What men want

A few years ago when author Aatish Taseer was travelling in Sindh Pakistan to conduct research for his book Stranger To History he met a mujahir immigrant from Jodhpur who commented on the tone of his voice ldquoYou Indian men speak so sweetly And also wear floralprint shirtsrsquo he saidTaseer waved it off then but now as he speaks over the telephone from his New Delhi residence the author vividly remembers the manrsquos smirk Softspoken men it would seem were not lsquoman enoughrsquo to the burly aggressive mujahir a notion he says is only too common all across the subcontinentAuthor Aatish Taseerrsquos new show explores aspects and conflicts of Indian masculinityUnequal gender equations and patriarchal notions are far from changing in most of the country However in some mostly urban sections of society the Indian male is under more scrutiny than ever Greater discussion of sexual violence against urban women misogynistic politicians suffering from the footinthemouth syndrome women reporting sexual violence against godmen and magazine editors alike mdash are we waking up to the fact that we finally need to discuss Indian masculinity in all its forms ugly anxious and earnestTaseer thinks so He is currently hosting the TV show Gentlemanrsquos Code a sixpart series which discusses the psyche of the Indian male ldquoA lot of ugliness has emerged about male attitudes and I wanted to be able to discuss some of thatrdquoA still from Rahul Royrsquos documentary on masculinity Zinda BhaagAt the outset Taseer admits that the show does not really cut across class and given that it caters to a primetime television audience also ends up focussing on luxury style and aspirationsWhat he does hope to do with the show however is debate the role and concerns of the Indian male in middle and uppermiddle class Power hierarchies at work in social settings and even marriages are no longer rigid ldquoThis ushers in a new reality for men mdash something they are excited about but also confused and scared of because they donrsquot necessarily have the vocabulary to cope with what is happening to them That territory for me is most interestingrdquo he saysTill We Meet AgainTaseer says he is curious about how the modern urban experience is playing out around us ldquoWhen aggressive ideas of masculinity which are rampant in India come in contact with Western ideas of modernity in big towns and cities men feel threatened and affronted It translates into violence too I think we need to find a way to assimilate these ideas so the transition is less confusing and not violentrdquoTaseer says his own ideas of masculinity fortunately were first shaped by his single mother ldquoI grew up around liberal women so gender equality was a kind of social inheritance But that was not the case for everyone around me and a new equlibrium between men and women could cause a lot of upheaval in peoplersquos livesrdquoFilmmaker Rahul Roy one of the directors at the Letrsquos Talk Men 20The show discusses changing expectations of the sexes their sexual anxieties and womenrsquos experiences when it comes to dealing with the men in their lives The first episode for instance discussed the relationship of a man with his mother through the story of filmmaker Karan Johar who told his mother that marriage was not for him ldquoThat segment threw up interesting ideas and explored the deep yet difficult bond one man shares with his mother But what interested me the most in that episode was my interview with Priyanka Chopra Unlike many women who would want their men to loosen up when it comes to jealousy and possessiveness Priyanka said she likes her man to be possessive But equally she would like to be free to do what she wants That I thought was an interesting contradiction as well as perhaps an example of why men often complain that they donrsquot fully understand how women expect of themrdquo Another interview he adds was equally revealing ldquoI was speaking to singer Anoushka Shankar who said she was appalled when she realised that she had been invited to a party as eyecandy She added that Indian men do not make her feel threedimensional at all and that she could have never married an Indian guy That I feel says quite a lot about our attituderdquo says TaseerThe female gaze he adds is not monolithic ldquoI think women should engage with masculinity and interrogate their expectations just as men should A lot of gender dialogue fails to acknowledge the complicity of women in enforcing certain gender attitudes and I feel if we are to really understand urban masculinity we must recognise the role of women in shaping itrdquoTaseer has some interesting observations of what shaped his masculinity and how being born in London education in the US and living in India and Pakistan sharply contrasts the multiple lsquomasculinitiesrsquo he has experienced over timeldquoMy exposure to the West changed my idea of masculinity It became important for me to cultivate an interior life to have a broad range of emotional and cultural experiences that I could share with men and women alike These are broad generalisations but I feel men in India and Pakistan can often lack that emotionalcultural life which only comes really from exposure to the humanities Men here can tend to be a little onedimensional mdash the finance guy never moving past finance the intellectual confined to intellectual things They are not perhaps as rounded as they should berdquoMen in India according to Taseer can often lack the vocabulary to express their emotional life ldquoFor me literature opened up new ways of feeling And I realised that it did not come at the price of being less of a man I meet many men in India who tell me proudly that they donrsquot read fiction they think itrsquos for women I suppose and stick to management or selfhelp books Well only a fool would think that the great novels have nothing to teach himrdquo laughs TaseerLast week the National Centre of Performing Arts screened films made by four filmmakers from India Pakistan Nepal and Sri Lanka As part of the project Letrsquos Talk Men 20 the films explored the mind of men in the Indian subcontinent In 2000 the