falling for joe schmoe

the other day ( a month or so back) i saw this poster for the new yashraj chopra movie, something about there being an exceptional story, behind every ordinary jodi. and there was shahrukh khan, looking so cute in his loosely tucked in shirt, ill fitted brown pants, over sized chashma, and the totally geeky-i-am-so-out-of-touch-with-the-real-world mooch. he looked just way over the top cute, not like the made up superstar types but like any other ordinary guy on the street types.

okay, wait. i see the guys going, bas, this is the problem with you women, you will turn your nose up at a normal looking guy in front of you but you will go all senti and emotional about shahrukh khan dressed like a fool.

well.

let me answer that.

first off, the reason women my age like shahrukh khan is because he makes us feel young. he is obviously older than us, we were in highshcool when he was the new kid on the block and if it is okay for him to be jumping around doing these falling in love roles then it is okay for us to let go and completely enjoy those movies. it is very different watching shahid kapoor falling in love, matlab theek hai bachhe hain, you just cannot relate to them, you cannot totally immerse yourself in it. and you cannot hold back a part of yourself and still enjoy. well may be some people can, but not most of us. so there, that is the reason why anything shahrukh khan does is now acceptable. for the record i was never such a huge pankha cooler a/c earlier.

now to the second part. i think it is a myth that men create - the one about how women fall for the bad guys. i so do not think that that is true. most women do notice and fall for your average joe shmoe, we do, look around.

yes, when i think back at the times when we were in university a lot of people did hold the opinion that women - girls - did not really care for the average guys. it was this weird unspoken, not discussed undercurrent; a grudge of sorts - that most girls thought too highly of themselves. it was strange how no one -including myself- ever bothered to argue against it. you see, in hindsight, i do not think that that was true. i know of a lot of young girls who actually thought very highly of some geeky-nerdy-bloke coming out of the library with a ton of books. only, the trouble was, that the poor idiot either was too busy to realize that, or had such a low self esteem, he just could not believe that he was being thought highly of. so really, explain to me why it was that girl's problem? yes, she did not talk to every tom, dick, and harry for hours and hours, but honestly why should she? would you like her better if she did? umm hmm. thought so.

i think it is rank sexism, how these opinions about women are propagated and nurtured. like that one about us trying to change the men in our lives. i think it's an unsubstantiated myth. most of the women i know, actually like the men for what they are, well, we might not always worship the ground you walk on, but we are not trying to change things too much either. for that matter we are most upset, about why you have changed from who you were when we got married, to now, ten years later, we liked that guy, could you bring him back please. i am generalizing, not all men are the same, not all women are the same, every rule has exceptions - but that goes without saying.

so what i am trying to say is, that your neighborhood pappu, should cheer up and feel better about himself. that even though not everybody was swooning over him, he can rest assured that someone somewhere was. someone somewhere always does.and if you still believe that this has never happened to you, then a) you are not too bright, b) you have no powers of observation, or c) you are in denial.

there. that is my theory.