But if you are not connected with any of the above professions, you may be forgiven for wondering whether the speaker was sure about what he was saying. For, even he is not connected with any of those professions! On the contrary, he is a retired taxman, one who served the IRS (Indian Revenue Service) for 35 years till his retirement in 2005.

And yet, such was his grasp over the subject, his self-confidence and his erudition that by the end of the talk he had his audience guffawing and literally eating of his hands.

Of course, he prefaced his talk with the popular advertising ploy of making a claim and then placing a little asterisk near it, leading the reader to the fine print, viz., “Conditions Apply”. If ever a full-fledged talk at a Rotary meeting could be classified as one to which “Conditions Apply”, then this was it.

Dr. Pillai was introduced by PP Dr. Rumi Jehangir as a person who

had post-graduate and undergraduate degrees in subjects such as physics, chemistry, psychology and economics and a doctorate as well.

He had undergone a change of heart after a near-death experience while playing tennis in 1996. He had turned to spirituality and became an avid reader and an author.

Dr. Pillai started by quoting Buddha to reinforce his own disclaimer.

“Gautama Buddha told his followers that they should not believe a single word that he says, or what anybody else says, or what they read, unless it appeals to their reason and common sense.

“I request all of you not to believe a single word of what I say unless you think that it is reasonable and according to common sense. (However), every word that I am going to utter now has got the support of science, physics, chemistry, mathematics, genetics and common sense.”

Dr. Pillai said his research had shown that women were superhuman. Most men were chauvinists, but were far inferior to women.

About 400 women on earth were releasing their eggs every second. At the same time, men were creating 200,000 billion sperms. As a result of the release of 400 eggs and such a massive quantity of sperms every second, there were a total of five births per second in the world.

The point to note was that women were extremely frugal and economical, releasing only 400 eggs for the creation of five children. Men, on the

other hand, were more liberal and created 200,000 billion sperms – most of these just went waste.

Dr. Pillai then turned to the process of fertilisation and the course adopted by eggs, sperms, genes and chromosomes.

He said in the process of fertilisation, which involved a single sperm fusing with a single egg, when both partners contributed an ‘X’ chromosome a girl child was conceived. But if the male contributed a ‘Y’ chromosome, then a boy would be on the way.

When this process started about 300 million years ago, the ‘X’ chromosome (present in both males and female) had an average of 1,500 genes; the ‘Y’ chromosome also had 1,500 genes.

But things had changed overtime. In the year 2009, ‘X’ chromosomes still had about 1,500 genes, but the ‘Y’ chromosome had only 45 active genes. In other words,the ‘Y’ chromosome had deteriorated over the last 300 million years and it was possible thatthere would be no ‘Y’ chromosome left after another five million years.

“Don’t ask me what will happen then. There will be no ‘Y’ chromosome, there will be no ‘man-making chromosome’ left in the universe.”

Returning to women’s superiority, Dr. Pillai said they had two ‘X’ chromosomes while men had one ‘X’ and one ‘Y’. In women, eggs with two ‘X’ chromosomes were created in their millions before the birth of a child. Once the girl child reached the reproductive stage at adolescence, about 20,000 to 25,000 eggs were prepared.

At the time of fertilisation, of these 25,000 eggs five or six started vibrating and then any one was taken at random and kept in place to meet a sperm.

Man, on the other hand, produced 3,000 sperms per second, or 72 million per day. In other words, at the time of fertilisation it was likely that two to three days’ “output” of sperms (roughly 250 million) would move in a small space of about one and a half centimetre to meet with an egg.

The moment one smart sperm touched the egg (which was already in place), the egg released a protein to cover itself along with the sperm. This was the actual process of fertilisation and no other sperm could touch the egg.

The process of fertilisation involved only one out of five or six eggs produced by a woman, whereas the man’s contribution was one sperm out of 250 million.

Calling this a “lavish display” on the part of man, he said that this union resulted in an almost invisible fertilised cell that was one-tenth of a millimetre in size.

A close study of the processes just before fertilisation revealed that the two ‘X’ chromosomes “checked” each other’s genetic inheritance. One of these had come from the mother and the other from the mother-in-law. These two ‘X’ chromosomes not only “checked”, they also copied, edited and corrected each other to become almost perfect (thus ensuring that very few genetic disorders would be passed on).

“This is the first point of their (women’s) empowerment, of their superiority, because their genetic diseases are very, very limited thanks to the opportunity they have had to copy, to edit and to correct the two ‘X’ chromosomes.”