filmmakers had screened films on similar themes as part of Letrsquos Talk Men 10Indian filmmaker Rahul Royrsquos film Till We Meet Again is a story of four men in their 30s who have troubled relationships with their wives yet make for caring fathers The Sri Lankan film in the series looks at a marriage in which the woman finds it difficult to establish a bond with her inexpressive husband The Nepalese film looks at a gurkha training camp which puts unnatural pressure on men to be tough In the Pakistani film four men face the societal pressure to make moneyRoy first began making genderrelated films in the 1980s and they discussed womenrsquos issues ldquoSomewhere along the lines I got uncomfortable not because these films were questioning my own values but because I was making them without looking at myselfrdquoThe discomfort urged Roy to turn the lens on his own life ldquoI wondered how does one represent masculinity which is allpervasive and ubiquitous yet something that hides within itself Dialogue on gender does not speak of men mdash it largely speaks of women How then do you engender menrdquo The idea behind the films made under Letrsquos Talk Men 10 was to bring male filmmakers together who could then mdash consciously mdash look at their own gendering process including ideas of sexualityThe filmmaking process was revelatory for Roy who discovered similarities in the way Indian masculinity was shaped across classes ldquoAlmost every Indian man discovers sex and sexuality around other men not women and by the time they make the transition to experience you already have set ideas of women Almost every male jokes about how marriage is alright for the first three months and then it is a pain I find it sad that the fate of the most important decision in your life is predecided Do men have resources to elaborate these thoughts How do men negotiate these fears The tug of war between their mothers and wives I know makes most men paranoid and they have no idea of how to go about it So many men I spoke to told me that in this case theyrsquod try explaining things to their wives but after a point there would be no other way than to hit them into silencerdquoUrban masculinity however has changed in many ways too An area which intrigues Roy about Indian masculinity is the increased possibility of nonsexual friendships between men and women today He also says that the changing dynamics at workspace are threatening men on many levels even as they try to negotiate womenrsquos presence ldquoThis struggle is significant and is happening for the very reason that our institutions are not gender sensitive in the first place This discrepancy manifests in peculiar ways mdash like the Tarun Tejpal case where the supposed fountainhead of feminist ideas is mired in a rape case The same goes for caste in Indiardquo In his film Roy highlights this confusion through a man who is unsuccessful at work ldquoWhen his wife is out earning and he does domestic chores he runs himself down calling it lsquofaltu kaamrsquo Because thatrsquos not a lsquomanrsquos placersquo It must be a womanrsquosrsquoLetrsquos Talk Men 20 concentrates on SouthAsian masculinity because Roy feels a common tapestry emerged while trying to find narratives of masculinityMen he feels feel a greater need to talk about themselves in the aftermath of the Delhi gang rape in December 2012 ldquoTo me this is the largest public expression of masculinity in the longest time Somewhere men are trying to reflect on their gender which is a good thing The problem with masculinity is that is it everywhere but is invisible in discussion It is hardwired but needs to be reconfigured Masculine ideas need to be changed and rejected if they are not positiverdquo he saysWe need more examples of positive masculinity out there So many Indian men are domestically involved divide chores and are caring But where are such role models Masculine images out there in urban society are boyish masked as lsquoyouthfulrsquo mdash aggressive without responsibility When you segregate the sexes and then throw them together at workplace for instance it results in passiveaggressive behaviour which many men mask under the jokes they crack about women We need to speak about it empathetically and emphatically to understand indian masculinityParomita vohraFilmmaker who makes films on genderrelated issuesDiscussing Indian masculinity makes most men uneasy Jokes abound of course about going to thailand blowing up money and so on but culturally we are not at a point where we sit down and speak about men I think when we speak of indian masculinity we must speak of how class influences it Urban educated men are better off and have the means to work around anxieties the message of what indian masculinity should be has to percolate to rural india and smaller towns too there is no interaction between the sexes we live in an insanely structured society mdash on one hand we have these sexualised images in cosmopolitan india but the guy on the street has barely interacted with women in a sensitive way That must changeAnuvab PalStandup comic and writerThe fact that we are talking about masculinity itself is a significant change because Indian masculinity is just something that is taken for granted This means that we see talk about gender issues as a relationship between men and women not just as womenrsquos issues Indian masculinity is being challenged because of broader changes at workplace in property laws and issues around inheritance These changes have changed the traditional Indian family setup where the patriarch had the last word It is unsettling for men and makes them rather anxious Most men are alright when women work outside home but they donrsquot want to accept the independence which comes with it They want to be the consumers but not deal with the sacrifices which come with the choice The power the indian male enjoyed before is now being challenged mdash how does he negotiate around the fact that the women in the family may be in livein relationships work or have a boyfriend in short things he could lsquocontrolrsquo earlierProfessor Sanjay SrivastavaProfessor Sociology Institute of Economic Growth