Letters: Men and other retards

“The unfairer sex”(July 10) by Mitali Saran makes for delightful reading. I couldn’t figure out whether it is indicative of the author’s deep insight into the male psyche, or her frustration in her relationships with men (she does say that some of her best friends are men) or just plain, simple fun. Hence, I don’t know whether to be flattered, hurt or merely amused. I choose the last.

Saran’s protestations against gender bias are really heart-warming. Her frankness is utterly disarming and her admission about the countless hours she spent as a little girl on her wooden toy loom “weaving the most horrible little bits of misshapen cloth” reveals how creative and precociously talented she was at that tender age. The fact that she has spent significant time and effort on writing about the “really, really retarded” members of the human species shows her praiseworthy selflessness. I hope that she will, in future, write equally entertaining and informative pieces about other retarded species such as slugs, newts, single-cell organisms, etc.

Nripjit Singh Chawla, New Delhi