No such process occurred in the case of men. Mistakes were neither corrected nor “checked”, and whether it was the ‘X’ chromosome or ‘Y’, all inherited defects of the parents passed on to the unborn, yet-to-be-conceived child.

“The poor boy is more liable to suffer a heart attack, diabetes, blood pressure, all kinds of diseases that can be inherited from a genetic deficiency.

“That is why I say that woman is born as a totally different creature, with an opportunity to compare its genetic inheritance from two sources, the father and the mother. But poor man is denied that opportunity.”

Dr. Pillai said that the single fertilised egg (one-tenth of a millimetre in size) had all genetic instructions written in sugar and phosphate in one billion words. This included information about the traits that the child would inherit, the diseases it would develop, how it would grow and so on. All this information was written in the first, fertilised cell.

Interestingly, even when that child became a full-grown adult, this basic information (the genetic imprint of the first cell) was imprinted in each one of the body’s 100 trillion cells.

Men had other problems from the embryonic stage. They had a hormone called testosterone which was both powerful and dangerous. It gave men their aggressiveness, arrogance and competitive spirit. At the same time, it also shrivelled the left portion of their brain to a slight extent, thus reducing its capacity.

Women had no such problems, thanks to the absence of testosterone. Their brains were fully developed on both sides; they had a greater capacity in their sensory organs and a better capacity of storing and retrieving information and approaching things more intellectually.

A woman’s brain when scanned and checked under MRI showed 15 to 20% greater blood flow than a man’s brain. This meant that a woman’s brain was more active and superior to a man’s brain.

Dr. Pillai claimed that there were about 100 genetic differences that showed that women were superior to men. These had been discovered over the last five years and now almost all researchers agreed that women would carry the flag of humanity after five million years. There would be no man left in the universe, thanks to the deterioration of the ‘Y’ chromosome.

However, women had one handicap – their brains were extremely active even in those parts that caused depression. Men got over their de-pression quickly, but not women because their brains were very active and they gave free reign to their imagination.

Another reason for depression in women was the spike in hormones that they underwent at the time of adolescence. The oestrogen and progesterone that appeared during adolescence devastated their lives because their levels never remained constant. They kept going up and down.

To make matters worse, there was also a little bit of testosterone during this period, which gave women some aggressiveness and sexiness.

After touching on some of the sexual proclivities of women brought on by nature, Dr. Pillai returned to his statement about hormones devastating all the life of women. He said that women had seven incarnations:

(1) The girl child, (2) the adolescent, (3) the married woman, (4) the woman bearing a child, (5) woman before menopause, (6) one after menopause and (7) woman in old age.

There were different kinds of hormonal surges in a woman’s body in all these stages. But it was only after menopause that she was comfortable, with no hormonal surges.

“They go on changing every day, they can’t understand it. Just before their periods, they have a lot of cramps, pains and so on. After that, there are a few days of calm and a few days of interest in sex; but after that the same cycle resumes. If they are not working or if they are not feeling well, don’t blame them. They are not responsible for what they do. Their body is devastated by chemicals.

“Men, on the other hand, have only one chemical, testosterone, which gives them only one idea and that is to have sex as frequently as possible and to show aggressiveness, competitiveness, to achieve something and to go up in life.

“But their (women’s) life is different. They are much more intelligent, more emotionally active and that is why every woman is a mystic… like Lord Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammed, all great, enlightened men. I have not named any woman because there is no woman mystic in the world – I say that every woman is a mystic.”

Defining a mystic, Dr. Pillai said he was one who had transcended his ego and reached the stage where he had forgotten himself completely.

All the mystics he had named had become evolved, enlightened men after meditating for years and finally uncovering the truth – that the absolute truth was beyond the self and that it was possible to see reality only after banishing all selfishness, all thoughts and emotions related to the self.

All self-related thoughts congregated in the parietal lobe just above the right ear. But once a person started meditating, a circuit was established from this portion to the front lobes and thence to the thalamus, thus creating a special circuit – which was seen during an MRI done on a group of meditating Zen Buddhists.

Meditation turned an ordinary person into a spiritually evolved person. But every woman was a spiritually evolved person because of the chemical oxytocin that was created in huge quantities at the time of giving birth. It led to the creation of affection and closeness to the child.

“A woman is so affectionate with her child because of this particular chemical. She gets a sort of chemical bath at the time of delivery and that makes her a really affectionate mother.

“After becoming a mother, she forgets about herself. For a few months she doesn’t remember herself. The self-related centre in the brain remains inactive and she thinks more about her child, her husband and others. That is why she is a mystic. She is an enlightened person by nature. Nature has given her the power of enlightenment.”

