Download Ki Hindi Kya Hota Hai

From my childhood all stories that I heard or cinemas that I watched, the hero fought the evil men hard and saved the pride of his parents and saved the girl (heroine). The hero faced all the pains, but never cried, and finally that "atmanirbhar-purush" (self-reliant man) without much support from the law of the land defeat the evil men. That is the show of strength, right? Whereas everyone else had to wait till the hero entered the car garage/ abandoned mill (a typical Indian cinema backgrounds for fighting) and fight single-handedly with a bunch of heavily weapon loaded goons to save his near and dear ones and in some cases the entire world till the police reaches the spot only to discover that the goons got grounded by the hero. Finally, we all celebrate the hero with a statement of pride- Mard ko dard nahi hota.

You must have heard this frequently used statement- "mard ko dard nahi hota"a quite common saying. It is mostly expected that if you are a man then you need to possess some supreme skill of never experiencing pain. May come any ordeal, a man is expected not to shed tears and unwaveringly continue with the responsibility defined for him in society. We (both men and women) fail to understand that this statement has been detrimental for the men in society. Moreover, we have miserably failed in distinguishing sex and gender, which has paved way for greater gender-based discrimination. In the name of strength and masculinity, society in large has used gender and gender roles to curtail men's freedom to express their vulnerability. If you ask me, there have been multiple situations when I felt like crying aloud, telling my friends my mental status, but the very idea of gender that tells you how a man(woman) should conduct himself(herself) did not allow me to do so. The best example I can quote is from my mother's funeral when everyone came to me and asked me not to cry because that made me (an earning man) weak in front of everyone (relatives in large). People had no business with my expression of vulnerability but had a lot to do with the pride attached to masculinity that could be in danger because of expressing my pain. I think almost all men have experienced such moments where your freedom or right as a human had been overturned by the socially constructive idea of gender.