Men are however wrapped up in helping each other maintain this illusion it seems
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Of late, we are required to expend a lot of sympathy for the emotional repression of men. This confuses me. As far as I can tell we are constantly forced to inhabit a masculine emotional universe. We are brought up on bromances, devdases, officers and gentlemen. Men wreak havoc and vengeance all round while “not showing emotion because we are rational and only losers have feelings”. Ok Fred. But we have seen Sholay, Andaz, Namak Haram, Dil Chahta Hai, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Sangam and Jean Anhouil’s Becket so We Know.
Men are however wrapped up in helping each other maintain this illusion it seems. Behold, Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly falling, falling out of love (as if). Glass hearts shatter. They hurl slo-mo shards at each other across the internet.
“I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” Elon Musk wrote on X. Which is the most, dost. But now, “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more” said Trump. Yaniki, dost dost na raha, pyar pyar na raha. .
Here are men who epitomise the Break Everything culture fashionable for too long. Such men see themselves as swashbuckling pirates and like to shiver their timbers together so to speak, congratulating each other on having the cojones to speak the unspeakable, to impose their will on others. They also share the touching belief that this comradeship is true love. They will be jerks with everyone but never with each other. They will strut into the sunset, cool dudes forever, brawling bros who pillage, plunder and drink sloppily together, laughing at all those lallus who have neither guts nor glory, who are, hyuk hyuk, decorous and lol, ‘ethical’. But once you’ve broken everything who do you have left to break? Each other, na? As a million romances have already foretold. Allah bachaye ishq aisi bala hai. At least, hum sabko bachayein.
Perhaps there is that intertwined thrill of pleasure and danger in seeing people naked in public like this. They may even seem liberated. In fact, they are imprisoned by their need to dominate each other’s attention, to jealously, zealously following each other’s statements and having the last word in their lover’s quarrel, while their country and company burn. This is not what we meant when we asked for more rom-coms.
In my heart, I feel (and dread) that one of them is going to send the other a version of that Louise Gluck poem: Long ago, I was wounded. I lived/ to revenge myself/against my father, not/ for what he was —/ for what I was: from the beginning of time,/in childhood, I thought that pain meant/I was not loved./ It meant I loved. Or post the video of some break up song that goes “I love you like I hate you.” And we will be unable to look away from the awfulness.
Maybe a little repression may not be so bad after all.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com
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