Not Man Enough Read online

Not Man Enough

  By Santosh Jha

  **

  Copyright 2014 Santosh Jha

  **

  OnlyNess (Fiction)

  Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero (Fiction)

  Autobiography Of A Duffer (Fiction)

  Naked Solutions Of Dressed Up Life Woes (Non-fiction)

  Habitual Hero: The Art Of Winning (Non-fiction)

  Maya And Leela: Utility In Life’s Futility (Non-fiction)

  Why We Flop In Love (Non-fiction)

  Wisdom Of Wellness: Perpetuity Of Poise Of Purpose (Non-fiction)

  Decipher Destiny: Decode God’s Will (Non-fiction)

  Youth Sanity In Crazy Culture (Non-fiction)

  Redeem & Reinvent The Art Of Lost Wellness (Non-fiction)

  India Beyond Stampede Of Stupidities (Non-fiction)

  Karta: Life-Inspiring Essays On Cognition, Consciousness & Causality

  Enter 2014 A New You (Non-fiction)

  Why Do You Want To Change Me? (Non-fiction)

  Hey Beautiful, You Are The Hope (Non-fiction)

  Young, Restless And In Love (Non-fiction)

  **

  License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thanks for your support.

  **

  Disclaimer: This work is an absolute fiction, an outcome of pure imagination of perceived situations, with the clean purpose of the navigation of a set of life ideas. All characters and their portrayal are fictitious, with no intentional resemblance to anyone dead or alive. Any semblance must be accepted as pure coincidence and inadvertent.

  **

  FOREWORD:

  There has to be a humble admittance – Any word, however well meant and well spelt, is a possible suspect of misinterpretation. There is a simple reason. People are in different consciousnesses and culturally as well as personally inclined to a specific value-summation of utilities. As a writer, it is a huge temptation to take liberties, with not only imaginations, ideas but also with the words, as against their common and popular use. Do kindly accept my latitude with language, choice of words and interpretation of contemporary realisms, as I understand, many times, they may not conform to popular usages and sentiments.

  It is said, the best way to handle life’s adversities is making them object of humor. Objectifying the subjective troubles of life by making them the stupidities of fun and laughter is considered the elixir of life-living wellness. I have attempted to put some painful realism of our contemporary life and living in the domain of witty expressions, with the sole purpose of personal excellence of all. Do kindly accept my endeavor with affection of your own funny self to enjoy what I have mustered up here.

  I share with you whatever is part of my consciousness and its honest innocence. All wisdoms say, what stays with you is what sinks in. Wisdom is what we internalize. I share with you whatever I have internalized in my life. This may not be mainstream, however, may have utility in some meaningful way. I believe, as a reader, you shall enjoy this novelty and pleasant awkwardness of the writing.

  **

  I AM ASHAMED… genuinely and profusely… writing all this, which I am about to, as it is something I detest and consider as one of the worst vices of humanity – the ‘ingenuity of personalized inventiveness for justifying oneself”. But then, the issue at hand and things I am about to say is all about it… so, let it be… of course with loads of embarrassment…!

  The artistry of humanity in engendering the ingenuities to put oneself a step or two ahead in the incessant enterprise of ‘one-upmanship’ comes natural to most of us. It’s a crazy competitive world, where men enjoy tough enterprise of not only surviving but thriving in a milieu, replete with hypocrisy, debauchery and sado-masochism. Of course, they all come natural to us. That is why, it seems they are everywhere and refuse to die down in any measure.

  Success is a premium entity here in the contemporary culture and being one -step ahead; being a master-craftsman in artistry of one-upmanship is the cardinal rule for attaining this premium product. It is altogether different matter that even survival is not easy and sometimes it also becomes a premium thing. Moreover, there always is an innate inclination in we all to declare most of our success enterprises as ‘survival’ bare-basics.

