A Manual For Martians

In Surviving Women Jerry Pinto bravely ventures where no genie has gone before. In 16 trailblazing chapters flanked by a bare-all introduction and a female postscript, the Average Indian Man (aim) turned Confused Indian Man (cim) can now take a crash course in becoming a New Age Man (nam) - or not. Women might also learn a thing or two along the way about how men think. And readers of both gender persuasions had better be warned: if you want to benefit from Pinto's wisdom, you'd better be able to stand stiff doses of criticism, and merciless parody.

Take this kind of line: "Every Indian man is a mama's boy. No one is exempt. No one." Or: "The man she wants is inside you and she's going to make sure that he finds his way out of the hulking slagheap that you represent in your current self." Glance through the alphabetised list of words for evil women, drawn from cultures across the globe. See what Pinto has to say about men who think they're stronger than women ("You poor fool").

The central premise is simple: women are the evolved lot; men are clods; here, finally, is a much-needed instruction booklet to help them cohabit in peace. Surviving Women analyses the collective experience of many clods and offers male readers advice on how to negotiate similar kinds of bewilderment. It turns out that there is much more bewilderment involved than the average woman may realise.

Men can dip in here for directions on any kind of male-female interaction at all: asking her out, romancing her, marrying her, talking to her (shudder!), putting up with her friends and yours, surviving your mother and hers, working with female colleagues, letting go of your daughter, dealing with being dumped. In most cases, the author's finger is firmly on the pulse of the relevant emotion: "And you feel: It isn't fair...It isn't fair that she hasn't collapsed on the road like a stricken dog and hasn't come crawling back to you because she realised what a great guy you were and what she had lost, thus giving you the chance of spurning her with a cold 'I'm sorry but it's just too late.'"

Pinto hears your pain, and counters it either with sound logic or a straight-up instruction prefaced by "Trust me" - but while he is given to great lashings of stereotypification and oversimplification, he brooks no out-and-out chauvinism. As a self-styled veteran of many encounters with the fairer sex, he harbours a healthy respect for what he still doesn't know, admitting with disarming candour that he has more sympathy for his brethren than answers.

As a token gesture to this, the last chapter consists of female responses to his book, which are revealing in themselves.

Many readers will militate against Pinto's flip tone, suspecting that he often sacrifices insight on the altar of a funny line - but don't discount the value of this volume: for all its dedication to the matter of tackling women, this is entirely a book about men. And the ladies might as well read it, because as far as the men are concerned, it's probably a matter of pearls before swine.