The 3am buddy

If you are a wife, there is no forgetting your strife. The Heathcliff husband is brooding because you burnt his eggs. Harry Potters are trophy hubbies, always out on exciting adventures while you wash the dishes. And when he is back, all wondrous at his own heroic stunts, you put away his cape carefully in the cupboard.

The Garfield husband never leaves the house, even if you set it on fire.  

Where there is a wife, there is a husband and where there is a husband, there is a wife with a bag full of the bare necessities.

First off, you need a compartmentalised bag you can pick anything out of in a jiffy unless you are with a man who goes for ditsy. In goes the Bronte book you can wave around in public to look cerebral. And the big black sari, which is the desi equivalent of the little black dress. Suits every body type, fat or not.

Put into your pocket a gal pal who thinks you are God. She joyously picks up your kids from school while you are at a spa or runs the more boring of your errands. Look at it this way, if she isn’t doing it for you, she’d be doing it for someone.

Next on the list is the mad lad. Every woman needs this, a boy friend who is not a boyfriend. Sisterhood is fine but everything sounds better in a baritone.

Here is the man you can be you with, with gender perspective thrown in. If he is gay, well and good. If not, you have to use great cunning to scuttle every marriage prospect that comes his way. Not that you are against marriage in principle — you got married, didn’t you? — but his marriage will turn this friendship equal. He will have gripes too! Again, an act of kindness. He may find a woman who is babysitter, breadwinner, nurse and nympho, but can she cook like his mother?

He knows how widowed you felt when Heath Ledger died. He knows you feel this way when any handsome dude cops it in Hollywood. Who will tell you the truth, no strings attached. Who will pick up the phone at 3am to hear you whine. Who will join you in an off-key rendering of a song he has never heard. Who will order seafood for himself because you are ‘not hungry’ and then say not a single word when you blithely eat off his plate. A date, yet not a date. Socially and morally so above board even better halves are happy you have them on the side.

As I control my backslapping ways — my BFF is a slender man and I don’t want to dislocate his vertebrae — I appreciate everything that bit better. A good male pal for any woman is a must-have. If there is a man who can make you laugh torridly, supplies TLC and sings as badly as you do, quick, scoop him into your bag. He is that bare necessity.