and realistic of the two. That is what
evolution has made her: a Custodian of a precious commodity
that has to be invested after due care and cogitation. She is
usually inept at making snap decisions. She will put every
ounce of thought and reflection that she is capable of into a
decision.
After centuries of suppression, women –
systematic, patient, meticulous and hard working – are
making great headway in breaching hitherto male-dominated
bastions. It took two World Wars before beleaguered nations
at war fell back on the pool of largely unutilized female
‘manpower’ resources, and found to their delight that in
several functional areas, women equaled or even out-
performed men.
Gradually, as the benefits of education spread to
women, a vote bank to be ignored by any political party at its
peril, they attained qualifications that equipped them to be
increasingly self-supporting. They began infiltrating into
almost every profession, and financial independence
hastened the process of empowerment. They joined, in some
cases with great success, the armed forces and even entered
politics, often in the teeth of considerable male opposition.
It is said that a woman has to be much, much
better than her male rivals to even stand a chance of
surviving in the work arena. Since those who breached
traditional thresholds—in ever increasing numbers, to access
areas which had hitherto been the sole preserve of men—
were willing to work extra hard and observe the highest
standards of professional ethics, and since they could count
on the support of other women in the larger interests of their
kind, they surged ahead. The power of the Egg had been
unleashed.
But it is this very methodical, studied, and
hardheaded approach that comes in the way of higher
expression. Tied to the soil as it were, rooted in everyday
 82

reality, it is hardly surprising that the mind of woman can

rarely soar to dizzy heights of creativity and imagination.
This is especially true of the post-nuptial phase.
Once the mating dance has culminated in pollination and
eggfruit—upheavals excepted—the CuTE focuses sharply, as
already seen, on the Primary Objective. Art takes a back seat.
True, the qualities stemming from the internal
programming of the Egg, such as ruthlessness, the need for
security, the prudent caution that went into decision-making
were supporting factors of no small significance in the
emergence of women from obscurity. But, at the same time,
these very qualities militated against the development of the
faculty of visualization. Great sweeps of the imagination
eluded them.
Thus it falls to the lot of men to be the dreamers,
the poets, the artists, the visualizers, the inventors, the great
explorers, pianists, cellists, cosmologists, and conductors of
philharmonic orchestras. The great destroyer is also the great
creator. He is none other than Shiva, of Cosmic Dance fame.
As a rule, therefore, sages, prophets, and saints
have been almost exclusively drawn from the ranks of men.
Women have ungrudgingly acknowledged this, and here
again we see a curious phenomenon where women will flock
to see and hear a holy man almost to the exclusion of men. It
is as if they hope to gain immortality for the Egg in giving it
such exposure.
Since some of these gurus have preached
universal love in a way that went beyond conventional
definitions and social norms, many CuTEs even manage to
shed their inhibitions and social conditioning. When a woman
makes up her mind that she wants something, she will go to
great lengths to get it. If she makes up her mind!
And so they go through life together or alone, TGP
and his CuTE, and their fate is decided by the way the cards
fall. She is the one who tells him which cards to hold on to,
and when it’s time to fold. She advises him when it is time to
walk away, and when it’s time to run. She never likes it when
he stops to count his winnings; she knows there will be
enough time for that when the dealing’s done. What would
TGP ever do without his CuTE?
In a way, it’s lucky his huge, fragile ego doesn’t
realize how dependent it is on the CuTE’s support. It would
shatter his self-esteem if he realized he was as putty in her
 83

soft little hands. He hunts, expends, renews, dreams, builds,

dissipates and rebuilds. She is the one who ‘husbands’,
collects, fortifies, nurtures, and brings to fruition.
They are two halves of a whole, yin and yang,
inseparable, united though torn asunder, two parts that mate
and mesh to further the game of the Great Gamester.


Twilight of The Egg
OR

‘CuTE calls it a day’

To everything there is a season. And the Egg is no

eggsception. There comes a time when her job is done…or
her allotted timespan of operation is over. She’s had her day:
now it’s time to hand over the baton of eggsponsibility. It’s
about time; she’s tired, plumb worn out bringing up her
brood, her clutch of eggfruit. She’s done the job Nature gave
her. It’s a great feeling. Let someone else take up the
Standard. Her fight is over. She’s no longer as fit for the job
as she used to be.
The only constant in life is change, and a big
change is about to overcome her…or rather, come over her.
Let’s see if the analogy of a new car can help us see it better.
When a car is new, it needs careful running in. The parts are
new and need to function as a team to work out their
interfaces and function smoothly as a single unit. Frequent
adjustments are needed. In due course, everything settles
down and it only needs the periodic oil change or minor
tuning adjustments. It hums sweetly like a good motor
should.
 84

As it ages, however, parts need frequent

replacement, oil changes don’t produce that noticeable lift in
performance, and things start sliding downhill. A time comes
when it can no longer be fully relied upon to take one from
place A to place B. Breakdowns are a distinct possibility. It is
relegated to lighter duties…supermarket hops or the
occasional visit to the dentist. For that 10,000-mile
transcontinental holiday, you’ve got yourself a spanking new
model.
But don’t ditch the old girl. She’s the standard by
which later models are judged. After all, she put in a sterling
performance in her heyday. So although that shiny new
Superdooper Roadbuster ZXL2 you’ve got parked in the
driveway now bears the brunt of the tough work, the old lady
remains as the yardstick against which all is judged.
The Old Egg is worn out. She’s creaking at the
joints, her suspension is suspect, steering is wonky and her
bodywork has been dented-painted too many times. No
amount of facelifts, cosmetic surgery, engine overhauls or
new upholstery is going to bring her back to her pristine
condition. She’s done her job well, and now Nature decides
it’s time to blow the whistle. She is no longer fit to be an
active CuTE. And Nature literally pulls the plug and stops egg
production.
This traumatic event has been on the cards for
quite some time. Her odometer has been warning that
mileage has exceeded the average lifespan of
reproductibility. Hot flushes and chills have begun to plague
her. Mood swings are commonplace. She’s frequently tense
and overwrought for no rime or reason. Who wouldn’t be, if
their job were at stake? No thought is given to newer roles: all
attention is focused on the transformation that is about to
happen.
When egg production stops, it’s just like the old
car that now has lighter, non-critical duties: additional
lubrication is necessary, there’s frequent starting trouble, the
engine takes longer and longer to warm up, speed, pick up
and cornering are all poor, and years of enthusiastic polishing
have rubbed away the layers of enamel to reveal the pale
undercoat of paint. Electricals are a problem area: the battery
needs frequent charging, the lights are dim, indicators and
meters don’t work, fuel consumption is heavy, hydraulic lines
leak, brakes are weak and the suspension sags. It needs
 85

regular exercise and frequent visits to the mechanic, weekly

check-ups having become a way of life. But—as before—
things settle down, and the advantages of the metamorphosis
start becoming apparent.
Now she can go about her life without fear of an
egg turning into an eggfruit in her womb. She no longer has
to face the extreme challenges of motherhood; now reviewed
in retrospective glimpses—like a blurred landscape fast
receding in the rearview mirror—memories of this most
taxing phase of her life take on an idyllic aspect.
Pride in her accomplishment takes precedence
over all emotions. It is well deserved; she has sacrificed,
suffered, and struggled through her changing relationship
with her mate to rear her Eggfruit …and succeeded against
all odds. If Nature says ‘that’s enough!’ she’d be foolish to
argue. Half the battle is won when one accepts, ages
gracefully, counts one’s blessings and makes the most of
what’s left.
As the body wanes, her spirit grows. With the
successful completion of her mission comes a new tenderness
towards her mate, a tolerant understanding of why what
happened, happened. She comes to see that it was all
perfect, that it happened just as Nature in her wisdom had
programmed it to happen, that she and her mate are not foes
at all but allies, wired to assume the stances they’ve taken,
internally programmed to go through prescribed motions that
have always worked for the betterment of the species,
meaning—in the context of this book—The Egg.
Now her Eggfruit are engaged in mating rituals of
their own, succumbing to the inexorable call from 2 billion
years in the past tugging at their heartstrings. She watches
discreetly from the sidelines, noting how the rules have
changed yet remain ever the same. She encounters an
entirely new set of feelings: an inexplicable and
uncharacteristic burst of hostility towards her ‘rival’: a
younger, sleeker, faster CuTE that her male Eggfruit has
brought home.
But with the benefit of hindsight and her newfound
wisdom, she fights her responses. It’s time, she decides, to
break the mould, to change thought patterns where they are
counter-productive…and with superhuman effort she
overcomes the program. She lets her heart and mind do the
talking, having learnt that introspection is the key to growth
 86