Turning to economics, Dr. Pillai said by the end of the year 49.9% of all employment would be with women in the USA. But in India women made up only 10% of the work force. India was at the 114th place on the gender parity scale, while Bangladesh was at 99, the USA at 27, the UK at 13 and Sri Lanka at 12th place.

Women were totally neglected in India and not given their due share as per their abilities. That was the reason why the country was poor – “because our real resources are being kept at home”.

Dr. Pillai referred to a variety of river fish called waterskaters in which the male lived on the back of the female in order to prevent it from mating with other males. However, the male got no opportunity to feed itself. Once it died of starvation and fell off, another male took its place. The survivor was the female.

He made a strong appeal to those in business and industry to appoint women at the head of their HR, marketing, finance and other departments. Asserting that there was a genetic reason for his request, he said women were more capable of participative leadership than men. They tried to take the team together and were not hankering after their own careers.

“When you leave this room, forget about yourself; you are a very weak person. You have to respect women, give them the opportunity to take decisions and to lead you in your life. You are a very weak person (because) you will get a heart attack, blood pressure, diabetes and so on. But if she is empowered, she will not get anything. She will take care of you and arrange a very good funeral for you!

“Please, for heaven’s sake, give them their share, their due. You should take 30 or 35% of the employment and leave 70% for them. In the USA there are now 3.5 million homes where the salary is earned by the wife and the husband is at home; in Canada 58% jobs are with women and in some European countries it has exceeded 60%.

“If we have the intelligence to give them decision-making powers, we will be able to increase our GDP annually by at least 0.5%. In the next ten years we will exceed double digits (in growth of GDP),” Dr. Pillai added.

Once the floor was thrown open for questions, Ashok Jatia bowled a googly. “If women can really make such intelligent decisions, why do they marry their husbands?”

Not one to be fazed, Dr. Pillai told him that he had answered his own question. “By marrying a fool, they don’t have to work!”

Burjor Poonawala said he believed that 49.9% of what the speaker had said was true. But after hearing his talk he had reached the conclusion that the stronger sex was really the weaker sex because of its weakness for the weaker sex.

Dr. Pillai said there was no strong sex or weak sex. There was only one sex – ‘X’.

“Everybody is born as a woman but for a small gene called SRV. Two testicles are created (by it), if they are not created then everything would be woman. There is no male at all. The default (human being) is female.

“They are the strongest and we have a weakness for them because we (men) have 400 to 500 units of testosterone in our body. When we are old it becomes 30 to 40 units. But this particular chemical is so dangerous that wherever we look, we find only sex objects. That’s because of the chemical!”

Dr. Nayna Dastur was thrilled that the speaker had recognised the fact that everybody was born female and that it was by God’s choice that those who would have been weak had had a slight alteration in their genetic material that made them men.

She added that women were far stronger, had greater tolerance and were superior to men in innumerable ways. “I am very happy that you have summarised this properly. Would you agree or not? You better agree!”

Dr. Pillai said if he had the choice he would have made Sonia Gandhi the Prime Minister. If women like Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Hillary Clinton were compared with their male counterparts, the latter would be found to be weak in leadership.

However, women had been suppressed for many millennia, told that they were good for nothing and that their place was in the home, serving the men, having children and bringing them up.

Sitaram Shah brought the house down when he said “I would like to shift the pendulum”. The point he made was that India was suffering not because of men and women not being employed equally, but because of the battle between communities, the backward communities, the forward communities and so on.

Dr. Pillai said as far as humans were concerned, there were only two divisions, men and women; all other divisions were imaginary and created by ignorant persons.

Shyam Bulchandani asked why it was said that women took decisions based on their heart and not their head.

This was the feedback that had been given for several millennia – that the left brain in women was weak and that they were not good at logic, abstraction, language and so on.

“We tell them not to do outdoor things, remain at home, if possible under purdah; opportunities are not given to them and they have been mentally suppressed. But now they have realised that those were utter lies and that they are more intelligent than men and (so) they are now exploiting their own competence.

“Just as we give reservations to communities that were suppressed for several millennia, we should give women representation in Parliament, not just 33% but 90%. In fact, I would say that they should be given 99% reservation, just 1% men will do.”

Burjor returned to ask about “the middle sex”. Dr. Pillai claimed that “the middle sex” was a genetic problem. “Every gay person has a genetic problem, a genetic origin,” he added.

The vote of thanks was proposed by Nanik Rupani.