Growing up, I never really saw or imagined my parents pursuing any hobbies. While I’d pick a new interest every Summer vacation and once when school work took over, the crafts materials, the badminton rackets, all would go inside a box under the bed, gathering dust, they’d just stick to reading books occasionally in the name of their ‘me time’. Every corner of our house usually had boxes of my discarded, forgotten ‘hobbies’ that my mother would pack away. Funnily, when one day she opened a big suitcase of old, stiff used paintbrushes, folders of paintings carefully saved in a folder and an easel, I was surprised to know that my dad used to love painting while he was in college, and gave up on it when family life took over. That was the beginning of me, as a woman, asking and noticing why the men around me were only working at an ‘office’ or running their own business.
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There is no debate about who has it easier in life - men and women, both deal with their own set of struggles. Sadly, the way Indians have lived life till now has largely been dictated by societal terms and norms around us. While the traditional set of values demanded men to be sole bread earners and women to run the house, things today have changed and how. An increase in disposable income, wavering economic climate, increasing family expenses has led to our ‘society’ today being okay with women contributing to household incomes. Women are competing with men in every walk of life, earning, raising kids and doing all that they were told they can’t do, but so many families today continue to pressure their sons to earn more than the wife.
I have friends who’re told by their husbands to do ‘whatever they want’ until that turns into a big business opportunity for them, and then they’re told to ‘take it slow’ as they don’t have to run the house. So while our brave men have been conditioned to earn till they die, what is the price they pay fulfilling a duty they didn’t even choose?
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I grew up with friends, cousins, who played football and cricket with me while growing up. One of them took it seriously and even ended up playing at the state level, only to be told by his father that he was turning 20, and it was time for him to learn the ropes of the family business. A dear friend, who once used to be the lead singer in the school band, is now resorted to just singing for us at every reunion we have. Coming to my dad, now when I look back, I feel the ‘artist’ in him came alive every time he made my school chart papers, my biology homework diagrams, or paint the cover of my school files. While I’d wonder why he is taking so much interest, he’d spend hours painting sheets of paper for me like a happy kid. Sometime I wonder, if more families allowed their boys to pursue dreams, to chase interests and just live their dreams, will their homes turn into happier nests?
It is not a secret that the temperature of every house used to change when dads used to come home from work in the evening. Tired, sometimes frustrated, they’d drop their bag and just demand to be left alone with their TV remote. Well, maybe that’s because they didn’t know what else could they possibly do? Could they pick up a guitar and sing with their kids? Could they paint their lovely wife's cooking? Could they practice some dance moves they learnt in school? Perhaps. Who knows? Maybe they would, if their dreams weren’t crushed under the pressure of earning.
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Thankfully, men today are finding the time to create their joy. I see them learning music, signing up for cooking classes, taking dancing lessons over the weekend, because the society as a whole has changed its perception of being okay with men doing this, as long as they earn. However, sadly, millions of men hailing from lower-income families cannot even dream of letting go of a job because they’re burnt out, or taking it slow during appraisal season because health is suffering. The wife may be earning, and may very well be in the capacity to take care of expenses while the husband takes some time off, but chances are that the pressure around him will be so high, that the overdose of taunts around living off on his wife’s salary will make him not stop working.
Traditional parents like to control their son’s earning and infuse this mentality because they feel the woman might ‘take over’, or how the familial ego cannot be massaged if his wife is earning more. Just look around yourself. How many couple do you know personally, where the wife is maybe running a business or climbing the corporate ladder, while the husband is a make-up artist or a theatre actor? Hardly any, right? Which also brings me to the point that how our men are often forced to choose traditional income methods, and expected to crack the CA exam, take an MBA and work, or best, join the family business.
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I get it. Not everyone can be a Virat Kohli and earn through cricket. Every guy cannot be an SRK and make a Mannat for his family, who will the run the family business if his father has already expanded it. I get all of that, but who decided that our men are ‘asli mard’ only if their net income is higher than their partner’s, that their parents can only eat and spend money earned by the son, that if the son decides to quit the job, and his partner is well equipped to bear all expenses, he’s still failing at life? It is high time that society accepts that most Indian men are paying the bills of their houses and fueling dreams of their families, by burning their own dreams to the ground. Let them live a little, let them laugh a little. Like they say “zindagi aasaan hoti hai, bhoj toh sirf khwahishon ka hai”.