and a happier way of living life. And that there is no way to

happiness: happiness itself is the way. It lies within; she is
unable to find it anywhere outside of herself. Coming from
this happy place inside her, she makes the world outside her
a happier place as well.
Nature meets her nemesis

OR

‘Built-in Self Destruct’

It is an observable truism that most things contain

within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. The
dictator who encourages sycophants—to the extent of
ignoring or even eliminating dissent—paves the way for his
own downfall. Hitler brought down the Third Reich by
silencing the dissenting voice of Reichfeldmarschal Erwin
Rommel, once his friend and his greatest military asset.
Ancient cultures, like those of the Greeks, Romans,
and Egyptians stultified and degenerated, choking on their
own affluence. Hugely wealthy and dynamic systems have a
history of succumbing to the lethargy that often follows
success. The fat and lazy make easy targets for the lean and
hungry.
That is as Nature meant it to be. The rich and fat
are food for their hungry successors. The nutrient-packed
flesh of the fruit is food for the seed that lies within it. Nations
that focus solely on achieving the materialistic aspects of life,
wealth and power, usually end up creating internal conditions
that undermine the entire structure. Lack of healthy
competition and over-abundance can bring complacence in
its train. Weaker, poorer, under-privileged peoples will look
with growing envy, hatred, and bitterness at the ease and
affluence of their well-to-do brethren.
Envy, hardship, and inequality fuel a growing tide
of resentment in the less-developed countries of the world
that can explode any day into a global crisis. Nature stands
for harmony and sharing…disharmony and imbalance
produce cataclysms that level playing fields. Since all things
are involved in their own cyclic processes of Rise and Fall, it is
difficult to disengage from this inexorable process without
conscious acts of will at all levels.
 87

The battle of the sexes that Nature has

engineered and set in motion is no exception. We are already
aware that there resides in every man a little bit of woman,
and in woman a little bit of man. While this was limited, in
earlier epochs, to personal traits and predilections, the latter
half of the twentieth century has seen a visible mass-shift in
this direction.
As already noted, the latter half of the twentieth
century saw the emergence of meaningful emancipation of
women in major portions of the globe. Improved transport
and communication facilities going hand-in-hand with
intricately intermeshed national economies will advance this
process through globalization on a scale never before seen on
this planet.
They have already given birth to the phenomenon
of a global culture that is uniting the sexes as never before.
Unisex fashions and the common language, music, and
values of the youth of the planet are harbingers of a much
greater revolution; we are in the process of making a major
evolutionary jump, one that will not take millennia but mere
decades.
Mapping of the human gene will lead us far
beyond surrogate mothers and Egg-and-sperm banks, and
well beyond artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization.
Man is in the process of shedding his dependence on the Egg
and Sperm route and to take charge of his own evolution, a
process whose by-product will be the ultimate elimination of
decrepit old age, disease, and even death as we know it.
Along with physical death will vanish the
traditional concept of the mating ritual. Always in love with
himself, Man will fall in love with his own Self, as predicted in
the scriptures.
Let us examine how this can come about. In the
first place, Nature herself has to evolve and adapt, and, like
everything else, she contains within herself the bug that will
destroy her earlier programs. Through the process of eternal
selection of the fittest, she has created men who are
sufficiently advanced in science to supplant her. This is the
greatest secret of all: Nature is always evolving! She applies
all her rules to herself! When all things change and evolve, so
does she. She carries within herself the seeds of the Nature of
the future.
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Man can now evolve as he wishes. This is the

Great Choice before us; we have: to guide our own evolution
wisely, or to submit to short-term considerations and evolve
ourselves into extinction.
Today, we have the technology to create identical
copies of ourselves, or even genetically compatible body
parts. Donated—or even artificial—organs for the human
body will become merely options. The laboratory will meet
the indent, and the surgeons will do the rest.
The day may come when our organs will be
programmed to constant self-renewal and newt-like
regeneration in ways we cannot imagine, vastly extending
the scope of extant programs that see to the repair and
maintenance of the body. However, due to accident, some
body parts may suffer irreparable damage, in which case
laboratory-grown ‘spares’ produced from its own genetic
material will be available as replacements.
An old dream of Man, locked away in some
‘Garden-of-Eden’ atavistic memory in his mind, will be
realized: the dream of eternal life, perhaps even eternal
youth. The mythical Fountain of Youth is almost within reach.
In the early twentieth century, if anyone had said
Man, within the next hundred years, would go to the Moon,
replace failing hearts with transplanted or even artificial ones,
and develop the technology to clone himself, he would have
been institutionalised.
Today, these things are already commonplace. We
have come to realize that the exponential pace of progress
has demolished barriers to achievement. What Man can think
of doing today, that he will achieve tomorrow.
It’s a new twist to the old adage that truth is
indeed stranger than speculative fiction. In fact, those of the
generation that reached adolescence in the sixties and are
alive today have actually seen their science fiction become
science fact. Man’s only hurdle to achievement appears to be
the limitations acknowledged by his own mind. If he thinks he
can do it, he will (another age-old saying given a fresh lease
of life). In other words, Man is limited only by his own
imagination.
But Nature has a trick up her sleeve: she but
stoops to conquer. For in giving Man the ability to improve his
physical body to the extent where it will become, for all
practical purposes, immortal, it also frees Man from that self-
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same body. Down the ages, the intellectuals, sages,

philosophers and saints have stressed the pre-eminence of
soul over body.
But the body was so fragile, so prone to
destruction by disease or accident that—sorely needed as it
was for purposes of maintenance of self and family—Man was
totally obsessed with it. He couldn’t imagine what he’d do if
something went wrong with it. Incidentally, this weakness
encouraged the emergence of medical science, as also
charlatans who claimed to have a better way of preserving it.
Chained to his body, and to constant worry about
its maintenance, Man found it difficult to give much credence
to the wise men who said the body was of secondary
importance….it was the mind that determined the state of
the body.
By drastically weakening the ancient instinct of
self-preservation through a demonstrated ability to manage
the physical self, science has unwittingly ushered in the age
of Self-realization.

