MASCULINE HUMILIATION

 

This is an anecdote from the newspaper yesterday.

The writer met a hotel owner in Rajasthan whose daily routine included a personal battle against gravity to keep his moustache pointed upwards.

While showing the writer his car, the hotel owner took offence at a fairly simple question, "Why did he not drive an automatic?"

His reply was, "If I drive an automatic, then I won't be driving it. It will be driving me."

The writer continues, "Initially I couldn't understand what he meant. But then I realised his local philosophy. The car had to remain under his control. Obedient much  like the ideal wife in his imagination."

"A machine changing gears on its own was a form of masculine humiliation."

Anurag Minus Verma
The Times of India
20 September 2026