Male Majority

Lady to his left, lady to his right...

We were in the middle of our exercises when Shekhawat suddenly discovered that male members had outnumbered the females 11 to 4. “Today, the men’s banner shall fly high,” he declared.
“Don’t jump the gun,” Jagmohan Papneja cautioned. “The late-comers are yet to come.”
Before long Bihari Milwani walked in, followed by Khatoon Baig. And Kiran Makharia and Sitaram Hivarkar…
By then, Shekhawat had become fairly certain that we would end up with more men than women in the circle. In a predominantly female Club, such things do matter – at least to Shekhawat. Rarely, if ever, have men surpassed the women in numbers.
And then Ramila Mistry came in. Shekhawat turned ecstatic. “Kokila-ben kem chho!” he greeted her, completely forgetting his numbers tally.

Jagmohan Papneja gets his BP checked

“Kokila-ben namaste,” he repeated, both palms joined.
Ramila struck a Sri Krishna pose and acknowledged Shekhawat with a high pitched “namaste”.
Dilip Babani took courage and with head bowed, said politely, “Namaste Kokila-ben”, only to be rebuffed: “Kokila-ben neyyyyyi, Ramila-ben!”
So that established the power equation for the moment and Shekhawat took it one level higher. He invited Ramila to stand beside him for the exercises – a space usually reserved for Razia Khan. No one else can ever dare to step into that space. But Ramila was hardly impressed and reminded Shekhawat that she cannot be a substitute for Razia. “In that case, I will stand beside you,” he said, planting himself audaciously next to her.
And so, for the first time in 11 years, it so happened that Shekhawat did his exercises flanked by ‘ladies log’ – more significantly, Ramila Mistry to his left and Ruksana Khan to his right. His day was made.
The rest of us drew some comfort from getting our blood pressure and sugar levels checked at the Garden gate. A new stall had come up, run by a certain Chakradutt Ayurveda that offered bottled sugar-free concoctions of aloe vera, blackberry, bitter gourd, sacred basil, etc. Most people got their BP checked and walked away.