The Dance of Life

OR
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‘The Eggstacy of Love’

“Sex is hereditary,” goes the old joke, “if your

parents didn’t have it, the chances are you won’t, either.” So
true! As explored in the preceding material, sex is to
reproduction as pollination is to crops: one is entirely
dependent on the other.
Sex is as old as the hills. It is a word that also
means one of the two basic genders (not counting
hermaphrodites, who have a bit of both) and which now has
come to be understood as a synonym for the act of coitus
that results in a sperm fertilizing an ovum to form a zygote.
But is that all that there is to it? Obviously not. As
one goes higher and higher up the food chain, climbing up
the hierarchical ladder of lifeforms that inhabit planet earth,
the process of finding a mate tends to get more and more
intricate. The mating dance increases in complexity to the
stage where it becomes the tortuous ritual that we humans
call falling in love and getting married.
It is not my intention to examine the history of
reproduction or trace the evolution of the act of fertilization,
that task already having been touched upon in earlier
chapters. Perhaps it would be more interesting to examine,
firstly, the nature of love, followed by a brief look at the
history of our attitudes to love and sex, mostly from an Indian
point of view.
As India’s population soars well above the billion
mark, it hampers progress and neutralizes efforts to maintain
a steady growth of GDP and per capita income. At the same
time, this vibrant young population is the envy of countries
with sinking population levels and rising percentages of old
people who are a huge burden on social welfare and health
services. The purchasing power of the rupee, in real terms, is
falling day by day. So even if it is for such mundane (but
practical) reasons, it is necessary for us to come to grips with
the population problem before it is too late to do anything
about it. Sex education has become crucial. But sex—and to a
lesser extent love—is still more or less taboo as a subject for
open discussion.
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According to my friends, one or two of whom share

my zodiac sign, I am a typical Piscean. In other words, I am
an impractical dreamer. That’s fine with me. I’m breathing
easy. I can live with that. I think the Age of Aquarius, the one
we now are in, stands solidly on the foundation built by the
Age of Pisces.
The 21st century is built on the dreams, and the
efforts that followed those dreams, of the Piscean mystics of
previous ages. Pisceans have nothing to be ashamed of.
Without our unconventional way of looking at things, the
visions of intuition and the flights of fantasy and imagination
that led, in the past, just as often to the burning stake as to
nirvana, mankind might have been moored uneasily in the
Middle Ages even now.
So it is with relief that I now sidestep the dismal
worlds of economics and grosspolitik and venture into the
fantasyland of love and romance… which is what this book
could be all about, anyway!
Although Cupid has impaled me on his shafts a
half-dozen times in the course of my life, I still haven’t
managed to come up with a plausible definition of love, even
in my most lucid moments. But well I know the fine madness,
the intoxication, which it brings in its wake. This book would
never have seen the light of day had not my wounds
compelled me to ruminate on the malady that afflicts men
universally. It strikes without any warning and leaves us both
elevated and crushed.
But having now taken the bull by the horns in
embarking on this reckless enterprise, I am not going to skip
the opportunity of having a shy at unravelling the mystery of
love. I know a man can fall in love with a woman, and vice
versa. The process is complicated by the fact that there is no
fixed time frame for the duration of the event; it can happen
in an instant, or it can take years before the realization dawns
that one is in love.
Usually, the woman knows before the man: how
and why, I am unable to explain. Perhaps Eve tips her off! A
woman always knows when a man has fallen in love with her.
If convenient and if the condition has a future, she
encourages it. Hopefully, she, too, ‘falls in love.’ But it is not
necessary to fall in love for practical, pragmatic woman with
her inborn childbearing orientation: the ‘offspring-oriented
automaton’ of the foregoing chapters.
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To recapitulate, her primal need is to ensure that

the most ‘capable’ male in her circle fertilizes her eggs, and
that the fruit of her egg(s) gets the best possible deal. So she
will even pretend to love such a man and marry him, thereby
securing the best possible deal for her progeny to come.
But let us not allow ourselves to be sidetracked by
the motivations and machinations of a 2 billion year old Egg.
In any case, I have already traced, to the best of my ability,
the primal forces that determine the thought-processes and
actions of men and women—to their origins in the primordial
seas of a young Earth of billennia ago. The unmasking of the
very nature of love per se is the final challenge…the Last
Frontier Freud implied eluded him all his life!
No amount of reading, no doctor or pundit, has
ever been able to give me any sort of coherent answer to my
queries. It is therefore left to me to set off alone across an
uncharted wilderness, with only my heart to guide me.
Explorers are known to sometimes lose their way,
one such notable being a man called Christopher Columbus.
Who knows what we’ll find at the end of our journey…far
beyond the pages of this book. For my real intention is to
excite your curiosity about this mysterious ailment that tastes
like ambrosia yet burns like a deadly poison. I hope you will
excuse this desperate wayfarer if he seems to drift off course
now and then. Humour me, and try to attune your
sensibilities to my particular way of seeing and thinking,
suspending disbelief, if possible, for a while as you read what
I have to say.
The way I see it, the fountainhead of love can be
located in only two spheres, one, the temporal world of genes
and cultural anthropology, the other being the realm of the
spirit. There can be no third source of origin. What about
‘chance?’, some will interject. There is no such thing as
chance.
Nothing happens that was not meant to be. This is
not fatalism at all. In a complete, finished universe, we, quite
paradoxically, have choices…yet the event was always a
reality, part of a greater Reality that Always Was and which
Always Will Be! Ultimately, all is thought, and every thought
that ever was thought always existed! We just bring it out
into the open…again and again throughout history. We can
do this because energy is matter (no need to quote Einstein
here: this is commonplace stuff in the 21st century). And
 93

thought is but energy. Thought creates matter. As Gary

Zukav says in his Soul Stories, we achieve what we do
because of our intentions. It is not the aeroplane that takes
us somewhere, it is our intention to go somewhere that takes
us there.
Energy recycles itself endlessly. We all learnt that
in High School. Stars are born from superhot gases and die in
colossal supernovae, worlds come into existence and perish
in galactic conflagrations, Universes come and go. Everything
expands from a primeval dot of incredible energy and—eons
later—shrinks back to the unthinkable nothingness that
always was everything ever made. As Herman Hesse says in
Siddhartha, ‘Everything changes, and everything returns’.
There’s ‘nothing new under the sun’, yet another biblical
aphorism examined and found to be true. Time is a
continuum that flows as readily backwards as it flows
forwards, at least at the sub-atomic level. In fact time itself—
as a phenomenon—has come in for considerable scrutiny
under the microscope of Quantum Physics and its illustrious
predecessor, Relativity Theory.
There is growing feeling among physicists and
cosmologists that there is, in fact no such thing as Time…thus
vindicating the mystics, who have maintained for millennia
that there is only an eternal moment of Now, within which the
never-ending, instantly and everlastingly experienced saga of
Creation unfolds eternally. Cosmic Dualities are paradoxes
that usually defy comprehension if we refuse to shed our
traditional way of thinking...the sort that divides our
perceived reality into ‘either/or’ possibilities. The illusion of
events flowing past us in linear progression appears to be
merely a mental construction that enables us to experience
our reality and avail ourselves of the obvious advantages of
experiencing, growing and evolving towards our destiny as
inhabitants of universes both physical and non-physical.
Can it possibly be, then—as men have long
believed—that marriages are made in heaven? In other
words, marriages happen on account of some pre-ordained
scheme of things? By extension, therefore (whether the
marriage is based on love or is a marriage de convenance),
the love that sometimes precedes the marriage was also pre-
ordained. I know many are not going to take kindly to that.
There is nothing like personal experience to fall
back upon, and here I repeat a story that I have already
 94

