On some days, I look in the mirror and I think, If you're in search of the perfect woman, you twit, what have you done to become the perfect man?

She must measure up to his exacting standards and be a saturnine mixture of suavity, wit and godliness, with an ability to project fire and quirkiness, sensuousness and innocence. Jerry Pinto reflects on his fantasy dream mate

My perfect woman must reckon with the fact that I am not a perfect man. I admit this myself but as a common or garden male, I reserve the right to dream and to envisage a composite woman who could launch a thousand ships while writing a novel in canzones.

There are ten things my perfect woman must have:

• A left arm
• A right arm
• A left leg
• A right leg
• A torso
• A head
• A right eye
• A left eye (but not at the left luggage counter)
• Hair that cannot be counted
• The tenth requirement is that she must be alive

That's on bad days. On good days, I look at myself and I see a cross between Dilip Kumar and Isaac Newton. Those are the days on which I set up slightly more exacting standards. My perfect dream goddess, my fantasy partner for a beach idyll somewhere in the lonely islands of the Pacific Ocean, the woman who would measure up to the saturnine mixture of suavity, wit, godliness and machismo that I see reflected in the mirror would need to be a zonker.

She would need the following qualities:

• Madhubala's combination of sensuousness and innocence.
• Rekha's ability to project a mixture of fire and quirkiness.
• Nutan's genetic make-up because bones like those come once in a while.
• Leela Naidu's ability to be beautiful, stunningly beautiful and unaware of it.
• Dolly Parton's gift of making you think she's laughing at the world.
• Kamala Das' agility in making love with words, in being vulnerable and cynical and wily, all at once.
• Arundhati Roy's ability to communicate passion and reinvent herself.
• Waheeda Rehman's grace and the precision of her face in repose.
• Barbara Streisand's ego, for how else would she cope with mine?

On days that fall in the exact middle, I look in the mirror and I think, If you're in search of the perfect woman, you twit, what have you done to become the perfect man?

That's when I list my good qualities:

• I can see my toes if I suck my tummy in.
• I can say the entire Homacol Liquid Toilet Soap commercial in voices (yes, in voices) from AIR circa 1978.
• I have 28 of my own teeth, okay 26 but teeth that have undergone a root canal count.
• I am kind to small, furry animals and to children, as long as the children are not incontinent brats or furry animals. Okay, scratch children.
• I am always the first person to know that I have body odour.
• I change my clothes every day.
• I know enough not to sign anything when I am drunk.
• I know red wine from white wine and I also know that red goes with meat and white goes with fish or is it the other way around? I know enough not to talk too much to wine waiters.
• I have a reasonably good digestion.
• I am alive.

But on most other days, I know enough to know that were I ever to reveal that there was someone in my head, other than the someone I am seeing or with, I would be foolish in the extreme to reveal her.

Just in case you were thinking of applying, here are the ten things that might disqualify you:

• Death.
• A cannibalistic tendency.
• Any desire to watch television serials in which the camera revolves to reveal a mother-in-law spying on her daughter-in-law because the son-in-law died and left a huge estate to the uncle of the daughter-in-law who is in cahoots with the second son's third cousin.
• Any tendency to say 'problematise' in ordinary conversation. As if things are not problematic enough without someone going out to problematise them.
• Any desire to make a home snuff movie.
• Any association with the families of Osama Bin Laden, George Bush or Tony Blair, however distant.
• Any desire to keep or nurture alligators, fire ants or iguanas.
• Anyone who says, "Have you read all those books?"
• And anyone who follows up that question with, "Then why do you need to keep them?"
• Anyone in whom an obsessive, bare-chested actor, Who Shall Not Be Named, is interested, is likely to be interested or was interested.

I am an easygoing guy, as you can see. If you are out there and would like to write in, please send:

• Passport.
• Proof of residence in India.
• Proof of sufficient income.
• Fingerprints.
• Two photographs showing your ears.
• Bona fides from employers, parish priest, society elders.

If you can do it for the American visa, why not for me?

[ Jerry Pinto is a poet. His first book of poems, Asylum and Other Poems, was published last year. By day, he is executive editor of Man's World. By night, he and his lungless salamander hold séances by moonlight.]