Since I have aired my views on women, it is my moral responsibility
to share my observations on my own self, we the men. And for this, I don’t need
a drink. It is another matter that I will drink! Having been brought up
in an all boys residential school, I was witness to a whole lot of different kinds of boys/men.
And after almost four decades on earth, I can largely categorise us in three
categories, as the title suggests. According to me, you can tell way beyond
years how will a boy turn out to be as a man. There have been exceptions and
those exceptions mostly become the diagonally opposite of what we would be as
boys. However, majorly, we tend to create a range for ourselves to oscillate our
existence.
Mard
In boys schools, we are young boys. And there are some
older boys among the young boys. With physical strength to our advantage, many
of us start reaping some usual benefits. You know, like better at athletics, getting
to do more macho stuff in front of little girls & ‘young’ lady teachers,
and of course, start bullying younger and weaker boys. We find sycophants who
encourage us in order to stay in our good books. Bullying slowly becomes our habit
and as time passes it only becomes worse. We not-so-young boys grow up to become
‘mard jisko dard nahi hota’ types. We want to bully our way to movie tickets
queues, parking lots, traffic signal; even our own wedding procession,
sometimes. We get our Tobu cycles, by hook or by crook. Bought by parents, snatched from friends, steal it just for fun & then dump it in an abandoned place. 'Ignorant abandon' is our birth right. We are the kind who have no respect for fellow beings, least of all
for the ones who could never stand up to our ill behavior. You could never tame
us. We live & die as wild animals. We have no limits & we fight without a reason.
Men
There are some boys, who right from the start, just know they are
either at the right place at the wrong time or at the wrong place at the right time. If we were at the right place at a not so pretty time, we ensured to make
the most of the time available. And god forbid, if we were at the wrong place, we
would make it the best time of our lives. We flourish in chaos. We borrow Tobu cycles so cutely, that it look as if it is ours which was loaned to the actual owner. We could play
without shoes, walk alone; run in groups; not study for an entire
trimester and then mug lessons for 14 hrs straight without sleep to vomit all on
the answer sheets & get pretty marks. We never bothered to top the class
academically, though some of us could, if we made half an honest effort. We
could debate with a wall, sing without a mic, laugh at our own butts; yet stand
up for a genuine fight. We grew up to embrace life, the boys who possibly, learnt
the art of social living. With time, there are glimpses of such a man turning
into a ‘mard’, once in a while. Mostly, we were civilized beasts. We know our limits & we play to participate.
Morons
And then there are boys who are mostly in deep trouble. Or, are the
reason why someone else is in deeper crap of a situation. We are the weakest, meekest,
dumbest, sissiest, lousiest & perhaps the most entertaining of the lot. We
are made fun of the most, bullied the most, avoided the most & rallied the
most. In fact, gradually, everyone starts believing we are God’s ‘special
child’. We cannot stand for our own rights because we believe we are weak and
incapable. But we quickly expect someone to support us. And hence, mostly, we are
the ones because of whom ‘mard’ and ‘men’ get into a fight. Naturally, men are
battered. Mard mostly becomes a hero of the campus because we never had
expulsions, barring very exceptional circumstances. My guess is, in all
probability, he would be a moron disguising as a man, who would be
rusticated. Else, why would you do
anything so idiotic or stupid, that people are forced to throw you out. Mostly
they are good riddance. Being a moron is the limit. Beyond us, there is stardom.
Ofcourse, there are exceptions. I could be a ‘mard’ who somewhere
down the line, became a man. Or, I could be a man who due to the need of the
hour, just acted as a ‘mard’ and then, started enjoying the frivolous life to
stay a ‘mard’. There are a few of us, who are actually morons but have truly
found the most perfect way to fool the world by declaring ourselves, a man. And
then, there is a minuscule population of morons, who flip their butt coin to
suddenly become a ‘mard’. And that’s when the world comes to an end.
*****************************