  Euphemizing major successes as survival needs is big part of pop culture. Alternately, for millions of humans, bare survival too is a huge success, given the zeal of success of other millions! Disproportioning of needs to the extent of making them king-sized wants and vice-versa is a favorite enterprise of humanity in all cultures. That is why they say – ‘What you want is not always you need yet, persistent refusal to accept this is what humanity is brilliantly skilled at.’ Most cultures are excellent workshops to impart this training of ingenuity of consciousness to humanity at large.

  It seems, in social relevance and cultural appropriates, the primary issue of importance is being a ‘man enough’ to attain the prized positioning of success. I have reasons to believe that. This success-benchmark of one-upmanship, which is core characteristics in all cultures, itself has the word ‘man’ as primary focus. However, my curse is that I have always been on the other side of the benchmarking. This is primary and perpetual blame for me! And I am talking about that.

  In 35 years of my life, how many times I have been made to confront this blame, I have even lost counts of. The eternal blame on my head is – “… you are not enough of a man…!” Somehow, some close ones would ensure that it gets more direct by saying, “you are not, man enough”!

  Success in life is important; there cannot be doubt about it. It is also clear that as we are many times more than what we may accept as ideal population, the success is not available to many. Seven billion plus people on earth vying for very few resources and pole position of ‘success’ is a tough challenge and that is probably why, benchmarks of success has one tagline – ‘Be a man enough’. It seems, it has to be like that. However, success apart, even being a man-enough thing has not been easy for me. Rather, it has always been elusive for me and that is why I am trying to make a case in favor of me not being a ‘man enough’. I may be presenting a poor advocacy against the primary indictment on me that I am not man enough; still I wish to do it with all my sincerity.

  Of course, my humble and compassionate advocacy against the accusation against me – me being not man enough, also happens to be as much predisposed to the same accusation. It is anybody’s guess that how much courage it takes to present an advocacy of such intent. And as, courage is something directly associated with someone being man enough, I already stand a victim of presumptuous judgment against me. That is why I said I am ashamed to present the ‘ingenuity of inventiveness for justifying oneself”.

  All labels on a person usually start early in childhood. They say – characteristics of a tree are ingrained in seeds itself. I am surely no exception. Since my early teen days, my class fellows and friends would gather abusive tongue, as there were cuss words and abusive terminologies all around us. Therefore, it was easy picking for all teenagers, who somehow has the mind training to behave like “man enough” as early as possible in life. To be a man enough, a teenager has a lot of peer pressure to speak as many cuss words, as most ‘men’ would in the social sphere all around. This comes easy and without much effort. Aping is easiest for all, especially kids, who are empowered versions of their close cousins, the ape.

  It is truly strange. I can understand that this is our mechanism. We are probably designed this way. The amazing realism is – we all want to be alone and lonely with our virtues but always wish to be in a crowd with ou
r vices. Few teenagers would compete sincerely, not to allow the person, who stood first in the class, to stand alone and lonely at the top. However, most very meticulously (without much effort though) joined the crowd who spoke foul and sexually explicit language.

  Even our popular cultures are designed this way. Prevalent cultures usually are aggregates of collective sense of conveniences and as it is common, most conveniences are designed for averages, commonality and mediocrity. The successful in the society would always love to keep away and above the pop culture. It is only the average and mediocre lots, who would gleefully remain stuck to populism. Most popular cultural appropriates are therefore usually mass-based and have majority backing. The abusive tongue and sexually explicit linguistic behavior are the worst culture of conveniences, having a mass-following and majority support. If not, teenagers would never be happy and comfortable mouthing the wrong language. Instinctively, they go only with majority. It is blame on cultures that mediocrity and stupidity always happen to be in majority! Minority of sanity is culture of convenience for humanity.

  It seems, it is a matter of utmost convenience to be man enough to join the majority of the vice of abusive and sexually explicit tongue in all cultures. It takes a huge burden to keep away from this vice of populism and be in the acute minority of being a person with the sanity of senses and tongue. This is probably why; most cultures have only a handful of poets of excellence but millions of master craftsmen of slangs and imaginative sexual linguistics.

