Bewilderment and Tears

“Frequent or seldom flood in eyes –Men at cry”, read title of an article I wrote in class ninth in the diary I maintained. What inspired me was the article I read  in Times life, Sunday supplement of Times of India in those summer vacations. That article forced me to think on why men are trained not to cry. I talked to my male colleagues and male relatives to know how they respond to crying. "Yes there are times when we feel broken, then we get over it, we don’t express it too often ", this what majority of them said.

A year back I saw a video ‘boys don’t cry’. The video showed how society conditions men not to cry and when men become stoic we complain men do not pay heed to their emotional needs or people around them. Men will men, what we end being saying. First society traps a human being within his /her identity. We make them close individuals who are made to behave or not to behave in a certain way.

I have seen a lot of women crying. I cry a lot too, most of the times I might not be sure of reason, but crying is very much an uncontrolled exercise for me. However glimpse of male tears bewilders me as most of the time a man’s tender side remains hidden. Because society asks them to be a man and being man in society is synonymous with being tough and macho. This is how patriarchy has victimized men as well.

These series of thoughts resurfaced in my mind on our farewell day. It was late in night; some of us were still sitting in the campus-talking to each other about each other. Suddenly Hari broke and seeing Hari, I who decided would not cry on my farewell day started weeping too. Hari said these words “These two years were the most terrific years of my life. I always considered myself to be a failure. My life just changed after I met you guys.” His words were drenched with sweet sour tears.

Only when we decided to leave, Sufian while making confessions broke too, Sufian is one person who never had  any cold war or a fight with anyone in the class .He was always ready to help people. He said he doesn’t share his problems with anyone, not even with parents. And it was for the first time in life he had confessed these things. I cuddled both of them to death.

In India suicide rates among men are higher, I don’t know about what studies say but the common sense tells when people are forced to remain strong and stoic, somehow they become to indifferent to their inner most needs. Also it makes them little less sensitive to others and it gets easy to laugh at powerless; it gets easy to play with emotions of people.

Last week I was at IIMC for a workshop with Karnataka State Information Officers, one of the participants made comics titled ‘boys don’t cry’. If I were to summarize the story, this is how the story goes

“A boy gets bullied in the classroom and he returns home crying .His father instructs him that boys don’t cry and he was asked to behave like a man. Words of his father had done more harm to him than good, since then he started suppressing his emotions. He becomes quite and starts to ill treating his younger sister. When father said him 'why you beat your sister?'.
‘Daddy’, said the boy ‘you only told me boys don’t cry. It made me, believe girls are meant to cry and one can play or hurt them as they won’t complain. When I was hurt you did not acknowledge my tears’”.