Who is a good boy?

October 15, 2016October 15, 2016 Navnit Kundu 1 Comment expectation, marriage, package

Modern youth is confused and doesn’t know what it wants in life. There are many fancy names floating around for this phenomenon, mid/quarter life crisis, existential crisis, existentialism, fatalism, nihilism. See this:

On a practical level, it is also a function of the gender roles we are slotted in. The females are breaking free of their traditional roles with slogans like “women don’t belong in the kitchen” but unfortunately men are neither aware nor willing to break free from theirs, nor will the modern society allow them to do so. The traditional male gender role is still that of a provider who works in an office and a man’s worth in society is still benchmarked on the money he earns. Girls break up with their boyfriends right in 12th standard when they realize that that the boy scored less than ideal marks in JEE/AIEEE and will have to attend a non-elite institution which will reduce his earning potential.On an abstract level, I spoke to a psychologist buddy and he said that the turmoil that upwardly mobile youth is facing is that we are climbing the Maslow’s pyramid too early and hence stumbling across the question of “what next?” which is the trigger for all forms of existential crisis. A person who has climbed the first 3 steps of the pyramid and ensured that he has enough resources so that he will never starve to death will start looking for sublime sources of validation like the definition of a meaningful/eventful/fulfilling life or self-actualization.

The need is to get into a variety of things like national security, martial arts, video games, religious geometry, dharma, paragliding, rifle shooting, solo long distance bike trips and recently even aquarium designing. Just consume a variety of content, get involved in various activities and communities and keep the brain stimulated.We are going to be alive for at least 50 more years, we better find something meaningful to do apart from earning money otherwise the existentialism will consume us. We have to stop the jinx of letting society define us as a good provider and start redefining the meaning of life with us at the focal point. Do things for ourselves instead of finding actualization in being a better provider and acquiring the paraphernalia to advertise to the world that we are indeed doing well (I am seeing a lot of contemporaries buying cars, shiny phones and what not). I reckon, in their mind they are defining it as a meaningful life while the cunning society is sniggering on behind their backs for having brainwashed them to believe in THEIR definition of a meaningful life which earns maximum dividends for them.

Wah beta wah, IITian ban gaye? Wah beta, MNC mein job lag gaya? Wah, 17 hours kaam karte ho, extra time bhi karte ho? Piles hain? Wah wah, fir toh bahut workload hoga? Excellent! wah, wah beta nayi car le li? Naya ghar? Badhiya hai, you are such a ‘good boy’. Now marry my daughter and be a good provider for her. Ayushman bhava, keep working for 60 more years. Even their Aashirwaad lasts for only as long as you continue to produce economic value. God forbid you get diabetes or get into an accident, then you are a non-performing asset for them. The definition of what it means to be a good boy and good girl is rapidly changing, and our interests are being eroded, that is the sad reality. Women are encouraged to take up a variety of fields, even unconventional ones, because they have no risk of being labelled as a non-performing asset even if they don’t find a job, but men are supposed to take up traditionally high paying fields to prove their worth. What’s going to happen is, as the economy booms, the women who took unconventional graduation subjects are going to set up thriving businesses and achieve nirvana, and those of us who took the conventional paths are going to be forever stuck in the 9 to 5 rut.A good girl does whatever she wants and a good boy does whatever enables him to pay for the good girl’s wants. That is the current Indian dream we are chasing. I say ‘Indian’ because there is no stigma in the west or even Japan for people who do not marry. Here, society imposes a heavy cost on bachelors. We are denied flats for rent/sale, we are looked down upon as criminals. This happens to a lesser extent in metro cities, but is is not nil. All of this is a cooked up drama from society, a backlash for rejecting their definition of a ‘good boy’ and pursuing our own interests.We are coached right from the childhood in such a way that even if someone asks “Beta, hobby kya hain?” We are only supposed to conjure up only those hobbies which are related to studies/productivity in one way or the other (stamp collection/ map collection / currency collection). Bachpan se hi bacche ko currency collection ke naam pe bhikari bana dete hain, so that this boy will grow up and do overtime to collect more currency.

We need to stop grooming young males in our society to conflate their self worth with their earning potential, otherwise we are only presenting ourselves as a magnet for the wrong kind of crowd who will file fake 498A cases and empty out bank accounts within no time. What young males in India need the most, is a spine. Unfortunately, it’s not available on Flipkart, so we will have to grow one ourselves.All said and done, let us admit that being a ‘good boy’ is not the goal in life, because this is what a good boy looks like:

No one who competes with this ^guy^ will ever be happy, because damned if you win, damned if you lose. We need better benchmarks for defining our self-worth.

Disclaimer from YP:

The growth of such opinion among men in India will destroy us just like it destroyed the west. And the men are not to be blamed for thinking this way, the society has been too harsh to them and will only get worse with further changes in marital laws. They are already feeling estranged by the nonchalant attitude which the political establishment has towards them. They are increasingly questioning their gains from marriage, where marriage can be ended on a whim, where they lose everything, including their earnings and kids and possibly their ancestral properties if the current idea to give ancestral property to wives on divorce becomes a reality.

These musings from an average middle class Indian man should serve as a wake up call to all the feminists and specially for the parents of Entitled Princesses in India. Such men are likely to grow in number if the Indian society doesn’t backtrack on its shameless aping of western ideas. Girls and their over greedy parents should ask themselves if it is worthwhile to pursue laws favouring women at the expense of men, if their girls are going to end up unmarried, unwanted, lonely and miserable like the women of the west who have pursued the same path for the past 70 years.

Image Source:

http://ayay.co.uk/backgrounds/animals/dogs/good-dog-jack-russell-terrier.jpg