How do I look ??

No no, relax,, I am not seeking your honest opinion on my personality. I do know that, that wont be the best of starts for a new year for any one of us. This my friends is more about this perennial question itself. A question that you may have come across many a times in different shapes & forms. On the onset it looks like a simple query, harmless, innocent to the extent of being a drag. But don’t be fooled by its cunning disguise, this question my fellow brethren from mars is the single most cunningly disguised plan against all the male species on earth.

The plot is deep, the plot old and the plan is bloody fail proof. See the one rule that Jesus, Allah, Ram, Nanak or the one God in the form & shape that you know him gave to mankind was that if you lie even once in life for your own good you would have no place in paradise in the afterlife. Men heard it and just nodded their heads, ‘That’s ok dude what else’ they said, the women however gave it a thought, rolled their eyes, took their time and came up with the impregnable question for their men - - - -  How do I look?

It a bloody ruthless trap. And if you are a man then you would know better that it is tirelessly thrown at you again and again until you fall for it. No one in the history of mankind can claim not to have never been a victim of this perfect crime irrespective of what you may have replied. And its not just the answer that will tear off your ticket to heaven. Its the way you say it, the speed with with you respond, body language, positioning of eyes, shaking of our earlobes and whatnot …. Do what you may, reason to doom you would somehow appear. Sometimes for example it may be your act. For example am pretty sure that to start with it was Eve who ate the forbidden apple first and then when she knew she was dammed she tossed another apple to Adam, came out from behind the bush and spoke in a low husky voice - - - How do I look? …… Apple did not get the man, the question did, and rest as they say is a story.

Anyways, while each man is responsible and mostly solo witness to his own doomed fate on answering this ill fated query, there is one place where the response becomes public, and the humiliation is to be shared with an audience ….. Outside the fitting rooms in shopping malls !!!

If an angel dies ever time a person lies, then the sale period around holidays is a bloody plague season for them,, waiting area outside the fitting rooms their graveyard and poor unsuspecting husbands & boyfriends their death daemons. Nowhere else in the world can you see an army of otherwise righteous, god-fearing and pious looking gentlemen lying through his teeth in series one after the other …. If you are telling me you have spoken nothing but the truth standing at that place, you’ve just killed another angel.

The sad part of it is that you cant help it … Lets me take you to a sample store with a nice sale offer on a warm sunny day …

Men accompanied with their chosen ones come in the shops with their happiness in their eyes, spring in their feet, songs on their lips, money in their wallets and moods high in anticipation of something they would be able to get for themselves. Little do these unsuspecting poor sacrificial lambs know that all of these would be snatched away from them by the ill fated finger of not fate but the damsels whom they themselves selected. (PS: Thats the bitch of it!)

Anyways their high spirits are soon dampened with their better turned bitter halves parading them through the female section of the shop floor tirelessly hunting for gold in the long line of clothes that the store has put on display for the single reason of they having not been able to sell that crap through the season. Oxymoron as it may sound, almost always most of these damsels are able find their perfect dream dresses in that heap of otherwise season long discards.

 

And after hours of this mad frenzy of rushing from one aisle to another, mentally mapping the aisles to be attacked in priority, almost snatching of clothes from other shoppers, comes the dreaded walk to the one area in the shop that is every man’s worst nightmares – The Fitting Rooms !! <add doomsday music>. By now the shopping spirits of majority of the men is already broken and they are reduced to mere slaves of the finger motion and eyes contact of their women. The unending wait outside the fitting rooms would do the trick, for the last few remaining ones who still see light at the end of men’s section tunnel.

As a new couple approaches the waiting area of the fitting room, quick glances are exchanged. The waiting men do a quick scan of the new cat and her kill. They act as one big clan in analyzing the couple and the common feeling towards the approaching man varies from sympathy to hatred depending on how many garments for trial his lady is carrying. The one with his woman carrying most trial garments gains the highest position in the clan with special privileges like right to sit in the few available seating spots in the waiting area and ignorance by other members of the clan at large to his leeching looks at others wives. He can be spared a murder, for the sheer torture he is in for. Such an empathy from this group towards a man walking in with his wife carrying say more than 20 garments matches in intensity only to the common grief & sympathy towards a husband hosting condolence on the untimely demise of his newly wed wife.

Quietly the newcomer joins the clan at his level of hierarchy and waits patiently for the missus to come out and look at him with just one question in her eyes. No words are generally spoken at this point but the letters in her eyes convey a loud and clear – HOW DO I LOOK? And this cycle goes on. This is but the price you have to pay to be in a relationship. Painful as it may sound it also brings some happiness to men. Puzzled? Well marriages or relationships may directly bring any evident happiness for a man but only when one is in it, does he realize how petty all his earlier issues & pains were. Only then can he truly experience glimpses of happiness, even if that is in his nostalgia of his such untroubled past.

Waiting in that dreaded area, looking at others as these thoughts cross your mind, almost always there suddenly appears this intriguingly dressed lady of waist size 48 and bust size 52, who has somehow managed to get herself into a 32’’ waist dress. As she comes out all eyes scan the waiting area, other men looking around more eagerly than her, trying to find the poor husband who would be in direct line of damage of this hurricane. Not coz they empathize with him, but so that the pain & suffering in his eyes can act as a soothing balm on their own. Weird, GOD gives you pain and miseries but if you are a true believer he also gives you means to ease your pain by bringing in your sight others whose pains out measures yours … Who are we to question his ways.

Anyways this massacre of male emotions goes on every single day in every single store. Only faces change.

Men come and men go,,, and then there are those men who stay behind at these waiting areas of the fitting room, long after their wives have gone to billing counter,, wait showing on their faces, their eyes pasted at the fitting room door, eagerly waiting for the appearance of the blonde who went in to try the minis ………