recounted elsewhere. I was in my twenty-sixth year and I

knew instinctively that the time had come for me to take a
wife and settle down. The clock within me told me that, the
very air whispered it to me. But, to my despair, I had no one
to call my own. Long ago, there had been a girl…but now she
was nowhere to be found.
The stage was set for an arranged marriage,
something I was not too keen on but did not exactly buck,
having seen the success of my parents’ marriage. Proposals
started trickling in, but none seemed right, although they
were about bright, qualified, attractive girls from good
families.
My parents started to lose heart as I rejected one
proposal after another. There aren’t always a profusion of
girls of marriageable age in the somewhat isolated Bengali
Brahmin community. But I was adamant: arranged marriage
or no, until I felt like marrying a particular girl, I was going to
stay single. The trickle of proposals gradually dried up, to my
relief.
Then one day, as my rickshaw pulled up outside
my house, an eerie feeling came over me. A Voiceless Voice
spoke in my heart. I knew, I do not understand how, that
when I went inside my mother would show me a proposal that
had come that day. There would a picture of a girl, the girl I
was to marry. The information was so smoothly grafted into
my consciousness that I simply accepted it. It did not strike
me as at all unusual then that I had suddenly come by this
knowledge.
And it happened just as I had been ‘told’. Four
months later, I wed the lovely girl in the hastily shot portrait,
and was blissfully happy for the first time in my life. It
appeared that we were made for each other. Wherever we
went, we created a stir, more on account of her ravishing
beauty than my own appearance, which was but average. We
would attend wedding receptions or other functions, and the
photographers would turn away from their subjects,
distracted, to shoot several frames of us, hand in hand.
So it appears that things beyond our narrow band
of conventional wisdom can affect our circumstances. I would
never have believed this had it not actually happened to me
personally. It seemed I had met with someone I had known in
an earlier life. Which brings me to a vexing problem, that of
the concept of an afterlife, and of reincarnation.
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Semitic religions are not comfortable with this

concept, but seers of all religious persuasions, mystics and
poets have always spoken of reincarnation, of a ‘love beyond
the grave’, of a love that survives the passage of millennia.
There is plenty of literature on the subject. I would
particularly recommend Dr. Brian Weiss’ Only Love is Real
(Piatkus Press).
I feel I have known her for eons…from the distant
future, long ago. I was comfortable in her company from day
one, as if I had caught up with an old friend and confidante
from some past beyond memory. I have never felt this way
with anyone ever before, not even my parents or my dearest
friends. It’s uncanny. I have no answer to this one, except
that I am certain that I have known her earlier, in past lives.
Her ancient magic endures, as alive today as it was before
the pyramids were built.
It appears to me that souls are in constant flux,
evolving through earthly experiences, gathering wisdom and
learning, satisfying and shedding cravings that bind them to
the temporal plane and the hallucination of a ‘reality’ that is
unreal.
Free at last from worldly preoccupations, the
eternal essence of us—unencumbered by thwarted desires,
buoyed up by a Divine Love—makes its way to perfection and
final fusion with All That Is. This is why true love on the mortal
plane—a reflection of the Greater Love—can arouse near-
religious devotion and fervour.
Oh, the poor unlucky souls that know not the
passion, the joy, the sheer transport of worshipping the object
of one’s affections. In that devotion is the truest expression of
love, for love is, in essence, unconditional, unfettered…
untainted by earthly motivations. Love is selfless, love is
eternal, surviving everything, spanning eons, life after life. To
quote from ‘Memories are made of this’ …
“The passion, the euphoria, the dementia, the
sheer abandon of it, all these signify arrival at a higher
plateau of experience that few ever reach, where the Gods
themselves live, for once envious of mortals. Love takes man
outside himself to a Never-Never Land beyond the stars of an
everlasting tomorrow, back to Alpha and Omega, back to the
Beginning…and the End of it all.”
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What We Can Feel and Know is Real

OR IS IT?

Love on the Material plane

All this is not to underestimate the genetic factor,

or ignore the role of our bodies in influencing our choice of a
mate…an offshoot of evolutionary conditioning with subtle
differences according to genetic diversity. In spite of all I have
said in the foregoing paragraphs, I stand by what I have
constantly maintained: that our responses are genetically
programmed into us as a consequence of the process of
physical evolution that we have undergone.
A ‘both are true and can co-exist’ is a useful
mindset in tackling the apparent paradox of a stance that
says something is both physical as well as non-physical, pre-
ordained as well decided within the context of the ‘present’. It
is useful to remember that some of the greatest truths about
Life and the Universe are paradoxical when viewed from our
limited earthly perspective.
 97

Thus, men are usually attracted to women with

wide hips (good for child bearing), large breasts (a portent of
fertility and ability to nurture the infants well with adequate
quantities of milk) and well-developed posteriors (ability to
store fat and to therefore survive temporary food shortages).
Smaller predilections and fetishes may be a result
of childhood experience(s) or conditioning, although they play
a significant role in the ritual of finding a mate. I had always
admired women who were lean but fairly well endowed…
bucking traditional tastes that seem to favour what I’d call
‘well fleshed out’ women with figures quite unsuited to
factory-made American jeans. While I admit it’s not fair to
assess people by their physical attributes alone,
nevertheless, most men appreciate a woman’s brains a bit
later in the game !
The foregoing may serve to illustrate that we are
all programmed genetically to look for an ‘ideal’ mate in
physical terms, meaning that there are bodily characteristics
that have a subtle influence on whom we fall in love with. Yet
I am aware of many cases where the subject has fallen in love
with the most ‘unlikely’ person, whose physical appearance
(as confessed to me) did not come even remotely close to
matching the internal template.
Here I can only conclude that there were
otherworldly influences that overrode the internal programs.
Once love has taken root, it is very difficult to dislodge, only
shriveling and withering away under the most severe and
extreme duress, or when the foundations (call them illusions
if you will) of the emotion are attacked by acts, attitudes or
trends utterly repugnant to that of the other. Erosion of trust
(unfaithfulness in marriage), loss of livelihood and/or material
possessions, or adoption of life-threatening habits (drink,
drugs, violence) are some of the factors that can destroy
love. It varies from person to person, situation to situation…
life to life.
Past life regression therapy can often reveal the
subconscious phobias that cripple us emotionally. Studied
over lifetimes, a recurring pattern of similar situations and
circumstances experienced over and over again in the
company of a core group of characters emerges. The
members of the same cast engage each other over
successive dramas, usually exchange roles, life after life: The
same essences take turns being father, lover, husband, wife,
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teacher or enemy in an endless game of playng musical

chairs.
As far as love is concerned, these internal
templates (our personal conceptions of beauty) apparently
vary widely, except perhaps in cases of exceptional,
stereotypical beauty as of movie stars or models, where
almost everyone thinks of the person as being outstandingly
attractive. Yet it is undeniable that even the criteria of beauty
vary from era to era, culture to culture. The large breasted,
big buttocked bushman belle would not be well sought after
in, say Oslo…whereas the tall, blond, slim-hipped and small-
breasted Scandinavian beauty would simply strike terror into
the hearts of bushman suitors.
Gazing up at the high pedestal of beauty, men
display preferences. We all have our favourite pin-up girl (the
ultimate template, as far external beauty is concerned). I
think the girl I love is the most beautiful woman who ever
lived…and so do Tom, Dick, and Harry in regard to the
objects of their own affections. Thus Nature, in her infinite
wisdom and mercy, has ensured that we all have a good
chance of finding someone to love and mate with—the
Eternal Biangle!
The problem arises when love is not reciprocated,
but is directed elsewhere…the infamous Eternal Triangle.
Here is a potentially life-threatening situation, for the lover
may plummet to the depths of despair when he or she
realizes that love is not always reciprocal.
Women are usually more resilient under such
circumstances, being Custodians of The Egg. The need to do
her best for the eggs within her, her highest duty, usually
gives her the strength to absorb the shock of unrequited love
and look elsewhere for the mate who will fertilize her precious
cargo of eggs and care for the eggfruit.
The Curator of the Sperm, however, reckless and
profligate, accustomed to taking fatal risks and conditioned to
regard himself as expendable once he has played his role, is
a poor bet. Loss of love can easily lead to loss of his life as
well. Men outnumber women in suicide over failed love affairs
by a ratio of 3:1.
In the final analysis, therefore, Love is apparently
a devastating, overpowering, all-consuming emotion born of
an irresistible attraction based upon a combination of
otherworldly influences, physical parameters determined by
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an internal, genetically determined template, and generous

