Mard ko dard nahin hota…

What swag! Amit uncle said what many feel… woh bhi style mein! A real man is he who doesn’t feel hurt, and he who feels hurt isn’t a real man. All’s well in the land of machismo. Prohibit elementary human feelings for an entire gender AND have them celebrate that disallowance too! God forbid if he disappoints, we can gift him the haathon-mein-choodiyan that we have stored only for such momentous occasions.

Raising ‘real’ men as Chief Guests in their own homes & a sense of superiority in their man-status is instilled in us from a very early age. Big little things all around us while growing up, confirming that being a man is a feather in one’s crown instead of the result of a random accident, when X met Y.

Elementary, my dear Watson!

Add to it, these symbols of manliness. Whether it’s blue being a man’s colour or a gun being his favourite toy, or the simple demand to toughen up and ‘Be like a Man.’ The choice is out of their hands even before the ecstatic family begins to celebrate with “Mubarak ho, ladka hua hai!”

It takes a world of normalised effort to create this unique being- The Man. Rajkumars to their mothers, Parmeshwars to their wives, Heads to their families, Protectors of their sisters and Providers to their children, we have placed crowns of thorns on their manly heads confining them for life. Behind every manly man is a very complicit ecosystem.