Maar Daalo Usay!!!

The other day I came out of yet another movie with the same thought!
What is going to follow in this post is definitely not a collection of archaic thoughts of a hypocritical moron, about vulgarity in cinema or the sorts. Perhaps it is an increasing trend, which has escaped the attention of most in reel as well as real life. Many incidences of extreme behavior on the part of men have a direct or indirect association with instigation by women. The defense minister in RDB gets shot at, at the behest of a certain Sonia and a hardened criminal attempts to reform to retain his relationship with his love interest in the movie Gangster. Both these instances, leave me wondering, whether such portrayals of strong roles played out by women in the life of men, today, are depictions of a realization that has dawned on movie makers now, or is it is the caricature of a new dimension to the changed gender equations as we see it today. I am forced to ask myself whether such a strong influence by women on men had always existed without our acquiescence or is it an emergent phenomenon, which is taking shape as a result of rapidly changing gender equations.

I have a suspicion that women had always exerted strong influences on the impressionable minds of men. However, social constructs of the past had restrained men from being able to admit it in the open. It is now, that the skeletons are emerging out of the closet and furthering the change in gender equations. Now, this suspicion of mine is not based on mere conjecture but draws heavily from evidences of women demonstrating far greater intuition and stronger minds. And more often than not, strong decisions require strength of conviction and tremendous belief in your intuitive self, which men have made conspicuous by its relative absence in themselves.

However, this leads me onto another paradox, which I find equally, if not more, puzzling. Traditionally, any incumbent regime of any nature, be it political, social or economic, has always demonstrated resistance to any kind of upheaval or threat which challenges its authority. Kings would go to war against invaders; religious puritans even today oppose change in prevalent culture or influx of foreign culture; business tycoons defend their empire against attempts to take over. However, the absence of any sign of protest or attempt to retain their position of strength as far the gender equations in society are concerned, on the part of men is extremely puzzling. Females protesting against male domination are hardly seen as out of place now. But any attempt to convince women about maintenance of status quo would not only be seen as out of place but, I believe, have to contend with a lot of condemnation as well.
This is not to say that this is my attempt to act as the harbinger of jihad against attempts to usurp the male dominion of power. I am merely expressing my surprise at the existence of such an anomaly to hitherto observed patterns. And absence of resistance by men is definately an anomaly.
Now, many might say that women are increasingly gaining a position of strength, as they are increasingly beginning to occupy domains, which traditionally had belonged to men. The role of being bread earners is no longer restricted to men and women are no longer restricted to the confines of the home. But contrast this against behavior of other animal species. Lions, for example, have always had the males protecting territory and the pride and females were always delegated the responsibility to hunt. In spite of the responsibility of arranging for food resting with the females, the males’ position of strength has remained unchallenged. Even today after centuries, the male eats the food hunted by the females, before the females. Therefore, I don’t see much of a correlation between the position of strength and the role of bread earning.

That brings us back to the same issue with which we started out. If the roles assumed by men and women are not the sole deciding criterion for assumption of power, there has to be something else to it. And that ‘it’, I believe is the stronger mind and superior intuitive powers possessed by women. Ironically for both these characteristics, women owe it to men. In a certain sense, women evolved into beings of stronger minds and intuition primarily because of the centuries of subjugation by men. Unfortunately for men, in this battle of the sexes the wherewithal possessed my woman has been ‘leaked’ by their own brethren, perpetrators of tyranny.

Still confused…phew!!!

“You lose me!!!”

Wonder what it would classify as, a proclamation or maybe almost an exclamation?
Now considering it was a proclamation after all, it is bound to have a certain element of the pitfalls of being judgmental. Come to think of it making a proclamation demands a certain degree of authority in order to be able to do so. And often it is this authority, which corrupts our ability to take an objective and unpartisan view of circumstances. So while we make our proclamation our misplaced belief about our superior position in a dialogue forces us to ignore other points of view. Well, almost. Therefore, while you decided that the person you engaged yourself in a dialogue with is not exactly worthy of persisting with, just perhaps you appropriated inadequate attention to his constraints.

Now that brings us to the case in point and maybe a detailed and verbatim description about the other side of the story. The story, which believes it hasn’t been heard enough.
It’s a story of this rather ordinary boy, who chances upon a lot of ideas, thoughts and intimate emotions of this extraordinary woman, almost a Goddess. This is a woman who excels at the art of the written word and enjoys a supreme belief in her abilities to transgress borders of the mind through her written word. Considering the abject poverty of original thought that this ordinarily mortal boy has witnessed until now in women around him, he is fascinated and yearns to learn more about the Almost a Goddess.
In his quest to unravel more, the young boy reads on and in the process somewhere his impressionable mind is captivated and challenged at the same time. And often this compounded feeling borders on deeply sensuous thought. He conjures up vivid imageries about Almost a Goddess to whom even words pay such obeisance. Now, one may find this association of thought inspired by words and sexuality somewhat remote. To the naked eye this may be true but for the eye that cares to probe deeper it isn’t. Since aeons the fire of challenge has always provoked sexual attraction. For some the challenge has taken the form of physical beauty, for some it stems from a desire for emotional support and for some like our young boy the challenge is provided by tangentially lateral thought. Thought which even he can’t comprehend completely.
A certain twist in the tale is provided by another classic complexity, which adds to the romance of this boy with these thoughts. The boy has no recollection whatsoever of any previous association with Amost a Goddess and hasn’t any clue about her physical form. This allows a free reign to his imagination, yet he is grossly unable to attribute any physical form to his imagination about her. In fact, in his obsession with those thoughts the importance of a physical form for his Amost a Goddess never even crosses his mind.