doses of pheromones and oxytocin...chemical messengers
that trigger attraction.
Sex, as in physical consummation of the emotion
of love, is the usual but not always indispensable, corollary.
Meaning thereby that people can be in love yet not need to/
be able to actually engage in the act of love to express their
love.
This may be due to a host of reasons; the
circumstances or social conventions may not allow it, or
because one of the lovers is physically incapacitated/
incapable of sex. When such conditions prevail, the enormous
energy and inspiration generated by this most uplifting of
emotions, even if one-sided, may be sublimated into creative
output—whether scientific, poetic or beatific—or social
service, an outpouring of the dammed-up love on all
humanity in toto.
Love is a universal phenomenon. I cannot think of
a single culture where there are no love stories or tales of
star-crossed lovers. Love is the stuff of which literature, folk
tales and legends are often fashioned. It has a universal
appeal that cuts across all barriers of country, community,
caste, or creed.
It is the gift of the gods to mankind, to lighten his
earthly lot and make it tolerable. And rare is the man or the
woman who has not fallen in love, whether it be in the form of
a violent schoolgirl ‘crush’, the frenzied drama of a Juliet and
her Romeo, or the mature, patient love of a Gabriel Oak.
Speaking of India as a whole, love and sex had a
field day over a thousand years ago. While little of our
ancient literature and sculpture on the subject has survived –
Kalidas’ ‘Meghdoot’ and Vatsyayana’s ‘Kamasutra’, the
oldest known treatise on practical love being two of the
enchanting exceptions – thanks to the depredations of time
and foreign invaders whose sensibilities must have been
outraged by such material, ‘offensive’ and sacrilegious as it
was to their cultures, there is enough left to indicate that sex
wasn’t exactly swept under the carpet.
In fact, Ancient India celebarted the glory and
beauty of sex as being symbolic of the divine union of all
things in nature, a merger of yin and yang that is the
mainstay of the physical universe and which points the way
to, and underscores, the Divine Unity of all things…the
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eternal Dance of Shiva in an ever changing yet ever the

same, immutable universe.
One has only to visit Khajuraho or the caves of
Ajanta and Ellora to understand this. As one gets over the
initial shock of seeing the intimate acts of union between man
and woman depicted in all their mind-boggling variety, the
ethereal music of ages seeps into the brain and reveals the
spiritual underpinnings of the erotic art.
One sees not Man and Woman locked in coitus but
Creation at work. The lump in the throat lasts long after one
has reached one’s car. Thus was our ancient culture attuned
to the cosmic rhythm of life, the endless cycle of creation and
destruction that is the nature of the whole. The physical plane
—as divined by these ancient craftsmen-savants—was but a
platform that enabled mankind to attain the transcendental
spiritual plane that lay beyond.
With the invasion and influence of militant foreign
cultures from across the natural frontiers of the land, such
‘heathen’ and ‘impure’ attitudes were ruthlessly crushed and
died away, to be replaced by a hypocritical prudery and
conservatism that did not allow love and sex to breathe the
air of a free and natural state. They became taboo subjects,
and all sorts of unhealthy practices and unnatural acts,
products of diseased minds, crept into society, like a gnarled
and twisted tree that takes root in a grotto, distorted by
alienation from sunlight.
Inevitably, sex became a topic that was spoken of
only in hushed whispers, as if it was something evil and which
‘good’ people did not indulge in. Physical renunciation
became a laudable ideal, and indulgence in things of the flesh
came to be regarded as a necessary evil, merely tolerated for
the perpetuation of the species. No longer was sex something
to revel in, to draw inspiration from, no more was the
climactic joy of orgasm a hint of the Divine Bliss that lay
within the grasp of Man.
Its concomitant by-product was that Woman came
to be regarded as the serpent of false temptation that drew
Man away from the straight and narrow path to God. She
became synonymous with the Devil, seeing as how she
enticed Man with her wiles to partake of the Forbidden Fruit
and paved the way for his Fall.
In terms of cultural anthropology, her position in
society plummeted from one of equality of status and
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opportunity with men that she had enjoyed in the past to the
category of ‘goods and chattels’. Alas, she came to be
regarded as a mere beast of burden, a mechanism for
purging oneself of the lower urges, a machine that was
serviced regularly, guiltily and in secret, in order to produce
progeny, and otherwise kept in cloistered chastity.
The glory of Woman, as the indispensable and
inspiring other-half of Man, was shrouded in disgrace and
oppression. A Dark Age descended on society as Man
suppressed the crucial half of his nature, choking off a vital
part of himself in the process.
This pall of darkness covered most of the globe till
as late as the twentieth century, barring some primitive stone
age cultures where, quite understandably, free approaches to
sex and love continued to prevail (and which still prevail on
our Northeastern frontiers). The White Men in Samoa, Papua
and New Guinea or the Hawaiian and Polynesian islands went
berserk when they discovered that they could partake of
sensual pleasures almost at will…and introduced sexually-
transmitted diseases that killed off the islanders and many of
the white men themselves (Paul Gauguin was known to have
suffered from syphilis) in large numbers.
In the lexicon of the West, the tropics became
synonymous with sexual debauchery. It is only now that we
realize what a paradise it was that was raped, mindlessly and
mercilessly. Unbridled sexuality can be most unsettling for
any culture unaccustomed to the fresh air of openness and
freedom from crippling conventions and stifling moral codes.
Mental attitudes are the hardest things to change.
The two Great Wars of the twentieth century were
followed by the debacle of Viet Nam and a period that
marked the zenith of western
materialism and the beginning of the decline in western
civilization as a moral force. Sweeping changes, a
beleaguered society’s desperate response to a threat from an
Axis that had geared up to either win or perish, demolished
the remnants of Victorian prudery and glib moral and social
conventions that, until then, had prevailed even in the
‘advanced’ western countries.
The most outstanding feature of the New Society
was the emergence of women as a social and economic force
to be reckoned with. She had won her wings in the USAF, the
WAAF and WAAC, and she had graduated from kitchen to
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cockpit. Suddenly, man was glorifying woman in her new role

as man’s equal partner in the great adventure of life.
Blue-stockings and suffragettes having already
spearheaded a movement that produced many powerful
authors and created the parallel world of Women’s Lib,
woman, educated, self-supporting, and convinced of her
uniqueness and indispensability, never looked back. She had
won her spurs, and the respect of men, as she took an ever-
increasing responsibility for her own welfare in a changing
world.
It was not long before the repercussions were felt
on the Indian sub-continent. For ages, woman had been
totally subservient to man, at least for the vast majority of
Indian women. They worked in the fields, gathered firewood,
chopped grass, looked after the children, cooked meals,
polished the pots and pans, and serviced her lord and master
in bed.
She walked two steps behind him, covered her
face with a veil, and was not allowed into many places of
worship. And before Lord William Bentinck, she was
compelled to join her husband’s corpse on the funeral pyre, a
widow not being either socially or economically healthy to
have around.
My parents were married on 9th December 1946,
and theirs’ was probably the first generation of Indians to
flout the old social conventions. They walked in public as
equals (I never saw them holding hands, however), both were
post-graduates, and they were not prudish. Yet they never
discussed sex with me, although my mother made sure that
enough reading material was available to clear up any
confusion about sex.
As a result, I had, for my generation, a fairly liberal
and open attitude towards sex, and recent attempts by a
friend half my age to shock me proved infructuous because I
was already bindaas long before that particular friend was
born! Sex was no big deal, and so I was able to devote all my
youthful energies to outdoor and field pursuits, knowing that
to everything there is a season, and sex would come when it
was meant to happen; all in good time.
I lived through the emergence of sexual
permissiveness at University, seeing it as a natural process of
change as society homogenized and old barriers of caste and
creed disintegrated. Yet it was the atypical girl-woman who
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wore jeans and T-Shirt to class or to the movies. Couples

