Mars and Venezuela

Revising the ground rules of marriage

I reached into Kamala’s handbag and fished out the money I needed to pay Blinkit bhaiya. Kamala was not pleased at my incursion. “You can’t just reach into someone else’s property and casually take something out. There is a method in the madness,” she announced, laying down the ground rules of boundaries and borders. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to Trump’s shenanigans inside the Venezuelan border or my hand in her handbag. And I had always thought that the guiding principle of marriage was, what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is also mine.

“You men have no concept of consent. The other day you were looking for your hip flask in my handbag. Whether it’s Madira or Maduro, you can’t just decide you need something and reach out and take it.” She was losing me now. Was all this about the Israel-Palestine conflict or the Russia-Ukraine peace strategy or the Venezuelan strike? Men have been indulging in naked imperialism throughout history, but no one has the courage to point out that the Emperor is not wearing clothes anymore. Men have also reached the Moon and now we seem to be mistaking Venezuela for Venus. Entering another country and threatening ‘boots on the ground’ may be one small step for a misled man, but one giant leap backward for Mankind.

Meanwhile, delivery bhaiya was looking at me hopefully, waiting for his payment to magically appear. I paid him while Kamala was distracted and accepted my safely delivered bottle of coconut oil and a strip of paracetamol. Geopolitics was reaching a feverish pitch and getting to be a headache. But ultimately it was also all about oil, even if we pretended it was about drugs or some other distraction. Even more interestingly, the bhaiya who delivered to my doorstep in ten minutes was as efficient as the US military who delivered a world leader to New York in a comparable timeframe. Maybe gig workers can be recruited for geopolitical strikes and be paid better wages and given health insurance instead of false assurances.

Kamala brought me back to the issue at hand: my putting kai or doing haath ki safai in her handbag. “I want that money back,” she insisted on playing her Trump card. Proving conclusively that Men may be from Mars but Women are not like Venezuela.

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