Marriage is a wonderful thing. Everyone ought to get married unless they have a really good reason not to, like becoming the Pope or if they are in a coma. I am married and you won’t hear me complaining. Einstein was twice as smart as any of us will ever be. And, he married twice.

Even so, what exactly prompts people to get married has remained a deep, dark mystery much along the lines of why women feel the need to own one hundred seventy pairs of foot wear. Research on this topic can fill a room the size of the telephone exchange in Dayanadhi Maran’s house. Of the reasons hypothesized about the willingness of men to tie the knot, the most realistic one seems to be that they have exhausted all conversation topics, and are forced to resort to marriage proposals to avoid awkward silences which led to the ancient jungle saying “Lulls in conversation with women are dangerous”. Women seem to get the urge to merge for all sorts of silly reasons like being in love, but the most plausible one could be that they have managed to locate that one specimen in the male population who is not a complete jerk.

It boggles the mind when you think of how marriage even began to be accepted as a concept, and how men were convinced to play along. It is widely suspected that a man’s tendency to avoid reading anything resembling a manual or asking for directions may have direct bearing on this situation. Imagine a man opening the marriage manual to find “Warning: Do not use this under the influence of alcohol to obtain free food” or “Step 3: Next, you will now engage in the process of getting married in a ceremony that will last longer than the second world war”, or “Step 27: Now open the diaper and, without inhaling any surrounding air, carefully wipe the rear end of the baby”” or “Step 28: Repeat Step 27 fourteen more times a day for the next two years”. There is no record in history of any man ever having read the manual. If there were to be such a man in the future, it’s likely that he would disapparate from the altar faster than an Indian batsman from the crease on an overcast day at Lords.

Funnily enough, for all their cooperation and willingness to get hitched, men have been held, through the ages, solely accountable for marital woes and much maligned as the primary reason for a general state of dissatisfaction among the female population at large. Research tells us that women spend one hundred and forty four hours a week, on average, either in contemplation or in discussion of the faults of men. Truth be told, men are not really at fault for anything. In fact, we have a rock solid alibi, summarized in two simple sentences.

1. Everything is controlled by our genes
2. Our genes do not care about us. They are selfish and care only about themselves

Millions of years back, a few molecules decided to join together to form amino acids, and later evolved into DNA. Not coincidentally, around the same time women began complaining about men’s attitudes. Until DNA came along, men spent most of their time snoozing blissfully to the soothing sounds of test cricket commentary. It’s not entirely clear as to how men and women decided to get together to start this thing called the human race – whether it was through divine creation or Darwinian evolution. But one thing is clear – that LSD and liberal amounts of other mind altering substances were definitely involved.

In spite of the DNA, millions and millions of men overcome their genetic predisposition, marry, stay married, raise kids, attend piano recitals, visit furniture stores, loiter aimlessly around department store changing rooms and public urinals, and live happily with their wives without nary a sideways glance at, to pick a completely random example, Angelina Jolie.

To get to the bottom of why women have problems with men, we conducted a survey of men’s faults. In that survey, the most common conversation went as follows:

Q: What do you think about men?

A: When will men understand that women think that they are incredibly idiotic and insensitive, and what will they do about it?

Readers will note that the tone of the response is distinctly unfavorable. They didn’t respond with “Men are highly rational and predictable” or “What can women learn from men about getting through life without potted plants?”. Instead, the surveyed women chose to take a negative stance.

It is our sincere intent at Laughing Gas to correct such erroneous perceptions about men, and we fully expect to be unsuccessful in this regard. So, we’ve prepared a short Q&A that we hope will (however inadequately) address the common complaints against men.

Q: Why are men so insensitive? Why is working on your laptop or fiddling with your cell phone is always more important than what I have to say? Why do dads have to be the cool heroes to kids and moms the stone hearted villains? Why is that I always have to do all the cleaning up around here? Why can’t we have a conversation about my feelings? Blah blah blah… Why is it that you never pay attention while I’m talking? Are you even listening?

A: What?

Q: Why do men have a problem listening when we talk?

We do not have a problem listening. In fact, we are trained to listen carefully for any signs of imminent danger. After a short intense scan of auditory signals in the vicinity, we stop listening if there is no problem detected. According to research, the average woman has a minimum of 42 feelings per minute while a man experiences feelings more at the rate of 3 per annum in the best case. So, when a woman tries to communicate feelings to her man, it always leads to confusion in the man’s brain, which usually has just one feeling at that time “Man, the game is about to start”. Strategies have been developed by men for such situations which involve engaging in hugs and mute conciliatory gestures while maintaining direct line of sight to the TV. Long story short, men have no idea what to do about feelings. They are doers. They are problem solvers. When confronted with an ambiguous situation without a clearly identified problem, their immediate instinct is to suspend all signs of life, hunker down and wait for the storm to blow over, and carefully monitor the conversation for key words such as ‘lawyer’, ‘gun’ or ‘kitchen knife’.

Q: Doesn’t it matter to you that someone important to you has something important to say about how they feel? Don’t you care about our feelings?

A: What?

Q: Why do men have a problem reading manuals?

A: That’s because manuals are written for idiots by idiots and contain stupid warnings like “Don’t use your high definition LCD TV as a floatation device”.

Q: Why do men refuse to ask directions?

A:  Men are explorers by nature, and operate under the assumption that there is always one undiscovered route to the neighborhood mall. If it weren’t for men’s thirst for adventure, the Spaniards wouldn’t have discovered South America and the Incas wouldn’t have been wiped out by small pox. There wouldn’t be globalization and five rupee bottles of chota Pepsi. Also, in ancient times when men had to protect their tribes, if man A asked man B for directions, it was naturally assumed by man B that man A was a weaker type who read manuals. This led to man B assembling armies and pillaging man A’s villages and taking away his women.

Q: Are you suggesting that men’s flaws are in fact virtues? Are you implying that men are the sole reason why the human race has not yet become extinct?

A: Don’t forget the five rupee chota Pepsi bottles.

Q: How could we have been so blind? We are really sorry that we’ve been inconsiderate and have hurt your feelings over millions of years. How can we even begin to comprehend the enormity of our mistakes, and correct the errors of our ways? Your hearts must be wounded, and your souls scarred by the pain….blah blah blah..

A:  What?

Also read Till Death Do Us Part from the Jaundiced Eye collection