were rarely seen holding hands, and those who did were
invariably from the upper crust of society that is always at the
forefront of permissiveness and change due to cultural
proximity to the West.
Today I see almost every couple, whether from a
deprived or a privileged section of society, holding hands, and
couples kissing in cars are not an uncommon sight. Almost
every girl today wears a ‘uniform’ consisting of a tight-fitting
T-Shirt (no bra) and low-cut, navel-baring, hip-hugging jeans.
‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’ is the motto. I wholeheartedly
agree.
Why not? Men are doing the same thing and tight-
at-the-crotch jeans are tailored to emphasize the family
jewels. Great! Girls love it; they are so much more open
about sex. Ever practical and pragmatic, they are zeroing on
well-paid boys from affluent backgrounds, proposing to them
in ever-increasing numbers, taking the initiative away from
them in choosing a mate as in days of the swayamvar of
medieval times. The Egg is at work…so what else is new?
The Internet! e-dating, e-chats, SMS and emails
are the sinews of romance today, opening up new vistas
hitherto undreamt of in finding, and keeping, a mate. The
electronic medium has revolutionized the mechanics of
dating and mating.
India was never a great environment for women or
the girl-child, what with sati, dowry, and female infanticide,
but sixty years of Indian independence have seen the
emancipation of Indian womanhood. Notwithstanding the fact
that dowry and female infanticide are yet to be totally
eradicated, India has unleashed her girl-power, enchained
since the passing of the Vedic Ages that produced the likes of
Gargi and Maitreyi.
I watch, enchanted, as the long-awaited Modern
Indian Woman, unutterably lovely, poised, highly educated,
supremely confident in her emotional and financial
independence, bold, forthright and realistic, proceeds to run
rings around her male colleagues! TGP never had it so bad…
or so good!
In ever increasing numbers, Indian women,
blessed with fantastic beauty and intelligence, enthrall the
globe. My heart swells with pride, for among their ranks is my
heart-stoppingly beautiful and talented daughter. Grateful am
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I that she comes of age at a time when the stage is set for
her and her sex to take the world by storm.
I am one of the first non-MCPs, now an oddity no
longer. With the coming of the Internet, that Great Leveller,
woman has come even more into her own. Never before has
she had the chance to interact with colleagues at the
workplace in such a detached, professional manner, the
results of her work unclassifiable according to gender.
Her online output, both qualitatively as well as
quantitatively, could well match or surpass that of her male
colleagues, I note with a sense of joy and pride. Aggressive,
daring, sensitive, and professional, taking her future into her
own hands, choosing her own mate and fashioning her own
life, she dons the mantles of both Aphrodite and Diana as she
courses onwards irresistibly.
Move over, Eros, Cupid, Venus and Apollo; look
out, world: India is on the move.
And now a little Internet humour to underscore the
point:

WOMEN !!

They smile when they want to scream.

They sing when they want to cry.
They cry when they are happy
and laugh when they are nervous
They fight for what they believe in.
They stand up against injustice.
They don't take "no" for an answer when
they believe there is a better solution.
They go without new shoes so their
children can have them.
They go to the doctor with a frightened friend.
They love unconditionally.
They cry when their children excel and
cheer when their friends get awards.
They are happy when they hear about a
birth or a new marriage.
Their hearts break when a friend dies.
They feel sorrow at the loss of a family
member, yet they are strong when they think
there is
no strength left.
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They know that a hug and a kiss can heal a

broken heart.
Women come in all sizes, in all colors and
shapes.
They'll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail
you to show how much they care about you.
The heart of a woman is what makes the world
spin!
Women do more than just give birth.
They bring joy and hope.
They give compassion and ideals.
They give moral support to their family and
friends.
Women have a lot to say and a lot to give.
In short, they are............ amazing !!

IT'S GOOD TO BE A WOMAN, say

women…

“We got off the Titanic first.

We can scare male bosses with mysterious
gynecological disorder excuses.
Taxis stop for us.
We don't look like a frog in a blender when
dancing.
No fashion faux pas we make could ever
rival The Speedo.
We don't have to pass gas to amuse ourselves.
If we forget to shave, no one has to know.
We can congratulate our teammate without
ever touching her rear.
We never have to reach down every so often
to make sure our privates are still there.
We have the ability to dress ourselves.
We can talk to people of the opposite sex
without having to picture them naked.
If we marry someone 20 years younger,
we're aware that we look like an idiot
(and we couldn’t care less if we really love him)
There are times when chocolate really can
solve all problems.
We'll never regret piercing our ears.
We can fully assess a person just by
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looking at their shoes.

We can make comments about how silly men
are in their presence, because
they aren't listening anyway.”

SMILE , Guys !!!



Love… Across the Eons

OR

‘Eggstinction?’

PROGNOSIS:
So where does all this leave The Egg, CuTE and
TGP? Are they ever to be liberated from the compulsions of
their endless tryst? Does the new technology spell the end of
romance as we know it today? Well, yes and no. The new
 107

science will make it possible for two people, irrespective of

their genders, to become life-partners and have children
conceived through the fusion of their genes and cultured in-
vitro or normally, forever removing the stigma of lesbian and
homo-sexual labels.
In fact, it will be a de facto return to the primordial
method of asexual reproduction as seen even today in
primitive creatures such as the hydra. If Eric von Daniken’s
theories and researches have substance (and I think they
take quite a bit of disproving), visitors from the stars
hastened the evolution human female as we know her
today .
It is otherwise very hard to explain the sudden
appearance of Mother Goddess worship in ancient cultures…a
well-demarcated period in our prehistory. Figurines crop up
from this period—the likes of which were never seen before—
figurines that monstrously exaggerate the female secondary
sexual characteristics as if to stress that they are things of
wonder, vastly different from what had existed before.
But however wonderful the innovation of The Egg
was, Nature is Change…and you can bet she has a better
plan (or a fallback position) up her sleeve. Perhaps The Egg
has served her purpose…she has taken Man to a high point of
evolution. Now the next stage looms into view—and could
precipitate a complete overhaul of the Old Order.
I am of the opinion that, in a curious sort of way,
deliverance from the established pattern of mating and
reproduction will increase the chances for two people who
love each other to find happiness, and live their lives to their
fullest potential. This does not mean that sexual pleasure will
be erased from human memory. On the contrary, it will be
enhanced as Man—unshackled from old rituals, their
attendant hang-ups, and the pressures of emotional
attachments—will search for and discover higher uplands of
physical experience. Anyone who says that’s a wrong bend in
the road is free to follow his or her route to Nirvana.
I see the distinct possibility of the very nature and
concept of reproduction coming in for a major overhaul, with
Aphrodite triumphing over her oldest enemies: prudery and
convention. Age will cease to be an issue in pairing off:, given
the rapid advances that will follow the cracking of the human
genetic code and concomitant breakthroughs in gerontology
and stem-cell based organ harvesting that will keep men and
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women in the prime of life for centuries. There will be nothing

