Every man possesses masculinity. When he cannot express it, he suffers from discomfort. Men display their masculinity through their socioeconomic and intellectual circumstances and position. Displaying masculinity and putting on airs are two entirely different matters—just as pride and arrogance differ. Due to the intellectual deficiencies of some men, unhealthy displays of masculinity continue within families and society. Let us consider this matter through several examples.
One. When we look around us, we notice something curious. We see that two people of the same rank behave in completely opposite ways socially. One is so full of himself that his feet barely touch the ground, while the other carries no such pretension. Why does this happen? Let us see—when does a person put on airs? Only when he has traveled as far as it is possible for him to go. What he has achieved is the maximum he can demonstrate; his capacity or ability extends only that far. This is what has happened with the first person. But if it turns out that while one has walked only a short distance, another could have gone much farther, then he will consider that distance merely a portion of his entire journey. His travels are not yet complete, the time to stop has not come, and his preoccupation with covering the remaining path leaves him no leisure to put on airs. Generally, the more pretentious someone is, the less capable they are. They use pretension to cleverly hide their incompetence. As the saying goes, “When a small man rises high, he makes his friends weep.” Very true words. Putting on airs is not masculinity—it is a sign of weakness.
Two. We see certain people who mistreat their family members. They display all their sick masculinity with their wives at home. Who behaves this way? The difference between the uneducated rickshaw-puller who gets beaten up outside and comes home to beat his wife, and the educated gentleman who mistreats his wife at home, lies only in a few certificates. The psychological characteristics of both are essentially the same. Men with shaky social positions possess unhealthy and primitive masculinity. Grand certificates can never make a small man great.
Three. An assistant secretary responds to acquaintances’ greetings with a cheerful “Wa alaykumu as-salam,” and also inquires about them and their family members. When that same officer, upon being greeted, asks only about the person greeting him, you understand he has become a senior assistant secretary. After becoming a deputy secretary, he will only say “Wa alaykumu as-salam.” Upon promotion to joint secretary, it will shrink to just “Wa alaykum.” When the response to greetings becomes a silent, smiling nod of the head, you must understand that the additional secretary has graciously bestowed what amounts to a great blessing! If, after greeting that same officer, he looks at you in such a way that suggests his mere glance is more than enough, then he has surely reached the final stage of decline (read: the bureaucratic ladder)—meaning, he is now secretary! One day, that same person calls out greetings to both acquaintances and strangers, inquiring about everyone’s well-being. Look into it and you’ll find he has become a retired government officer! One feels such pity seeing these people! However, happily, the number of such officers in the bureaucracy is now much lower than at any previous time. I often think we should legally establish a system making book-buying and reading mandatory for civil servants. The more books bureaucrats read, the greater their chances of becoming humane.
Four. That office bosses won’t be good is only natural. A good boss is far more important than a good posting. The tendency of bosses is to undervalue their subordinates’ positions and prefer to remain surrounded by flatterers. Many bosses almost forget that officers and staff cannot be made to work in the same way. Our country’s culture is this: your main job is not office work, but keeping the boss happy. If it ever happens that your personality and social acceptability are superior to your boss’s, he will feel a kind of unhealthy insecurity and will want to become accustomed to viewing you as a rival to his personal being. Those whose identity and social position exist solely through the strength of their jobs typically do not make good bosses or friends. They remain constantly absorbed in thinking about how to harm their subordinates. Small people derive self-satisfaction from giving severe punishments for minor offenses. The allure of employment is a great allure. In that allure, subordinates show fake respect to bosses while cursing them behind their backs in all the audible and inaudible languages of the world. Working under a boss who thinks his position makes him wiser than everyone else is extremely difficult. All their arrogance and antics exist only within the limited confines of their job. When the job ends, everything ends. In my experience, I have seen that after retirement, such harmful autocratic bosses are ignored not only by their former junior colleagues, but even the street dogs don’t bother with them.
Five. You went to a restaurant with your boyfriend, and when the tea cup arrived late, the boyfriend cursed out the waiter to his heart’s content. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he even slapped him twice. Why did he do this? When women are present, the muscle power of the incompetent increases. One who lacks the strength to hunt lions will, once he gets a gun in his hands, hunt donkeys and shamelessly take photos standing on the dead donkey’s body to hang in his drawing room. A man without a spine props up a bamboo pole in place of his backbone to stand straight. It might work somehow, but that helplessness looks terribly ugly! There are some stupid classes of girls who, due to lack of brains, mistake boys’ muscles for brains. The more hollow a boy is inside, the more he depends on physical force. When politically powerful students, strong in muscle power, cannot get even a peon’s job based on their merit after graduation, watching their futile rumination over their ‘past masculinity’ is quite amusing.