  Anyways, let us talk about the artistry of ingenuity of my teen associates. Not that teens in my peer group were dumb and followed contemporary populist trends like a stupid. They were smart enough to create such artistries of ingenuities to be man enough, which would make even a man proud or blush. One kid in my peer group would stuff a pair of his socks under the front part of his underpants to give a feel of ‘man enough-imagery’ to others he wished to impress. This ‘man-enough’ kid insisted that doing this was a must thing for him. He was big fan of Elvis Presley and while doing the pelvic gyrations and thrusts, he surely needed to have an impressive ‘frontline fortress’. Fortunately or otherwise, a teenager has hordes of people to impress about his status of being a man enough. One cannot entirely blame the innocuous girls for that. It is altogether different thing that this guy did this all to impress a pretty girl next door.

  Another genius ‘man-enough’ contender would drink glass full of crushed ice every day, before coming to school to have a man enough voice. In the class breaks, he would smash into his favorite rock numbers of Bruce Springsteen. He too insisted he need this trick to have the voice symmetry! “What a waste of a man, if cannot do a rock stuff”, he declared. There were other tricks too, which I cannot share, as I intend to continue to list myself in the minority of sanity…!

  Since then, as I would not succumb to this peer pressure, I would not be accepted as ‘man enough’. Mouthing a cuss words every few words in a sentence was labeled by my peer group as ‘man enough’ benchmark and as I was not obliging, my manhood was always doubtful. I cannot blame them now, though I was not happy with them then. I have read that it is instinctive of humans to hate and see with suspicion anyone who is not like them. This is what psychologists call tribal instinct, still ruling man behaviors and actions. That is why most people fear aliens, even when there is no official data about the possible aliens being antagonistic to us!

  One is amazed as how much we can blame on our instincts and lingering tribalism. That is why many women say that men have not been able to come out of the caves! One can understand as why men are always suspicious of women as most men believe, they have come from some other planet called Venus, whereas they have descended from what they believe is Mars! I must admit, this man enough advocacy is not easy for me… not for anyone! This issue is so multi-dimensional…!

  Anyway, let us stick to my story. Moreover, me being a fair, beautiful and chocolaty boy was ‘enough’ to add fuel to the fire of the label against my “suspicious manhood”. My ignorance with contemporary music and dance would add fuel to the raging fire. My friends would come to me jointly to advise me on the need to deliver a body blow to the accusations I was facing, with a ‘man-enough’ reply. They had the ingenuity to construct brilliant plans to shut-up my accusers and detractors. My persistent refusal to accept them finally made even my friends accept that there probably was something terribly wrong with my body-mind make up. Some would even join my detractors. As I said, it is always easy for people to be in majority sentiments. I cannot blame my friends for not continuing to be with my minority positioning.

  When I was around 12, I could find almost none (baring the women in my family), around me who could speak a language, which should be respectable, decent, lovable and commensurate to the status humans enjoy in the intellectual hierarchy of creatures of the world. I wished, this could be possible! In all languages that we speak, there is so much abusive tongue; such crash overtones of sexuality and habitual use of bestiality. When I was a teenager, I could not understand why even dignified men of our society would speak such demeaning language.

  In youth, this struggle continued, not only on college campus, in university buses and elsewhere but also outside. There were growing demands on me to be man enough and I was always caught remarkably short of the benchmark. In the university bus, which I took each day to get to the college, had no reserved seats for girls and there was a virtual war going on to sit on the next seat a girl occupied. Being a winning warrior in the war of prized seats was a hot benchmark for being man enough, which I was poorly unable to even attempt at, let alone winning it.

  There were students, man enough and they would proudly tell stories in the college about how many times they were successful in making the most beautiful girl of the college sit next to them. There would be a man-war on making others believe that the said girl was actually in love with him and not others, who claimed the same. I had no stories to tell and therefore was a natural not-man-enough suspect. Frankly speaking, I actually feared the man-war as I had heard that there were actual shoot-outs between contenders and one student was grievously hurt. I probably was not man enough to be part of the gun-war and that is why I quit the university bus ride.

