So a bunch of researchers at Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences got paid a few million dollars in grant to prove what I have been stating very subtly for an eternity. And here I shall state it again, MEN DO NOT UNDERSTAND WOMEN. No, we just don’t. Accept it. And now we have proof!

According to one of the researchers, “Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more”. Since I still consider myself as young and a man, I firmly believe I have been suffering from a similar problem since birth. Forget about friendly and more part, I had trouble with women in general. As a kid I never understood why my Mother kept getting mad at me or my Sister kept telling me not to bug her. At school it was never much of a problem as it was an All Boys high school and the few female teachers there hated all us boys in general, but the worst part was when a lady teacher threw me out of the English class for two full years for correcting her translation of Hamlet.

So I survived home and school and the brief little encounters I had with girls here and there, but was never in much of a relationship as, well, I was clueless. Then I got packed off to US for education where I had to survive in the wild for 3.5 years before running back home. There things got even worse. I couldn’t understand why all the women were nice to me or every guy in general. Or why that pretty girl in my English class kept asking me if I wanted to have coffee after the class. Finally I told her I hated coffee. I was beginning to realize that women were a very cordial and genial race in particular. I could understand some of them being extra nice at parties after a few drinks but why they were still nice next day in the morning was beyond my comprehension. Neither could I ever understand why those naked ladies at the strip clubs showered me with compliments and wouldn’t go away till I would tuck a bill in their thong out of sheer embarrassment. Or why at bars women would insist on trying to talk to me till I bought them a drink and told them to go away. Now before you people start raising questions about my sexuality let me move on to relationships. With women of course.

Over the years I managed to have a few relationships, both long and short. Ok mainly short ones and a rare long one. But it was the same story every time. Frankly if the girls hadn’t literally come and hit me on the head with a club that said “Dude I like you”, I would have never been in one. But this language barrier continued to create problem. One day I would be told I was not giving them their personal space and the next day I would be accused of being very cold and distant. I didn’t know what to do and let things take their own course which inadvertently led to dead ends.

Then I had to leave college and all this fiasco and rush back to India four years back. I moved to Mumbai and picked up a job to sustain myself and have been officially single since then. No, it’s not that there are no interesting or attractive women in Mumbai; it’s just that they don’t carry the clubs that say “Dude I like you” around with them. And that makes it even harder for me to comprehend what they want from me. I admit I have really liked a girl or two here and I have taken them out for dinners and movies and so on but nothing more than that as I could never understand whether they felt the same way. It’s not easy understanding non-verbal gestures and the study re-affirms that.

Why can’t women understand that your gestures don’t speak our language! Twirl your curls with a finger all you want but that really doesn’t translate in to “I like you” for us. For all I know you might have finally succeeded in finding that long lost knot in your hair you had been searching for since last week. And smiling doesn’t help. When will you realize that when you smile at me it turns my brain in to a highly intoxicating liquid, which in turn pastes that silly grin across my face and makes my eyes glaze. So if you are smiling and speaking it’s imperative that you grab me and shake me hard enough so my brain precipitates and crystallizes back to its normal state. Trust me verbal communication goes a long way when dealing with me. I mean men. Tell us what you seek and you shall have it, be it more understanding, more respect, more personal space, better sex or that necklace you saw at the mall yesterday. If you don’t spell it out do not expect us to decipher your Davinci code and fill out this crossword puzzle you lay out for us.

Does this mean that we men are le stupid? Not really. It’s the times that make us appear so. Gone are the days when men would woo women (only), serenade under their balconies and win their hearts. In this era of female empowerment, men would rather play safe and be ignorant than misconstrue any gesture by a woman and be labeled as a pervert or worse face charges of harassment. So women we have empowered you, come get us!