Six. Small people always have more time to pay attention to small tasks. Big tasks require great capability. Those who lack this are almost compelled to show masculinity by making a big deal of small tasks. Big people make things happen; small people make announcements. The less mental strength one has, the more insolent force they possess. They scold the housemaid for half an hour because there was less sugar in the tea. What else can the poor woman do! Scolding the housemaid doesn’t require any additional qualification. Let that person scold his boss for half a minute over an unjust decision—let me see! A man who considers himself a ‘tough guy’ by scolding a saree-wearing creature has no additional qualifications for being male beyond possessing male genitalia.
Seven. You’ll see another class of Facebook celebrities whom even dogs don’t ‘follow’ when they step onto the street outside Facebook. Their pretensions in the virtual world are always excessive. Apart from gathering a massive number of followers, they have no real achievements in their lives. When people lift someone on their shoulders and dance, that person thinks the sky has moved down a bit, and if he reaches out his hand, he can touch the sky. He believes the sky is his! When people stop dancing, he remains on the ground. Then he doesn’t even dare to think about touching the sky. Touching the sky from the ground requires some additional position and capability. Online masculinity, offline castration!
Eight. Money has a certain heat. That heat, belonging to whoever has the money, wants to burn everything around them. The more money someone has, the greater their foolish belief that ‘I can buy everything.’ If you don’t sell yourself to someone who puts on airs with money, you can live very happily, completely ignoring their existence. Behind flattery of the rich lies not necessity, but greed. The most prosperous person in this world is one who can walk without caring the least bit about the rich and powerful. Someone whose masculinity lies solely in money usually has a very weak personality. Show such a wealthy person your firmness once; then you’ll see them treating you with respect. Financial obligation to someone and slavery are both equal.
Nine. The less a teacher knows, the harder they make exam questions to display masculinity. A student knows little precisely because they are a student. Otherwise, they would have been a teacher. Making questions difficult means trying to hide one’s own fragility while making it even more apparent. I have seen many teachers come to class and talk about their own GPA. Looking at them, it seems they were born solely to achieve a GPA. They didn’t have the strength to do anything more to show masculinity. Many of them give low marks on exam papers. The purpose: to make students study more. This is the worst method for encouraging students to study more. Instead of giving low marks on papers, if we could explain to them why they should study, that would probably be more useful. I don’t know of any incident in any university in the world where making more students fail led to more studying.
Ten. Some men display masculinity by making others small to make themselves big. Growing big that way is easy because it only requires knowing how to gossip. Bengalis are the only people in the world who are innately gifted with infinite talent for envy. Envy reduces one’s mental strength. I believe if one must plunge a knife, a true man plunges it into the chest, not the back. Around you are some people whom you perhaps don’t even have time to think about, people whose existence or non-existence doesn’t cause you the slightest headache, yet they somehow manage to find endless time to spread nonsense about you to demean you. Ah! How much time they have! I’m truly envious! Every office has some bosses who leave their heads at home when they leave and come to the office with only their ears. From the moment they arrive at the office, they run the office relying solely on their ears. What else can someone without a head do but believe hearsay? Making decisions based on hearsay is the masculinity of the ear, not the head. The common belief is that women are envious. In my own experience, I have seen that men are far more envious than women. We live in a society where the hideous displays of masculinity by some envious, sick men constantly make us gasp for breath. Envious men have always seemed like eunuchs to me. Someone who has even the minimum capability to achieve something doesn’t have to live a life of envy.
One who possesses true masculinity has no hypocrisy. He doesn’t strike the weak but learns to endure blows from the strong to increase his own strength. The forgiveness that doesn’t make the Mahabharata impure cannot be given without masculinity. A man’s masculinity is understood by seeing his behavior with those in positions below him. Masculinity is recognized by seeing how much one can avoid corruption when given the opportunity to be corrupted. True masculinity belongs to one whose strength lies in his head, not his arms. We want a society free from invisible bangle-and-ribbon-wearing men! We want masculinity whose fire burns not in the haze of cigarette smoke, nor in French-cut beards, but in the fierce determination to build oneself that lies hidden in the corner of one’s eyes!