unusual in a two hundred year old woman marrying a
hundred and fifty year old man or vice versa—both will be
healthy and vigorous, with their sexual and mental faculties
undiminished by the years.
Release from the bondage of age is sure to come
within the next century. We may not live to see it, but our
great-grandchildren will. The need to perpetuate oneself
will wither in the face of immortality. And this will spell the
eggstinction of the old CuTE-TGP nexus. Nature will choose
Life over even the Egg to stay in business…for Life is her
foremost priority.
Death will become voluntary, as in the case of the
patriarch Bhishma Pitamah of the Hindu epic ‘The
Mahabharata’. Full of years, of loving and living, having
attained peace, fulfilment and free of his craving for the
things of the world, a man will probably exercise his
prerogative to move on to the next stage of existence—that
‘unknown country from whose bourne no traveler returns’—
content to advance evolutionarily on another (non-physical)
plane of existence that may seem much more meaningful and
fraught with possibilities than the plane of physical existence.
Thus will science fulfil an old metaphysical goal: to
progress from a material to a spiritual plane of existence—
with one outstanding difference. While it is said to normally
take many thousands of reincarnations for a soul to reach
that stage of detachment, it may become possible to achieve
this within a single lifetime!
When we remember that constant breakthroughs
in quantum physics lead us to a greater appreciation of the
ultimate unity of all things and of the homogeneity of all
matter as being both wave as well as particle (as are
photons), we shall perhaps rediscover what the sages of India
have always maintained (and experienced, it may be added):
that ultimately, everything is made of light.
For many years, I have felt intuitively that the
sciences, both physical and metaphysical, are rushing
towards each other, to meet in cataclysmic union at some
point in the distant future. The converging lines between the
two are already becoming so blurred that sometimes it
becomes very difficult to differentiate the two (those of you
who have read Fritjof Capra’s ‘The Tao of Physics’ will know
what I mean).
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It is gratifying to see my gut feeling coming true

within my own lifetime. Will this Point of Convergence
coincide with the fabled ‘Omega Point’ as predicted by Sri
Aurobindo, when Man will reach a level of spiritual attainment
that will elevate him to Godhead…and a blissful reunion with
his Creator? We can but speculate, but the two events seem
to be co-terminus.
While two billion years in an organism’s life are but
a prelude in evolutionary terms, they are but a wink in cosmic
chronology. We have no idea how many times the universe
has been created, to expand, then contract back into itself
and then explode in a Big Bang, in a process similar to the
birth and death of stars.
Western cosmology, more open-minded today by
the benefit of exposure to Hindu metaphysical thought,
nevertheless is unable to unshackle itself from a mind-set
that cannot see beyond the (what it thinks is the only) Big
Bang, which it places at a point about 13 to 14 billion years in
the past, provided time has moved at the same pace relative
to the event.
However, even this chronology is doubtful, since
that same Western cosmology indicates that the speed of
light (and hence time itself, relativistically speaking), hitherto
thought to be constant and inviolable, has slowed down after
that primordial event. Which is nothing but another way of
saying that the rate of expansion of space is speeding up…an
idea consistent with contemporary cosmological research
findings.
Hindu cosmology, based on a system of
metaphysics intelligible to but a handful of western
cosmologists, knows that kalpa (or cosmic cycle) follows
kalpa, that “Those who know that the day of Brahma lasts a
thousand Yugas, and that His night lasts a thousand Yugas,
they are the knowers of day and night”… Bhagawad Gita, VIII,
17.
Each 24,000-year equinoctial cycle in any
particular kalpa has a 12,000-year ascending phase and a
12,000-year descending phase. Each such phase contains
four ages or yugas, called Kali, Dwapara, Treta and Satya. It
is said that the (next) Treta Age for us starts in 4100 A.D. and
will see human consciousness evolve to the stage where
telepathic communication will be commonplace.
 110

The next 4,800 years of the ensuing Satya Yuga

will see Man evolve to a level where he works in close
harmony to the divine plan. The descending 12,000 years
that follow will see Man again gradually sink to a bestial level
(remember H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel ‘The Time Machine’, with
a decadent Earth in decline, and with humans reduced to
Morlocks and Eloi?).
This is the eternal cycle of maya, played out in a
universe whose entire span of existence is calculated by the
ancient rishis at 314,159,000 million years, based on π (pi),
the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its radius
(3.1416)2 !
And trapped within the time frame of this colossal
Scheme of Things, myriad souls struggle to realize
themselves and emerge from the quagmire of duality,
ultimately evolving to the stage where they awaken to their
inherent divinity and unite with the Creator.
I call the one I love ‘Divine’, an adjective she is
uncomfortable with when applied to her. I mean it literally,
however. She protests at my constant deification of her; I just
as constantly insist she is Divine! I love quoting the Gita to
her to prove my point:
“There is nothing higher than Me, O Dhananjaya.
All this is strung on Me, as rows of gems on a string.”
“I am the sapidity in water, O son of Kunti; I, the
radiance in moon and sun; I am the syllable Om in all the
Vedas; sound in ether and manliness in man.”
“I am the sweet fragrance in earth and the
brilliance in fire; I am the life in all beings and the austerity in
ascetics.”
“Know Me, O Partha, as the eternal seed of all
beings; I am the intelligence of the intelligent; the splendour
of the splendid. I am the strength of the strong devoid of
desire and passion. In beings I am desire not contrary to
Dharma, O chief of the Bharatas.”
Bhagawad Gita, Chaper VII, stanzas 7-11.
Is it any wonder, then, that I adore her? That I see
her the way I do? ‘Deification’? Of course!!! She is fit to be
deified; I do not always see her with the eyes, the mind, or
the intellect. I see her with my heart, which has a way of
seeing all its own:

2
I owe this to information to the relevant chapter in Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramhansa Yoganand.
 111

LANGUAGE OF THE HEART

I tried to find the rightest words

To tell her how I felt,
But they were hardly good enough
And so she didn’t melt.

Until, that is, my heart stepped in,

And told her how it felt,
For none can beat the heart at words
When things are left unsaid.

“Who could describe her—and do full justice to his

subject? So graceful, so hypnotic was her walk that it echoed
the eternal rhythms of nature. Her stride, confident and self-
assured, brought to mind the heaving waves of a river, the
forest trees bending before a hurricane, the heady sway of
ripened wheat as a wayward breeze teased it while playing a
riotous game of hide-and-seek through its golden stands. At
once animal and divine, it mirrored her very nature, titillating
and transcendental, sensuous and sublime. Pleasure and
purpose were its twin engines, and evoked these responses in
all who had the sensitivity to perceive its feline power. It was
pure poetry, it was pragmatic prose, it was a projection of her
inner beauty and emancipation. Untrammelled, undaunted,
unafraid, it was a delicious challenge to life itself…
If there was such a thing as melody, it was in her
voice. Chimes came to life and keened in sympathetic
response to the clarity and sweetness of its dulcet tones.
Flowers turned their faces away from the sun to listen to her,
and nightingales flew away, crestfallen, shocked at their
inability to match the music that issued from her lips as
speech. When she sang, as she often did, in a quiet forest
glade, the wind hushed its murmur in the branches, and little
rabbits crawled out of their burrows to draw closer to the
heavenly music. And when she laughed, all nature laughed
with her. The angels heard and were moved, for if mortals
could sing the way she did, half their work was already done.
When she entered a room, it immediately became
brighter. The atmosphere, too, became more cheerful and
optimistic, as if her coming had dispelled darkness and
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uncertainty. She brought light with her, carried it around like

a halo, because it was her and of her. The sweetness, the
light, and the beauty were so much part and parcel of her
that it was hard to tell whether she was of the ingredients or
was the mixture itself. Beautiful, unique, effulgent in her
timeless loveliness, she was the very substance of purity and
joy and bliss. Yet she was human…and mortal, which was
surprising, because her qualities were of the divine.
Or was it simply that he saw he saw her, not with
the aid of his eyes, but with his heart, a heart that chose to
selectively filter out the dross…a heart that perceived the
precious essence of her...an essence that was of the eternal,
and not the fallible humanness that all flesh is heir to.
Angelic, immortal, ever pure and unsullable: that was how he
saw her with his heart. Which was why he adored her: as the
Magi adored the holy infant they had traced by following the
Star of Bethlehem. An angel she was, and a baby, too, if one
cared to remember her mischievous ways and her pranks.
Humour, love, happiness, vitality, and radiance were
embodied in her. Those that saw her with the heart were
never the same, ever again. She captivated and enthralled.
He was her karmic pawn…life after life.”

