Who Moved Our Guy?

At the risk of being lynched, I want to stand up and say this to the urban Indian new age family: Hey, let's get some good old guy-energy back into the picture. The operant word here is g-u-y. Not New Age Man. Enough already with that caring-sharing, touchy-feely, shadow-of-former self. He's just an honorary female, that's what he is, by the looks of it. A make-over by his 'right-thinking' mom and 'right-thinking' wife. Give us a break from this excessive feminization of the family, please. A word to the lynching mob: We are well aware that Neanderthal Man rules in most parts of India. We're talking here about a not inconsiderable chunk of urban Indian families, where Dads have been set a target to turn as closely as they physically and emotionally can into Moms, or else there will be enforced conversions from the year 2005 onwards. The urban Indian family is suffering from an estrogen overdose.

This isn’t a call for the Return of the Neanderthal. What we’re badly missing is the guy-energy that comes from a source quite different from woman-energy. We yearn for the time when Dad asked his kid once in a while, absent-mindedly: "Which class are you in now?" Now we got Dads who echo Moms: "We're doing fractions; decimals we’ll do next year." Leaves you wondering for a few seconds - how this chap got a job in a big bank if he’s still working his way through fractions - when you suddenly realize - eeks, it’s New Age Dad/Honorary Mom speaking.

Come back, we say, to the Dad who shot a well-aimed Hindi gaali at some crazy overtaker on the road – while your mom vaguely said "Don’t" or "Shh" or looked stonily ahead. She didn’t immediately jump on Dad with the wrath of the Custodian of All Virtues. In the back seat of the car, you and your bro or sister rolled the word around in your mind a few times in delight, and then forgot about it. Catch the New Age Dad being allowed to get away with that one today. I had the fun experience, recently, of driving in the back of a car with a New Age family. The man forgot himself and muttered "idiot sala" to a passing vehicle. The kids - 4 and 6 - lit up and asked "kya, whadidyousay?" Mommy cut in smoothly with sanitized New Age subterfuge: "Daddy said he wants idli sambar." The kids seemed to have bought it, for a while. When we got out of the car, they ran up the stairs singing ‘idiotsala idiotsala’. Mom downstairs glowered at Dad, who looked stricken. Idiot sala.

Remember the time that your brother grunted twice at you on your birthday – and that was it. It was his guy-greeting. At the most he’d allow you to touch one of his magnets or prisms or some such thing that you’d coveted for years. Your sister made you a card and ironed your dress for you and even possibly baked a cake. She bought you a gift and wrapped it prettily. She wasn’t any ‘better’ than your bro. It was her sister thing. He did his brother thing. And it worked fine. Now we’ve pressganged brothers into making soppy productions on rakhi and bhaiya duj, complete with dressing up like ninnies in jari-and-mojuris. Gawdhelpus.

Where’s it all going, that normal-guy energy? On the surface it’s been channelized efficiently into attending art openings and music concerts and meaningful movies and PTA. But it’s sitting there somewhere, unused, waiting to gain critical mass. Currently, sadly, guy-energy finds outlets in stuff like overwork, guilt-ridden, football/cricket-watching, or The World’s Wildest Police Videos. But when it does achieve critical mass, guy-energy will, finally, make itself known – as a completely different way of caring, being, responding. Where the circle will once again be complete. Yin-Yang, Purush-Prakriti, Mars-Venus. Working in tandem. That stuff.

Of course, guys will breathe in and out in labour rooms with us, help kids bury dead birds, etc etc. But they’ll do it in their way. Possibly in silence, and not hold a seminar on how it made them "feel". They will, hopefully, counteract the hideous female-overfocusing that our families are suffering from. At a kid’s birthday party recently, I watched the accompanying parents. The mothers sat together, apparently chatting, but with their eyes fixed determinedly on only their very own Nehas or Ankits or whoever. No other kid existed in the room. Once in a while, a Mom would call out: "Aditiiii stopp chewing your naaaillls." Much to poor Aditi’s mortification. In another corner, a small huddle of accompanying fathers was busy talking on their cell phones or sitting it out staring vacantly in space, and by default or design, just letting their kids be. One of them had come in with a daughter dressed up as a princess. By the end of the party, the princess had done away with her trailing lace veil, turned it into a skipping rope, and was having the time of her life. Mom wasn’t there to freak out.

Perhaps it’s all summed up in what a 4 year old had to say. He asked me one day, conversationally – "Where’s your mama?"

I said, "Umm…she got really old and then died."

The kid said: "Oh - you don’t have a Mama – so you can eat and spill your food even?" Poor kid, obviously didn’t have a guy-energized Dad who told him it was ok to get a little food on the floor.
It starts nowadays at the pupa stage, this feminization deal. Men of 18 and 20 have been bludgeoned and marketed-at into buying the girlfriend a diamond – nothing less. First, of course, the girls themselves have been fed unending bunkum about diamonds and men and love; they in turn make it clear that potential mates just have to produce expensive bits of carbon. The potential mate then has his work cut out for him. Twerp. Antwerp.

Where oh where are the real boys – like the one who bestowed on me, circa 1976, a penknife – his very first, that he’d got when he was 8, and with which we had cut up head-lice and dog-fleas as we grew up. We were 16 when he gave it to me. It was such a guy gift – a piece of his world. Not a piece of what I and some advertisers think he should gift me.