The lopsided waltz

Modern marriage masks old imbalances, where women adjust endlessly, and men still call the shots.

- RENÉE RANCHAN

Times have changed dramatically (this with manic repetition whacked into your head) way back since the fag-end of the late 20th Century, and thus this everyday matter is, how would you phrase it, "cobwebby history", so why mull over a reality which has long gone to a cavernous grave, you are admonished?! However, can one dream of striking an equilibrium when the imbalance is so acute, when there is not the slimmest, thinnest chance of standing on a level bridge, when, one of the two, comes with a kind of apology?! Truth, no matter what, one is repeatedly reminded, cannot be glossed over, or a honeyed version of how things are, can definitely not be served up like instant soup...the inequity is like a deep crevice that can't, with the single sweep of the broom, be swept under a carpet, already grown lumpy with so many other matters to be shooed away or perhaps, concealed is the better word...before I go rambling on without telling you what in heaven's I am referring to must, at this very second brake in my shoes, even if that means me scraping the soles of the brand new footwear I happened to have, with smug satisfaction, slipped into early in the day, for a meeting to be held past 6ish and yes, around the same hour when this pen thinks it's a good time to hang up its boots! The persistent, all-pervasive inequity, imbalance between husband and wife, the scale, usually speaking, tilting in favour of the man. It doesn't matter that the woman might be as qualified as her "counterpart", might be bringing home not only the bread & butter but the jam as well, besides of course, running the house like a tight ship, with all hands on deck (her hands comprising of "all hands"!) and that it's only because of her that the home, mind you, not house,