Women and the art of persuasion.

You gotta hand it to women, when it comes to the fine art of persuasion. Got to witness a
sterling example of this the other day from my bedroom window, which overlooks a very densely populated colony.

At any given point of time, you could hear someone quarelling with someone else in this
colony with lots of onlookers to egg them on. Drunken brawls are common and so is the
use of real filthy language. Anyone living near this colony is sure to pick up real fast the
choicest abuses that have become part of the classical language called Tamil.

The main characters here are Mr.Saamy, his wife & two kids. Saamy is a house painter
by vocation & his wife works as a maid in a few homes. He must be having a real name,
but I have always heard him referred to as Saamy which I guess is due to his penchant
for visiting Swamy Ayyappan's temple in Sabarimala (Kerala).

As is his practice the year round except when he has taken a vow to go to Sabarimala,
Saamy returns from work either a little drunk or somewhat drunk or fully drunk. On
most of these drunken days, he is pretty decent & limits his antics to singing a movie
song or enquiring with the neighbours about their well-being etc. But on certain days
when he has had a little too much to drink, he can be hard to control. This was one of
those days.

Saamy stays on the upper floor of a 2 storey home. He is in no mood to climb up to his
home and instead is content to stand below and starts singing loudly. In between, he
stops to abuse someone at work and to cut the story short, is creating quite a ruckus.
His wife and kids come down and try to convince him to quiten down and come up to
their home. But, well Saamy is not convinced so easily.

His wife pleads, the kids request him and yet Saamy stands his ground. His wife almost
falls at his feet & pleads him to come up. She keeps repeating, "Enge, dayavu seydhu ulla
vaanga. Ulle vandhu pesalam inge" meaning "Please come in. We can talk it out inside the home". This continues for some 5-10 minutes. You start pitying the poor woman who has
so much respect and patience for her man, even though he has come home drunk and is
creating such a nuisance.

Finally, they somehow are able to convince him and he agrees to go up. They literally drag
him up the stairs as he is clearly unable to walk properly. They get him inside the house &
the doors shut. I am about to move away from the window when I hear the wife shouting
at him like a madwoman. She is using all the abuses that you only normally hear men use
and which also includes the Tamil word for "bastard". And to top it, she is also hitting him
left and right. It takes her around 5 minutes to give vent to all her pent up anger. Ofcourse Mr.Saamy won't remember this the next day.

I was astonished at the sudden change in that woman. Someone who was the epitome of
patience a few minutes ago had transformed into almost a witch. And to think that she was
so patiently getting him inside the home only to treat him to her anger in the privacy of
their home.

All I got to say is, "I would not like my wife to emulate her".