Jaggu and Modesty

I am in love with Jaggu (Jagajjanani-) Sahni. Of course, the likes of her exist only in the (male-) artist’s imagination. But Anoushka Sharma has done well to prove in pk, even in this porcine age, that only a girl who has nothing else to show has to bare her physical ‘assets’ to get noticed and ‘admired’.

So also with my Natalie. So also with my long-time heartthrob, Modesty Blaise. God, what I wouldn’t give to be friends with a woman like that, whom I can respect so much – and obviously for far more important things than the fact that she is a lethal warrior, physically speaking. Those who are curious are welcome to find out for themselves. She is just incidentally beautiful, and has lots of beaux besides the one and only Willie Garvin always by her side in her hour of need, but the point is, she is such a wonderful human being, better than I can ever be! What an imagination that could create someone like her; what a man he must have been.

It is a matter of eternal shame to me that I looked at flesh and blood women again and again all my life and tried very hard to force myself to believe that they measured up to something even close to such dreams. Never again, I hope. If a man is to stay sane and live by certain principles which only men can understand, there are only three ways he should deal with women – and that is a given that has not changed in the whole history of civilization. Overarchingly, the thing to remember is that far too many women are congenitally incapable of thinking beyond shoes and smartphones and selfies and security and tradition and shopping and gossip and ‘fun’, no matter what they pretend, or even try to convince themselves of.

This year is going to be just mine and Pupu’s. Anybody else, except those who are paying me, and those who have consistently maintained warm, substantive and respectful relations with me for decades together, will be tolerated only if they make it evident that getting close to me matters to them far beyond a mere form of words. I have been thanklessly nice and attentive to too many random people in my life.