The Story of a Man

Aakash Yadav

Today, it just happened that a get- together was cut short by few people’s prior appointments. So, while left stranded, I and my friend just happened to start talking over some topics. Normally, while enjoying we stay away from such topics. But today, it was an entirely different situation altogether. Everything else apart, the topic that we focused was on Individual Responsibility and how it mattered, if it really mattered at all. What happened next was the appearance of simple things, which upon being ignored give rise to complex situations.

Nowadays, there is a lot of stress laid on the role that men can play in curbing such incidents. A simple question: WHO IS THIS ‘MEN’ IN THE REFERENCE? A person who works in the house and goes to office and comes back and works in the house again and does not ask for any help is still a Woman. A person who wakes up in the morning, takes a bath, picks up the lunch kept on the table and leaves for office. The same person comes back at night, freshens up, has dinner and goes to sleep. The person does not contribute to any daily household activity and is still called a Man. And I get to hear from people that I am strange. Is the society not strange? The Man who does not help with any household activity, lives a king-sized life as compared to his spouse and still claims to be ‘tired’ when he comes back home can be compared to a Lion which goes out to hunt on occasions, while the woman is treated like a Lioness. No wonder people like Lions more than any other animal!!! Coming back to individual responsibility part, why is it that the most powerful person cowers in the face of an uphill task while a powerless person is able to master the same challenge without any issue? The answer is simple. One person has owned up to his/her fault of giving others the leverage of taking decisions and of underestimating his/her own abilities. The other person is not willing to go through the same ownership process.

The solutions to such issues are not as simple as firing a Gun. But then, who said that one has to a find a needle in a haystack to solve such issues. If such had been the case, we would be having separate courses to deal with the same. Issues like these neither requires huge effort nor long brainstorming sessions. What they do require is a sense of semblance to the issue and the will to solve the same. The will comes through the first step of Owning up to the reality that one has been casual while dealing with such issues and that to deal with the situation, NOW is the correct time. The call is never too easy to take but then once the process starts, one tends to ask about the point where the difficulty lay. Choosing a side is not an option. The only option is how to make things better. The sooner we own up to this reality, the better our society would be. Otherwise, the blame game would continue and we would never come to face the reality that we are as much a part of the society as any other individual.

This Blog is part of the Men Say No Blogathon, encouraging men to take up action against the violence faced by women. 

More entries to the Blogathon can be read at www.mustbol.in/blogathon

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