When Ronnie reported for his first semester at university, he was excited to find Maria there, and their friendship just picked up from where they had stopped at high school. What is more, they were doing the same course.

 

Sat together during lectures. Did course work and assignments together. Visited each other’s families together. Did everything together, except what they were not supposed to do, were those things lovers do when they marry... Until they were done with university, and joined the world of adults.

 

Then one day Ronnie walks into Maria’s house, a model of a beauty daintily hanging onto his arm. We all know that little chip no man has ever been able to land his eye, let alone hand on, which is inbuilt in every woman‘s system, announcing to them the most inconspicuous things, even the trivial ones. Well, this was far from trivial for, among other things Ronnie said to his long-term friend Maria that day, was, with smile and all, that “Maria, meet my love Joey!”

 

Give it a thought, friends. Give it a thought, from your own point of view, whether as a woman or a man. Then consider Maria’s reaction: Maria has never spoken to Ronnie again.

 

No, I don’t mean that they’ve never discussed Joey again; I mean that be it education, social or physical infrastructure or Millie Vanilli or Spanner Banner’s music, or the origin of neuro-surgery... Ronnie and Maria last talked when Joey entered Maria’s house that doomed evening, hanging onto the hand Ronnie now knows Maria had always looked at, and seen herself hanging on; his fingers clasping hers... fingers she had, for many innocent but fanciful years, seen and picked out a specific one, on which she would probably have pushed a ring, unmindful of, indeed grateful for the many camera flashes and the crowd’s ululations... And now all that was gone.

 

Okay, get out of the reverie ladies, and let’s talk this over like the adults we ought to be. Tell me ladies, and here I allow you to look up my contacts and talk to me, what offence did Ronnie commit? I ask; you answer: 

 

Had he proposed to Maria? Had he even as much as intimated to her that he would be hers for life? Was he wrong to walk in the light, into her house, his new love on his hand, to let his only friend who would celebrate his achievement with him know that he was off the shelf? 

 

And the age-old big one: Is it illegal or sinful for a girl to come clean about her feelings? Why must a woman begin pouting and scraping layers of green envy off her skin, over a relationship she had let turn permanently platonic, waiting for the guy’s initiative to take things to the next level and him not heading there? 

 

See, women are strange. I don’t know if there’s a guy reading this, I would ask them the next question. So you fair, liberal ladies out there, tell me, haven’t you heard your liberated sisters say that what a man can do, a woman can do seven times better? Isn’t that what they say, that what they used to wait for men to do, now they can do ably? 

 

Well, in the past, they waited for the man to propose, didn’t they? And if what men can do, women can (now) do better, isn’t it time we saw some really creative, bold and courageous propositions, unaccompanied by fumbling and twisting of shirt sleeves?

 

For, who wants to commit to a man who chews the tip of his necktie, just because he cannot get across a proposal to his girlfriend?