As he is caught up in this vortex of exciting thought, he secretly wishes to meet Almost a Goddess just once. But, the very thought of an actual rendezvous holds its pitfalls. So many times people disappoint by their incapability to live up to the initial promise they pose, until they meet. So many times their best, which fascinates you isn’t able to cover up for the worst, which is unveiled only upon meeting.
Somehow, by now our young boy has come to treasure his imagination about Almost a Goddess so much so that he finally decides to confess his predicament to Almost a Goddess herself. Unfortunately, in spite of all Her prowess she is unable to understand, or maybe she refuses to understand, that for the young boy her physical form is of no consequence at all. He worships the Almost a Goddess for the sacredly original thought she stands for. The magnetic thread by which he is pulled towards Her is made of the unconquerable challenge she poses to him by Her radical beliefs and thoughts. However, until now his feelings are a form of idol worship, as he hasn’t ever met her. And today, when a tryst with his Almost a Goddess beckons he is gripped with apprehension. All that he ever believed about Her was formed out of what he read of Her works, which primarily were monologues. Therefore, his fear isn’t completely misplaced about the thought of his Almost a Goddess not turning out to be as sensuous during a dialogue. All too often, a direct dialogue has denuded a lot of perfunctory perceptions formed out of monologous correspondence, as they cannot be challenged as they can be in a dialogue. Just this once the young boy wishes it doesn’t turn out to be thus.
Coming back to the whole issue of proclamations and exclamations, it could very well be possible that the pedestal onto which the Almost a Goddess was raised blinded her vision of lesser mortals below. She refused to provide the young boy with a sufficiently prolonged audience and allowed her judgment to be too hasty. Perhaps, without trying to understand what the young boy’s concept of sensuality was, she related it her physical form. Perhaps she ended up insulting the young boy’s sacred concept of sensuality by typecasting him with Her previous experience. Perhaps she never understood that she was nothing more than a radical school of thought, which incidentally belonged to the female half of the human species, for the young boy. Perhaps she never cared to understand that the challenge, which she posed, was completely abstract and therefore could have nothing to do with Her physical form. Perhaps she never understood that the boy’s apprehensions were about whether this radical school of thought would withstand the test of an intense dialogue if they met. Perhaps she just proved that proclamations are biased and judgmental, as they are made from a height without a complete understanding of ground reality.
Equally possible was the exclamatory nature of the statement, which demonstrated the eagerness of Almost a Goddess to typecast the boy as one of those who she had won over. It could just have been an eagerness to categorize him as just one of those men she felt she possessed as edge against. Perhaps it was Her easiest way to win against him by exclaiming a self-announced victory. But maybe she was just running away from the battlefield without having withstood the complete wherewithal of the boy and his ideas.

Wherever the truth lies is beyond the young boy, considering his limited cognizance. But whatever the truth, he just knows one thing for sure, if he did lose her, he must have possessed her at one time, for some time at least!!!

I Make No Allowances

There are those days under the sun when maybe, just maybe, at a certain level you do realize that you have lost. And yet admitting and verbalizing this loss at the hands of somebody, perhaps a shade better, becomes a tough ask. That is precisely when you wonder what is it that holds you from making this objective assessment of your own abilities. On the face of it, a task, which doesn’t seem to be such a Herculean task after all!!!
But almost akin to most men on the wrong side of fifty who find it hard to hold an erection and equally hard to admit it, our over-fed egos hardly permit such allowances. It would not be far from the truth if I said that, admitting that your competitor is better, is nothing short of bravado similar to that of a guy, who on the day of his marriage ends up muttering an ‘I do.’
To make matters worse, eliciting the admittance turns out to be a quantum more difficult if your tormentor incidentally happens to belong to the opposite sex. Now the case in point makes us ponder as to whether such a phenomena has anything to do with the vastly predominant social constructs we have learnt to live with. I suspect it does. More so, as our super-evolved and hyper-competitive society has increasingly taught us that our sole antidote against this venom of one-upmanship is, self-belief. However, often in our pursuit for the same, somewhere our muddled-up minds can no longer differentiate between being possessed by this false notion of self and self-belief. Ultimately leading us unto a make-believe world where even the most objective of our thoughts are heavily influenced by what we wish to believe about ourselves and nothing beyond mere figments of our imagination. The fundamental rule governing exclusive entry into this make-believe world of ours is perhaps that one needs to fundamentally uproot any cognizance of the fact that this world is nothing beyond a misconstrued defense mechanism. It is a defense mechanism, which in times of introspection we make use of just in order to continue to reel at the behest of a misplaced assessment of self. It is a mere support phenomenon, which withholds us from effecting actual improvement or even realizing further scope for improvement.
Now consider this, I chance upon this piece reading which, my feelings border upon tremendous appreciation, yet I find it extremely difficult to completely disregard this threat I am embroiled with. This is a threat, which challenge my bloated notions, hitherto oft fed by people around, about my flair for the written word. Now, this threat makes rather pressurizing demands on my self-esteem and requires me to revisit my assessment of my own potential in the light of the piece I have just read. However, benevolence is something as far removed from this assessment as largesse is from a marwari and all I am able to tell myself is that maybe, just maybe, this is as good as your best composition.

Yet again, I have lost out on a chance to enlighten myself to a loss and the existence of a superior practitioner of the art. In the process losing out on the possibility of learning from the peer and looking inwards. However, I do manage to distract myself by allowing myself to entertain thoughts about meeting up with this tormentor of mine, who happens to be a female and the way I see it, is oozing with what we politely refer to as sex appeal. This makes me wonder, can the written word so much as incite carnal thought even in the absence of a physical form. Must be true, I have never seen this ‘equal competitor’ of mine….