Cloud 9 Minus One

Last week I met a friend in whose office I was going to read the second chapter of CNMO to a few of his colleagues. He was intrigued when I told him that I would prefer an all-female audience. He wanted some of his male colleagues to also attend. Why should they miss out on the fun, he asked. No reason at all, I replied, except that this book is about relationships as seen through the eyes of two women, two friends different in all respects except the strength that they carry around with them like a second pair of jeans, comfortable and timeless. And men, we all know, do not understand relationships except in binary terms like love-hate, friend-foe, useful-useless, success-failure. I’m not sure if this explanation didn’t make me a foe instantly in my friend’s eyes.
This friend was the same man who admired my ‘strength’ in a severe crisis. He admired my ability to see blood without flinching, to sit in a roller-coaster without going into hysterics, to enter a stranger’s dark house without hyperventilating. I pointed out to him that I could do some things that he absolutely couldn’t. I could cry at a sad scene in a movie, I could comfort my teenage son’s blues away with a gentle brush on his head, I could giggle at trivial jokes that didn’t involve sex, I could persuade my mother-in-law into visiting a dentist in spite of her phobia of allopathy.
My fictional best friend, Priya, understands this only too well. She knows that while it takes two to make a baby, it takes just one to raise it. My other friend, Ruts, knows what it takes to rebuff a particularly ardent lover without making him feel like pond scum. These and other traits that these two women have makes them the kind of individuals that one respects for themselves.