For the last few months, I have been writing a lot in support of men.
I have written that men can’t find things because we were never trained properly. I have written that men don’t know how to apologise because nobody taught us.
Basically, I have stood up for men, and all my articles suggest that men are not completely useless. We are only slightly underdeveloped.
Naturally, I expected men to be grateful.
I expected them to gather in large numbers, raise me on their shoulders, and say, “Rajan, you have spoken for us. You have given voice to our suffering. You are the ‘Periyaar’ of husbands.”
I was hoping to gallantly refuse, “No, sirs…I am no ‘Periyaar of husbands’ but just a cockroach.”
But none of that happened because men are such strange creatures. Instead of thanking me, they are now against me.
Because every time I wrote in support of men, women read it, laughed, and then looked at the men in their own homes with a new pair of eyes.
Earlier, if a husband didn’t find the sambar in the fridge, the wife would simply get angry and tell him where it was.
Now she would say, “Ah, men only scan for things…which is why they don’t get it. Rajan has already written about this.”
Earlier, if a husband gave a bad apology in a hurry, the wife would silently punish him.
Now she would say, “Ah…so you have given a pressure cooker apology. Rajan has classified this.”
For those of you who don’t know, a pressure cooker apology is the apology a man gives only because the pressure inside the house has become too much and he just wants out of it.
When this started happening in the houses of all the women readers, the men understood that something was wrong. They figured that I was not saving them… I was just being a snitch.
And that is when the men decided to act. It started, I am told, in one secret WhatsApp group.
The group name was simple: Men’s Welfare Association.
That’s how we men are…boring. If a bunch of women were creating a group, I can visualise names such as “Crazy Bitchers,” “Filter Coffee Feminists,” “Screenshot Sisters,” “Still Hot, Slightly Tired,” or “Saree Not Sorry.”
Inside the group, there were husbands, fathers, boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, men who had been friend-zoned, men who had been blocked, and men who had been asked to ‘communicate better.’
Please don’t ask me how I know about this group…I don’t want to snitch on my informer.
The first message was from a man called Prakash. He sent in, “Brothers, this Rajan is becoming a problem.”
Immediately, fifteen men replied with .
No one asked, “What happened?” and no one sent, “Please elaborate.”
That’s just how lazy we men are.
Then another man wrote, “I agree. My wife read his article on why men can’t find things. Since then, she has stopped helping me find anything. Yesterday I asked where my black belt was…and she didn’t even reply.”
Ten men sent .
Another man wrote, “And my wife read his article on why men don’t apologise properly. Since then, it has become difficult to solve our fights.”
One more man said, “My wife read his article on how wives can offload their cognitive load on men. Now she has delegated the whole department to me. I am in charge of gas booking and parent-teacher meetings. Earlier, my life was peaceful.”
Someone else wrote, “This man must be stopped.”
After some time, a senior husband named Murali typed: “We need to silence him.”
Now, if you have seen Marlon Brando’s The Godfather, you know that here “silencing him” could mean Omertà – the strict Mafia code of silence and honour. In The Godfather trilogy, this code is the ultimate law, dictating that members must never cooperate with the enemy (the police or government).
But it could have also meant silencing me and putting me to sleep underground…we won’t know yet.
And then, one man replied, “But how?”
Another said, “Should we report his articles as inappropriate content?”
Another said, “Should we unfollow him on social media?”
One practical man said, “If we unfollow, our wives will still read and forward.”
The man was right. If one wife reads a useful article against a man, ten husbands are in danger by evening.
Then one man suggested, “Let us write counter articles.”
The whole group became uncomfortable. That’s probably because men can’t even read long articles, let alone write them.
Another man suggested, “Let us debate him.”
This was also rejected.
Nobody wanted to debate a man who had already admitted publicly that he is short, useless, bad at finding things, weak at apologies, and a slave to his wife Rekha.
How do you attack a man who has already accepted defeat in life?
Then someone said, “We should send one person to meet him and make him stop writing.”
Sending a representative sounded reasonable to all the men. If you remember PTMs…men like sending representatives.
And that’s when the discussion on who should go and meet Rajan started. An introvert who had been silent till then said, “Let us send a proper masculine man.”
Everyone liked the idea.
Finally, they agreed to send a man who would strike fear in Rajan’s heart — a tall man with a beard, strong shoulders, and a silent personality.
The kind of man who says “hmm” and women go weak in their knees just looking at his forearms.
But then another man asked, “What if Rekha sees him?”
The group went silent again because it was a valid concern.
Because my wife Rekha’s original dream, as everyone now knows, was to marry a tall Malayali man with a thick moustache and a Royal Enfield.
So sending a proper masculine man to Rajan’s house was risky. If Rekha fell for him and left Rajan…then, like MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence agency, he would come after each one of the WhatsApp group members.
Why solve one problem and create another? So the plan was rejected.
By now, the group was getting restless. Some men had to go pick up children from tuition, while a few others had to pretend to help in the kitchen. One of the husbands had already got an ultimatum from his wife…she had already asked, “Spending too much time on the phone…are we?”
That is when a quiet man in the group, who had not spoken till then, sent a message: “Why are we complicating things? Why don’t we send an assassin?”
For two minutes, nobody replied.
Then one man sent, “Bro…”
Another sent, “This is too much…”
But besides these two, nobody else complained. Maybe because nobody wanted their current comfortable lives to be disturbed by a nobody called Rajan.
Over the next 10 minutes, it was decided that the assassin’s job was simple – meet me outside the home, probably in the nearby park, try to convince me to stop writing, and if I don’t agree to, kill me.
Now came the most difficult part – selecting the assassin. The men created a shortlist.
The first candidate was Suresh because he had once managed to convince his wife that buying a 65-inch TV was an ‘good investment’ for the family.
Even though he was a strong candidate, he was rejected because recently he had forgotten his wedding anniversary and was not in his wife’s good books.
The second candidate was Arvind. He was the kind of husband who could listen to his wife talk for five minutes and then let out only a “Hmm…”
But he was rejected because if he met me, both of us might sit silently and their mission would not move forward.
Then someone suggested Deepak. He was the kind of man nobody would know, and even if they did, they wouldn’t accept it in public.
He was married for eighteen years and had two children. He had survived one kitchen renovation, and one 4-day wedding in his wife’s family.
He had once told his wife, “Calm down,” and lived to tell the story.
And finally, the group admin typed: “Deepak will have to do this for us.”
Another wrote, “Future generations of husbands will remember you.”
One older man sent .
So it was final…Deepak was to be my assassin.
The next ten minutes were spent discussing the plan, after which all the men cleared the chat history in the group.
Here is the plan that was agreed upon – Deepak would meet me and speak on behalf of men everywhere. He would tell me that I had gone too far, and my articles had given women unnecessary confidence. He would ask me to stop exposing typical male behaviour. And if I refused, he would kill me.
Continue reading part 2: How I tamed an assassin who came to kill me and made him a domesticated husband