The enigma

Some of us complain that we live in a boring age: where are the centuars and medusas; where are the Gods who used to walk amongst us, where are the weird and dangerous places which by their existence alone intrigue the curiosity and spawn deeds of bravery and legends? I mean, all we have are the lame Loch Ness Monster who never ate anyone, and the Bermuda Triangle which is in danger of fading into anonymity. Give us a break!

Nowadays everything is claimed to be explicable under the banner of Science; the holy light of Science promises to banish all the monsters under the bed, slaying the evil dragons by sheer reason alone. While this pompous claim seems much resented by the romantics, at the same time, reflection on reason itself will show that it is not really possible, despite its recent success.

However, science aside, perhaps not every myth and legend could really ever be rooted out, or indeed wished to be so. For despite the intervening eons since Adam and Eve, there still remains the greatest enigma of all time, the unfathomable knowledge -- the siren-like woman.

No one ever knows what a woman is thinking, can be thinking, or would be thinking; not another woman, and definitely not a man, maybe not even the woman herself. Trying to guess what a woman is thinking is not so much like trying to guage what direction she might jump while she jumped in an entirely different direction; trying to do so is more like trying to guage what direction she might jump when she suddenly turned into a flock of penguins and fly away.

If there is a vote on the "Greatest Mysteries of the 21st century", I would heartily vote woman to be the first, in addition to the "Greatest Mysteries of all time" and the "The Number one Mysteries probably solvable nowhere in the Future". It is said that even male porcupines dont understand the female porcupines.

To fully describe a woman, it would be best to mix tequila with some bailey, add a pinch of soda, a drop of volka and some raw ethanol, and some ice cubes. The resulting mixture still wouldnt help in describing woman, but drinking it may make the task seems easier.

And to complicate matters, women dont want to be understood, or fully described. There is nothing to irk a woman more than to be told that you understand her fully, or want to understand her someday. Being understood fully can be stifling: every move you make, every breath you take is predictable; every reason you have for doing anything can be told to you from another mouth as if its yours.

While this may be stifling even for men, woman however makes the quality of unknowable into an art, ingraining in us the feeling that the world may change, gravity may go away, but women will always be unfathomable.