♥
The above piece— ‘The Heart Also Sees’ — just
about sums up what I’ve been trying to say all this time. We
see people in many ways other than those dependent on our
visual processes.
I know my soul has always loved her, and my soul
is the real me; this shell I presently occupy is only a
temporary garment I will shed as soon as see it no longer
need it. I have changed bodies many, many times before, but
I have always been, always remained ‘I’. I pray ‘I’ shall always
have her divine companionship through the ages before us,
for I believe she is my eternal inspiration and my salvation.
‘Love’? I’ve gone light-years beyond that. Now you
probably understand why I think it’s such a weak word for me
to use as far as she is concerned. She is far ahead of me on
the eons-long road of evolution, and, bedazzled, I struggle to
keep up with her intellectual capacity and cope with the
Force that emanates from her. I need her help desperately as
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I strive and toil upward on the steep climb to Omega. I need

her like I’ve never needed anyone ever before.
For we are all climbing, evolving, slipping back
now and then, then clambering on, shedding our false egos
and delusions as we ascend with all others, all having the
same divinity, the same potential to realize themselves. We
are all part of the cosmic game revolving around The Egg, the
source of Life itself. As Walt Whitman said in a different yet
analogous context:

“ Thee in thy future,

Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male—
thee in
Thy athletes, moral, spiritual; South, North,
West,
East.
Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization (until
which
thy proudest material civilization must
remain in
vain).
Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship—
thee in
In no single bible, saviour, merely,
Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, equal
to any,
divine as any…
These! these in thee (certain to come) today I
prophesy.”

….. From “Thou Mother with Thy Equal

Brood”
Leaves of Grass


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EPILOGUE

So, in summing up, it might appear as if the pull

of a love beyond the grave just might manage to overcome
the near-indelible writing of time on our DNA banks. But the
influence of evolutionary factors is so old and so deeply
ingrained at the cellular level that it takes the kind of divine
love I’ve been rhapsodizing about to circumvent it. It is
hardly any wonder, therefore, that few couples manage to
keep the fires of passion burning over an entire lifetime. All
too often, sadly, they find that nature has crept up on them
silently – when they had settled into an easy domesticity and
had started taking themselves for granted – and stolen the
greatest gift that a kind Providence had blessed them with.

It is all too easy for men and women to revert to

the ancient patterns. It doesn’t take much for CuTE and TGP
to re-assert themselves. The pressures of modern living, the
constant deadlines at work, the mad race to keep ahead of
the mortgage, the credit card payments, the mountains of
bills in an ever-inflationary world, the overall atmosphere of
tension and insecurity that hovers over the globe like a
noxious cloud, has eaten its way into the vitals of many a
successful marriage.

Then there are the Eggfruit to consider. Here, as

we’ve seen, CuTE brooks no obstacle to the betterment of
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their present and future well-being. She can be as stubborn

as a mule when it comes to decisions involving their welfare.
Nothing but the best will do for them, and here, how many
men can come up to her exacting demands? This is the
beginning of her disenchantment with the TGP who – poor
fellow – just can’t understand why his best is never good
enough. Seen from CuTE’s viewpoint, he’s short-changed
her. She gave him the priceless gift of herself, in return for
the best that was available for the fruit of her womb.

Alas, that rat TGP has enjoyed her person but

failed to keep his end of the bargain. Rage turns to fury,
comradeship turns to contempt, when she finds that TGP
isn’t going to be able to deliver. He has thwarted her lifeplan,
and she’s never going to forgive that. Infidelity she is
prepared to overlook at times (like Victoria Beckham, God
bless her generous heart). After all, some other CuTE is likely
to have a cuckoo in her nest thanks to her mate’s betrayal.
That ought to slow her rival down a bit. As already seen,
every CuTE is a rival of every other CuTE: there’s only so
much land, money and gold on the planet—to the advantage
of her own Eggfruit. But failure on the material plane is
unpardonable.

If, however, by some stroke of good fortune, CuTE

is not of a predominantly materialistic temperament – if she
isn’t perennially upset that the eggfruit next door are better
off than her own brood – if she is able to rise above purely
materialistic considerations – then the chances of the pair-
bond surviving through all the ups and downs of their lives
are bright. Practical as she is, she may realize that the male
ego is easily bruised. Constant comparison with wealthier
neighbours or colleagues is hardly the stuff that eternal love
is founded on. If CuTE is accommodating enough to realize
that there are more things to life than money – that a happy
home and contented, well-adjusted children are the real fruit
of a successful pair bonding, then the couple has a very good
chance of surviving their genetic programming.

Yet love is allowed to become the first casualty by

most people lucky enough to be blessed by it. We never
realize the true value of something or somebody till they are
gone. Love is such a rare and precious thing (a fact
 116

submerged under the barrage of millions of films, books and

novellas, all of which seem to reduce it to the commonplace)
that it should be carefully nurtured and not willfully
squandered. We need to fight to keep love alive, safe from
the relentless onslaughts of a hundred foes. There is no
feeling quite like it – it’s a fine madness, heralded by the
most incredible emotions possible for a human to
experience. And I repeat: it’s a gift from the gods…and very,
very rare. If it weren’t so, it wouldn’t be the mainstay of
fables and legends.

So keep her happy always. Here’s how:

1. Love her. Hold her tight frequently.

2. Love her more and more
3. Miss her now and then, when in office. Tell her
so
4. Love her even as you make love to her
5. Try making both love and lust to her as
frequently as possible
6. Give her chocolates
7. Always take out the garbage
8. Never criticize her parents
9. Give her space to appreciate your love; go on
tour occasionally
10. Save money right from Day One of your
marriage. Money saves marriages
11. Marriages save money; divorces are
expensive
12. Try not to ogle other good-looking women;
remember, ultimately it’s her nature and
personality that stays in your mind and heart,
not mere looks, which are ephemeral at best
13. Be creative in showing your feelings for her;
try to be different: she’ll appreciate and
remember it
14. Write poems for her
15. Take a holiday together, just the two of you.
Keep the intimacy alive
16. Give her a foot massage whenever you can
17. Be innovative in bed; she’ll realize she
means a lot to you
 117

18. Always do what’s best for yourself; since

what’s best for you automatically translates
into what’s best for her and her Eggfruit
19. Never poke fun at her, or ridicule her
atavistic urges; she’s helpless before them.
Help her best the program
20. Understand her actions in the light of the
program, and take appropriate steps to
maintain harmony
21. Never see yourself as being the wronged or
the oppressed party; know that love and
patience can usually offset conditioning
22. Appreciate her good qualities often and
loudly, sincerely. She’ll love you all the more
for it
23. Give her love. It usually comes back to you.
Only Love is Real, honeybaby
24. Tell her you love her forever, till the very
end of time (which you probably do. You may
not know this right now)
25. Tell her you love her…but that it’s none of
her business. That’ll blow her like nothing on
earth
26. See your union as a divinely-sent
opportunity to evolve in every way possible;
see your marriage / bond from a long-term
perspective, an eons-long odyssey to self
actualization
27. Love begets love: revel in it
28. Let love unlock creativity in you; see it
reflected in your work.
29. Love makes a man special. Remember, ‘All
the world loves a lover’. Make your lover feel
special, too. He / she is.
30. Beat the program. Know that love can help the
two of you to overcome it. Don’t just survive –
triumph!

Good luck!

***
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The End

© Subroto Mukerji