The Complex She

She clinks her spoon nervously against the frothy coffee mug. I see her lost deep in thought. She nonchalantly smiles at the man seated before her. Her boyfriend, maybe, I think. Her nonchalance is intimidating. I notice her nervous fingers fumbling with the paper napkin. Probably, she is in a deep confusion.

I see her every day, women who belong to the era of technology. She is well read. She can speak at length about history, philosophy, geography, art, literature, politics, and business. Men find her interesting. Not because she is the dumb bimbo who would say yes to their small talk but because she confronts them, she challenges their ideas, she has an opinion. Men call her intelligently complex. The person seated next to her tells her that she thinks something else while she speaks something to him. She multiprocesses, she does not walk the talk, rather walk the thought. Men are utterly linear beings. Women are all circuitous. She disagrees. She tells him it’s not the way it is supposed to be. Women are just as simple. Just as no two men are same, no two women can be same. He disagrees. He is a learned man. He can give you a treatise on virtually anything on this planet. She can challenge him, but probably not convince. But he relents, unwillingly. He calls her intelligently simple. She knows it’s a just you-are-my-friend-hence –different kind of yes.

She thinks of the man she loves. How would he react to this? He would have aligned his view with the guy next to her. She is complex. Her paradigm is non-coinciding. She does not understand herself, nor does anyone do. The man she loves, or probably thinks she loves, would have said you are mysterious. You store things to fight upon at later times. She knows that she does not. She hates to fight. She prefers being silent, probably she can breathe when she is silent. She respects him for what he is. She wants the same in return. But of course, he is a man who respects women, opens the door for them, talks softly when they are around, serves them at dinner table, laughs at their jokes and does not mind wasting football time on shopping with her. But he would still prefer some other woman’s company to her. Because she is complex and she has unrelenting opinions and she would prefer reading to clubbing and she would write not talk and she would not call him every split second to tell him about topics of discussion while she is with her male friends. She is definitely complex. I see her face. She does not need any man to prove herself. She knows coffee, books, travel and a salary would last her longer than her boyfriends. She is free but she knows she isn’t.

The sun begins to set. She takes the final sip of the coffee. She smiles one of those it-was-nice-meeting-you smiles. I know she is still thinking of the man she loves. The sun sets. I see her confident gait, she is still nervous.