I learnt a new word today to describe myself. It’s “misandrist”. It is the rarely used feminine equivalent of “misogynist”, which means “woman-hater”.

Now I could simply call myself a “man-hater”, but that sounds so crude, bald, nasty, brutish and short, that it sounds exactly like a wife-beater. So I looked for a word of Latin origin and am hiding behind it for the time being.

But I can’t escape my fate. Hate mail is pouring into my mailbox from men from every corner of the country, hurling the dreaded word at me. One of the men has threatened to sue me.

The reason: in my last column, I wondered why men are so scared by the Domestic Violence Act. I said that it is likely that the Act, though most welcome and well-intentioned, may not translate into women reporting the violence against them in far greater number.

“What are men scared of?” I had demanded loftily in the headline — in case you want to quote me, because I am famous now after so much mail and can barely keep the sound bytes down.

The men were so angry. They seemed to have leapt at me straight out of the accompanying cartoon. I think it was the word “scared”. They charged me with two things. They said I was one-sided, stupid and biased and was deliberately blind to the suffering of men at the hands of women.

They added that I was criminal in my tendency to avoid the issue of potential misuse of the Act by unscrupulous women just waiting to do unsuspecting men and their families in by lodging false charges, which would be assumed to be the truth by the judiciary under this Act, as they were under the Dowry Act.

I love the men in my life — and I will immediately distance myself from the kind of women that the men warn me of. I agree absolutely there are “bad” women, terrible women, like there are terrible men. But I just want to say that the enormity of violence against women, and the many subtle, complex ways it happens and the ways in which women accept it make me wonder again how many more women will drag men to court armed with this Act.

And in the comparison between violence against men and violence against women, women win hands down. What is the ratio? 1:4,000? 1:2,000? 1:1,000? How many men in this country have been burnt by their wives or in-laws? And if any man can point out an Act that has not been misused, let him cast the first stone.

But what really made me scared — and perplexed — was the way the mails kept coming, jamming the mailbox, hurling abuse after abuse. I will present some excerpts. The authors reserve all rights to the spelling, syntax and meaning. (DV stands for domestic violence.)

Writes Kush Rudra (swa_rup@yahoo.co.uk):

“This is not a LAW at all, this is a AK 47 with out licence, when it will fire not only men, including women and child, whoever will come will be killed. First learn the bais of any LAW, then write. If you do not understand what is law, that does not consider that all will be fooled by your anti male articles.”

I am learning, I am learning.

Says Gocool, (drmura@hotmail.com):

“We are not talking bad about the genuine use of this (Act), but trying to shed light and the ample opportunities of misuse (have u ever read DV domestic violence Act, my dear Smiling Budda?)”

Who is the “Smiling Budda”? Me? Why?

Says Saurabh Ojha (saurabhko@yahoo.com):

“You do not need to worry about the skewed sex ratio or domestic violence. Thanks to DV act which in the very short time will wake and shake up the society either positively or negatively. In both the cases Feminists are the winners. But its a good sign for young males who either won’t marry or marry to Russian Girl’s. They are far better than the current lot Indian girls. According to them, Indian Husband’s are the BEST.”

How do the Russian women know so much?

Says Swarup Sarkar (swarup1973@gmail.com):

“Story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia (the UK-based woman who killed her husband after 10 years of inhuman torture and was acquitted) is just an Example. She like thousands of other Indian women in India and around the world is a Hard Core Criminal, who justify her crime and got scot free. But what makes Kiranjit stand-apart is that she found the Loope Whole deep within, which made her finally put an end to the Story and not give any socpe to her husabnd to say the truth.”

Sure, I want to find the ‘Loope Wholes’ too — they sound like just the thing a woman should be equipped with.

But two letters really hammered the point in. “She needs full dose…,” says Manish Gupta (m_kiit@yahoo.com), the three dots ominous.

Says Swarup (swa_rup@yahoo. co.uk): “Need some dose this feminist bastered — Terrosit Jurnalist.”

At this point, the mailbox collapsed. But I think I know what violence is, especially the sort “scared” men are capable of. Next week, I will talk jharoo ponchha.

chandrima@abpmail.com