Dear Men!

I know many of you will not be aware of the fact that there is "International Men's Day" too. Yes, tomorrow, on 19th November, there is International Men's Day.  I extend my heartfelt wishes to you all on this day. I will also take an opportunity to share few of my honest thoughts on this occasion.

I don't know if anyone has told you this, but you are just beautiful the way you are. I think the word "handsome" is not that apt to describe you. You don't need to be 6 feet tall, with "Johnny Bravo" physique or have those 6-pack abs. All I want you to be is fit and confortable in your shape. 

I understand that you too face so much pressure to look decent. But trust me, decency comes from behviour and not looks. And yes you can think improving on that front.

I think this whole concept of "masculinity" has done more harm than any benefit to you. Societal pressures, I believe, have contributed to boost your false ego. And in all this, it is conveniently forgotten that you too are human beings. But no, you don't even have a liberty to the basic human emotion, to cry, you have to be strong whatever be the situation. You are never given an opportunity to pour your hearts out. I guess that can make any person insensitive. You have forgetten how to respond to a situation. You end up reacting to it making things worse for you and the other persons as well. You are conditioned to suppress your emotions and that at times it breeds escapist tendencies in you. I will like you to consciously undo such conditioning and embrace your emotions as they flow in.

Your roles in our lives is always reduced to breadwinners, ATM machines who will provide us cash when we need, be there to protect us come what may. Though you are capable of all these things, I believe, you can do much more than this. I have seen you giving love and care to us. I have seen you doing best in cooking and all other so called "women's job". When gender biases kick in, its injustice done to you and us alike. Lets try to break these biases.

Also as mentioned earlier, you don't let out whats on your mind freely and frankly. That puts you in a potential threat arising from various mental illnesses. Your inabilty to express at times, leads you been taken for granted. Also some of you may fail to open up about the bad things that are happening to you and end up suffering alone from pain in silence. There is no need for all this. Just free your bottled-up emotions. And yes smoking and boozing are no ways out! Do all that stuff, but don't do it to run away from your thoughts and emotions.

Also, don't do things just because society expects you do them, do them only because you want to do them. Pursue your dreams and passion. Don't kill them for your parents or sacrifice it for someone else. 

Last but not the least, be self-empowering, confident and passionate. Trust me that adds to your beauty. Never forget to wear that warm smile. Just try to be who you are, that will make you more humane and organic. Wishing you loads of love and support on this International Men's Day. Power to you!

Cyclic Puke!

Again it is that part of the day and that point in life when you feel like doing nothing, not even existing.

Whole bunch of festivities, colours, light, fun and frolic is around you but these fail to please you. You feel utterly helpless and hopeless. And to add to the agony, there is untimely rains. To sum up, you feel odd, ugly, old and out of place. Absolutely nothing interests you, not even the sleep. You just want to cry out loud and pour out that venom you have been holding for long. Fuck the world…who cares anyway?

This tingling feeling has been stinking so badly, that now it has become identical to you. You just want to run away, bury that, kill it and overpower it anyway. It is taking toll of every single thing you do or you say. It is as if that Black Dog is coming back to haunt you, tear you apart and squeeze life out of you. And this feeling is becoming recurrent in nature. It has drastically reduced your attention span. You cannot keep yourself engaged even for 10 minutes. You are fast losing interest in everything around you.

Just look at you! You have become so weak and impaired that you constantly need something, someone by your side to make yourself realise what you can do and who you are. You are privileged to have such people around you who make you feel wanted, loved for and cared for. But for how long? Even that has some limit. These are by default good people. They are going to be there for you. They want to bring best in you. But don’t you think you are trying their patience?

It is not that you do not trust them. In fact you trust them more than you trust yourself. Problem is you fail miserably to trust what they say about you. And it is not that you disagree with them on what they tell you about yourself. Deep down you too have known yourself and your analysis of yourself matches with them. You just fail to believe in yourself. These people show undying faith and belief in you and you fail to do the same to yourself. And this makes no sense.

HE was right when he said, “Your problem is within you. You are fighting inside yourself with your own-self. Sort that and you will do wonders! Problem is not that you are capable of thinking, problem is you overdo that. You think of people, situations and outcome. And not just think, you overthink! Stop doing that. You are in your prime time of your life; you are playing your prime overs. You are capable of doing great things in life but all you are doing is overthinking and by doing this you are killing that part in you which is your core, your identity.”

That was an eye-opener. He put so much of his effort and valuable time to convince you this. Someone had to show you that mirror. And again this brings you back to where you started. You know what your problem is, you know what solutions are, you know what you should be doing but you just like to be that stone…..that stone which lay as it has been since ages, wearing away atom by atom and doing nothing. It is evident enough to show that you are not at peace with you; you are not comfortable in your own skin. You are not able to confront it and so you are running away from.

What should be done to tackle this is for you to decide. No one has panacea for it. Dig it little deeper may be you will find what you are looking for. Face it gracefully. You have been in this place before too, been there done that. Just don’t expect that every time you are in this shit, someone will come to rescue you. No one can ever help you in this. You have to liberate yourself from this and just believe that you can withstand this as well. 

This too shall pass. Stay strong, you got this!