In today’s Delhi Times, I saw the front-page headline, highlighted in bold, above the photograph of our honourable Prime Minister and the ISRO chairperson, K Sivan, the man behind the Chandrayaan-2; India’s latest moon mission. Unfortunately, ISRO lost communication with it just 2.1km from the destination.
It was heartbreaking yet all we can do is try a little harder next time.
So the headline said, “Is it ok for men to cry?”, with other comments like, ‘Can men cry?’ ‘How can the chairperson of ISRO cry, leaning on the shoulder of the Prime Minister of India?’, and so on.
I started wondering to myself, why can’t men cry? Don’t they have any emotions? Don’t they need to get rid of the feelings that make them sick of everything around? People like them worked day and night to make missions like Chandrayaan-2 possible. So why was it wrong for them to cry when they couldn’t succeed?
It became the new trend on Twitter where people started posting such things.
People started mocking Dr Sivan saying, “Being a man, he was crying like a woman.”‘“Men should not cry because they are brave enough to handle everything.” “Men don’t showcase their emotional status in public as it will be considered disrespectful to men’s reputation as a powerful being.”
We start criticising and say foul things when men cry, and when they cry in front of the media, it becomes a piece of fresh news to ponder on.
Comments like ‘You should not cry like a girl because you are a boy’, give rise to questions like, how can tears judge if you are a girl or a boy? How can people, making such comments, turn out to be feminists? How can having emotions fall under the category of females?
Men do feel emotions. So, why does the gender issue arise when they cry and let out their hidden pain?
The major problem, I see, is in the upbringing of men. Whenever they get wounded, they are taught that ‘boys don’t cry for such minor wounds’.‘Boys never cry because we have classifications based on gender and crying comes under the “women section” only.’
I remember my friend’s brother used to cry a lot. Whenever he used to cry, his father used to say, “Men don’t cry.”People are going to mock you if you cry this much.”
“Crying will make you feel like a girl. Men are stronger and feeling helpless is not good for men.” “Men should know that their power lies in controlling, not in crying.”
Why did it become a crime for K Sivan to have an emotional breakdown after the failure of Chandrayaan -2?
His tears were the outcome of all the efforts, and the amount of hard work and energy his entire team spent for the past few years to make it a successful mission.
But, we live in such a society where a man crying becomes a controversy and people post thousands of tweets about it.
I’d just like to remind you that crying has nothing to do with gender. Tears don’t know the language of female or male. Emotions don’t have names. Feelings are not feminine. So let’s just remove the blindfold and see that crying is normal for everyone. Venting one’s emotions is good, and men should vent their emotional disturbances more often. It will surely make an impact on their lives.
And while judging K Sivan, let’s remember that he has done a lot for India, and he will keep on working with his team and make the impossible possible by launching Chandrayaan -3.