Why Do Men Cry?

Why do men cry?
O, but men do not cry.
Ooops, my bad, wrong question!
Of course men do not cry;
how else can they be called the man?

 

I meant to ask, why do male humans weep.
For grief, you say, alright and pain,
sorrow, loss, or by any other name
we may call a heartache?
Perhaps, in brief, for all the reasons a female
human might? But of course
the social construct known as Man,
the very image of God, it is often claimed,
how can it cry and still maintain
its self-imposed godliness; no, men do not cry!

 

Rather, men prefer to hunt, and plunder,
and men would love to shed their blood and die,
for a cause they have decided to believe,
and often loot and rape, upholding the said cause!

 

But woe! The thing men truly love
in their hearts, more than all of these combined,
is the role as writers of what
the definition of a woman ought to be!

 

So, of course men can never cry.
But female humans can become men too
and in shame, the man in male humans too can die!

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Women’s Rights

Disclaimer: the following text may reek of narcissism to some readers!

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Hello and welcome to another episode of two bits. Last four weeks have been Ramadan, a month of fasting from an hour before the sunrise to sunset for Muslims. This year after more than two decades I decided to fast. By the time this gets posted many Muslims around the world would be enjoying the eve of Eid al Fitr, the biggest religious festival in Islam. Here though it would be on Thursday. However, while the followers of Islam practice self restrain during this month, those of Islamism do the exact opposite. Not that they do not fast but during the meals before and after fasting, known as Suhur and Iftar respectively in Arabic, they tend to be too excessive about items and courses. A large number of them also experience a sharp spike in their suicidal tendencies, unfortunately they start blowing up or murdering other people while killing themselves. That is the part I find unacceptable about the religion called Islamism, despite an abundance of love for all other religions including the pagan ones in my heart which should be evident from my About Me page.

 

Fortunately I was born in a Muslim family, not an Islamist one and as an Eid surprise for the audience, I want to talk about what I have learned regarding women and their rights in Islam from my family. As the process of learning goes, what I accumulated evolved as well and the path was not without a few hiccups along the way but what I am about to say is what I have firmly believed and been practicing since July 2015.

 

A woman, whether she is my mother, sister, wife, an adult daughter, a friend, a recent acquaintance or a complete stranger, has the following irrevocable rights:

1. She can choose to wear anything she wants or nothing at all if such is her desire. I have no right to intervene or interfere. I may dislike her choice but I cannot impose my choice on her or express my feelings in any way that might offend her.
2. She can choose to act in any manner she wants and as long as it is physiologically or psychologically not harming me I have no right to intervene or interfere. If it is, then I can defend myself or exit the scene. If her actions end up in breaching of any earlier moral contracts, she has the right to dialogues or go for a settlement if she chooses to.
3. She can choose to have an abortion whenever she wants. I may or may not like her choice but I cannot impose mine and nor can I express myself in an offensive way.
4. She has the right to be treated as me by myself and rest of the world if she decides to, i.e. whatever I might and can desire, she is eligible too. She has any and every rights I am supposed to have.

 

As a surprise I am keeping it down to some of the most important ones I can think of now and leaving out many other rights of significance. Perhaps in another episode I will talk about some more. Of course I have my rights too. Say, for (1) I would not be too inclined to interact with those that have decided to put themselves inside a Casper like shell from head to toe and the nudists; for (2) I too can opt for a settlement with a reasonable justification if she refuses her right to dialogues. Finally for (3), this being the election year in USA, the largest base of my readers according to WP statistics, I believe one can only urge a would be mother not to abort for the sake of motherhood but that is the most one can do. Killing doctors and other stuffs providing abortion related services or threatening a physically and emotionally stressed pregnant woman ought to be taken for what they are, killing and threatening challenged human beings. Moreover if killing and bullying are labeled Pro Life, then we have an acute case of misnomer in its very core. Pro life sounds and so it should be like Pro Mother, whether the mother wants to continue or abort, provide her with the care she needs to obtain her wish in a healthy way.

 

Well, I guess some of you are sighing in disbelief and disdain at my luck for the kind of parents I have but I am truly proud to be a son of my mom and dad. Thank you for being here!

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Image: my mother and father in 1973.

Hiatus

How long can I keep postponing the reality
of my senses, social standing and hunger?
How long can I keep fighting a war, lost already,
despite winning a handful of fights here and there?
   

It has been almost twelve months now I’m living on my dreams,
audacious for one from the third world middling class,
fatally foolish, I know, some would rightly say!
Perhaps my poor genes did not mutate properly,
for I know countless men and women too, who are
happy to live a rat’s life to its full extent,
living underground in fear and never too keen
to tie the bell, despite being cruelly victimized,
racing and multiplying like a fierce plague on earth,
to wipe out the planet from the face of the universe!
   

Well I can vent for all I want and call them any names
but perhaps that will only make my sin as grave as Cain’s,
for tonight a dreamer after dreaming his last,
will have to seek his way back to that despised world of rats
and only when he has nothing more to gain or has lost it all
will he return to his dreams with profuse apologies for the hiatus!

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Allegorical Allegations

Yes, of course I am free to seek the truth
but were you, to abuse my undoubted trust
and of course I am free to determine,
what might have led you to make me a fool!
   

Human beings do not react differently
to similar things, unless the said mind
is in fact a chronicle of perversion
and nourishing it is its’ meanest form!
    

So, I too was tempted to generalize
like the procrastinated boy of Shakespeare
had proclaimed, “Frailty thy name is woman!”
or like witty Donne that all women cheat!
  

But that would be like saying all men are rapists too,
so I told myself, perhaps it was only you!

.

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The Marching Lambs

As lambs we are marching towards the slaughterhouse,
through blood and gore, forests, rocks and vast deserts’ sands,
since the dawn of man to satisfy lust and greed
whose cloak has always been woven with threads of want
or need. In the beginning, it was with bare hands,
then with wood and stone but since the time of bronze came
the sheer scale has been rising up in leaps and bounds
until the Little Boy gave us nuclear liberty.
(We must leave due blood and fame for the Fat Man too!)
Still our march towards the slaughterhouse never stops,
for the men in power need these wars to remain,
should God need the strength of men to defend His name!
So we march ahead and the crimson river too;
give birth to saints women, not generals, will you!

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