Men and Manners

Keen observation over several years has taught me one thing about men - machoness or some (distorted) perception of it is inherent in them. And this comes out in several social circumstances. For example, when you're introducing one man to another - let us assume, for the sake of equal justifiable machoness on both sides that both of them are, and have always been, civilians, and are of similar height and build, complete with/without the paunch of the Indian Male variety. There's always a stiffening of the shoulders, a slight pursing of the lips (like you would do when you were acknowledging the winner of a quiz you lost on the tie-breaker), an almost imperceptible tucking in of the stomach, which immediately requires them to pull up their trousers just a bit around the belt, and then a stiff, jerky, supposedly 'firm' handshake. Then, if you've heard their voices before, you'll notice a surprising deepening of the pitch on both as they go, "how're you doing, man?" or, in the case of a more formal situation, "hello, how are you?", or, in the most obnoxious case, "Pleasure".

You now have a choice. You could either gag and embarrass the two of them, or you could excuse yourself and observe as they attempt to make conversation. The first question will be, "so where do you work?" and then this is followed by careful specifications, which clearly avoid designations. For instance, let's say a guy is a copywriter in an ad agency, you'll hear, "I work with *name of the agency*." The other guy goes, "what do you do there?" and the answer will be, "oh, I take care of the copy and other random things. You know how it is." And, of course, this will be followed by a quick nod, an exchange of smiles and shakes of the head. Yes, we know how it is.

Then, the stockmarket. Great if some company's making an IPO. They will discuss it for some time. This is when you need to butt in there. When they're running out of conversation, or out of knowledge, one of them will look at you and go, "look at her staring; she doesn't understand anything!", followed by the other one saying, "yeah, man, women and the stockmarket!" at which there will be a deep, throaty man-to-man laugh. This is when you long to say something like, "Have you seen *the company's IPO*? I'm pretty sure they're going to get right into the Sensex, and not just the Nifty." But then you know that there will be a slight movement by one of the two men so that they're aligned against you, and then they'll ask you, with a cynical smile (the same way they do when you say you follow Formula 1, and they ask, "so who's your favourite?" and if it happened to be Schumacher, they'd shake their heads and go, "yeah, everyone knows him only!" - like you're actually supposed to say "Robert Doornbos" just to prove you follow F1), "haha, what do you know about the Nifty? What's the difference between the Nifty and the Sensex?" So, the more fun option is to watch, or even better, to ask questions. "What should the IPO be for them to get into the Nifty?" or even better, "what is the Nifty?" Chances are that one of them will think it's the top 30 companies and another will think it's the top 50. Then there will be a bit of an awkwardness, because now it's time for the man-to-man competition. This will be followed by, "oops, sorry, top 30...no, no, that's the Sensex, the top 50 is Nifty". "No, you're mistaken; the top 50 is the Sensex." "No, that's the Nifty; the Sensex is the top 30". And you'll be cawing, "Nifty's the top 50, and the Sensex is the top 30" at the top of your voice, but hey, this is man-to-man and therefore you're invisible. Even if you explain why the Sensex is 14,000 and the Nifty's just over 4000.