  Not only ‘men’ in my peer group had doubts about my manhood. Girls were not far behind. Girls in my colony would throw paper balls on me and giggle at me as I would pass by their gang, but I would never look up. Though my mom would consider me better looking than the reigning super star of the movies, I would never think of myself as beautiful enough to attract undue attentions. Not that I had no idea about populist and contemporary trends and things in my society and culture. I had seen too many of ‘hit movies’ of macho heroes to understand, what ‘manhood’ criteria was existing in the society!

  There always were enough free videos in offer to confirm one’s label of man enough. Watching a porn movie was a bare essential for a teenager to announce to the world that he had arrived. And it was of utmost importance for every teenager to arrive as early as possible to the final destination of manhood. What better way to attain the goal, without spending a single penny and attaining it in just an hour and half!

  However, things could never be easy in the road to manhood. You always were in the tumultuous race for being more man enough than others in the peer group. The ‘man’ possessing most numbers of porn movie videos would always qualify for the prized success benchmark of being the most man enough thing.

  In such cultural milieu, saying no to populist benchmarks were reasons enough to draw the label of me being not man enough. As guys in my peer group would discuss in school about the reigning queens of the porn world and their statistics, I would be always sitting with mouth open in utter ignorance about the vital factsheets. My inability to add to the knowledge pool of my already talented peer group ‘men’ would draw loads of flak and the inevitable label of me being not man enough.

  One day, one daring girl from this gang of gigglers confronted
me, accepting the challenge from the gang that I would not talk to her. As I talked to her, she was happy winning the bet and in utter joy of celebration, she proposed to be friends with me and she confided in me that the gang believed I was ‘not man enough’, not responding to them. She also told me blankly that every girl in the gang boasted of at least five boyfriends and all of them offered them costly gifts just for a kiss. The girls were sure; something was amiss in me, as I was not responding, even when they initiated things. Most of them felt, I was probably too afraid of my mom or simply too shy… in both cases, a sure benchmark of me being not man enough!

  Usually, things settle down with time and many realisms change as time is considered to be the greatest leveler. However, for me, things did not change any bit as this label of me being not man enough grew up and evolved with me too. In job, things did not take any better shape. After prolonged frustration, one day, when he was in good mood, having put in two good glasses of fine wine, my boss confronted me and warned me that I would not rise in my profession, as I was “not man enough”. I asked him as why he thought so poorly of me and why specifically he thought I was not man enough. My boss told me in emotionless tone – “You are a vegetarian, teetotaler, not a womanizer and above all, too soft spoken to last in this tough world where men need to win tough battles for successes.” Of course, he said this, inserting choicest cuss words and sexually loaded terminologies, every few words to show me a specimen of what it takes to be man enough.

  Believe me, my boss was my real well-wisher, I have no doubts. He was being honest to me by betraying me the specimen of success-benchmarks of the popular culture. He of course was being man enough to do what every boss is supposed to do – subordinate development – but to his utter dismay, his subordinate was not being man enough to ride on the wave of development, he intended to instill in him!

  My relatives too were never far behind in preaching me about the “requirements and essentials of manhood”. A close relative declared in a family gathering that I was still a minor as despite being 35, not being married disqualified me from being a “man”. He mocked at me for still being a mom’s boy. Later when alone with me, he declared in a solemn voice – “A man’s manhood is not established till he has a woman in his life, who he can dominate and show up his man-mechanisms.” It is altogether different matter that in my family, everyone knew that he was a henpecked husband and supposedly in awe of his beautiful wife. However, this must not be considered a disqualification for a man as what happens inside a bedroom, between husband and wife is nobody’s domain. Anyway, even worthy warriors face reversals in war and as someone said – ‘Losing out to your beautiful wife surely is being man enough as even when she wins, the accrued gains are all his…!’