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CRANK'S CORNER

        This week I really want to talk about the issue of interlinking rivers in Tamilnadu and also all of India. Both Kalam and Karunanidhi have shared their thoughtful ideas on this. The two have asked why can't we do it. But before we answer that I want to focus your mind on the question that Sigmund Freud posed several dark decades ago: What does a woman want? If he were alive today, Freud would have straightaway figured out that all a woman wants is a husband who is essentially a cross between an ATM and a poodle.

        But in his time, there were no ATMS and hence Freud, who it must be said did not possess a credit card too, couldn't understand what the female of the species needed. As a qualified psychoanalyst, he could straightaway have sent women for a scan or something similar as is mandated by the Hippocratic Oath (which is the sincere vow that docs take to help keep the diagnostic centres and testing labs in good health). But Freud was no ordinary doctor, he was a specialist, which mean he also had to ask the women to keep coming back for repeated check-ups till he was convinced that nothing more was left with them (to pay up). That is the thing with specialists — they are thorough and will never leave anything half-complete.

        Anyway, I hope you remember that the basic aim of this piece is to discuss interlinking of rivers. But now that we are on the question of Freud, the real question to ask is why did Freud ask what he asked. He was probably helplessly wondering aloud after taking his wife or girlfriend on a shopping spree that never seemed to end. Or perhaps he blurted out after his wife went into a silent sulk (when women are caught in this mood talking to them is like a trying to strike a conversation with those buried in a cemetery or making a tap laugh). As a general rule, women, when they sulk, want the opposite sex to figure out the reason. And if not, then it would provide them yet another reason to prolong the sulk. But don't for a minute think that if the man figured out why they sulked, they would get back to normalcy. They will still sulk saying that the man allowed them to sulk even when knowing the reason for their sulk. I know it is all confusing. But you are dealing here with confusion incarnates, confusion junkies, confusion freaks, who can't make up their mind on something as infinitesimal as a bindi dot. Would it matter whether it is white or brown? A guy would hardly notice even if his girlfriend or wife were to turn up with an actual third eye on the forehead. By nature, men's gaze doesn't travel that far up. But women make such a fuss over bindi, its shape, its size, its colour, its texture and perhaps its atomic structure that you can be forgiven if you come to believe that they breathe through it. And women also have this cute habit of cuddling and hugging dogs which lick and salivate with the tongue that they use to pick dirty things off the floor. But the very same women, upon seeing a terrified cockroach in an unreachable corner, would behave as if dinosaurs have come back to life in the room. Only idiotic men will at such moments try to reason out with them that it is only a cockroach. For women, cockroaches represent what Osama means to Bush.

        By the way, this is to just tell you that I have not forgotten the essential purpose of this article, which is to discuss the issue of interlinking of rivers. Yet, as we are on the subject of forgetting, it is interesting to note what men and women choose to remember. Women have this amazing ability to recall with utmost precision what you shouted at them in a particular angry moment in your previous birth. They also will recollect vividly what they were wearing on that day. In the case of wives and girlfriends, they take special pride in remembering such helpful particulars like the first time you ever sneezed or yawned when she was around. They will not only remember this wonderful detail, but also come up with a suitable card to mark the occasion (the card-sellers, bless them, actually have cards to suit the moment). The problem for men is that women expect them to reciprocate such wonderful sentiments in kind. Or else, sulk, and then the Freud's question.

        Men's mind, on the other hand, is so finetuned that it can remember whom did Gavaskar score his 1000th run off (Ijaz Fakih) or who was the goalkeeper of England when Maradona scored his mind-bending goal in the World Cup of 1986 in Mexico (Peter Shilton). When a man's brain is crammed with such life-saving information, can he ever remember his daughter's age or his wife's birthday? Which reminds me that my wife's birthday is somewhere in July, but I can't get down to recall the date.

        In such a situation only the unreasonable would expect me to talk about interlinking rivers.