India is a nation of Mama’s boys turned wife-beaters. A combination of the child refusing to grow up and the Mom not letting him. Raja Beta never actually becomes royalty but never stops being beta.
A land of a billion kings strutting about with no clothes on. A man is the most honest representation of himself only in complete anonymity or complete intimacy. YouTube comments and closed bedrooms then become the most telling scorecard of bipedal evolution. Of how low you can stoop when there are no witnesses or consequences.

Most Indian men have not been able to own up the spine nature has bestowed upon them and the privilege granted simply by the act of being born. Such a wretched existence, never to be told you are wrong or that things can be done differently. Never growing past your immediate surroundings, you eventually start believing your own myth. The only other option is venturing into the great unknown, the vast possibilities the world had to offer but are taboo coz Mama feels you will get lost, get corrupted or worse; grow up.
Mama can’t be blamed of course, this is her Stockholm, perpetuating the system that never let her be more than a wife and a Mom. Despised as a kid, exploited in her youth and worshiped in her old age for surviving all the bullshit hurled at her earlier. But she keeps giving; perhaps hoping that if not love than guilt finally topples the mountain of hate.
Mom can’t be around forever though. The Mom finally makes way for the wife with no orientation course in between. Once again you have a woman in your life who provides for everything, even the one thing Mom never could and wouldn’t even like talking about. And you can’t wrap your head around the entitlement. Something you need badly but you also have complete dominion over, it never happens in the outside world, in the free market driven by demand and supply. Like an ape who breaks his favourite toy and then cries over it. She makes you hate yourself by simply existing. You are trying to beat your own insecurities out of her. It never works. But it continues.
Most of us would be aware of at least one case of domestic violence among friends, relatives or neighbours. ‘Par ye to unka problem hai,’ once again turning apathy into a virtue. Years ago, I had written for a campaign called Bell Bajao aimed precisely at these passive bystanders. But in the end the woman is on her own. If she makes it out with some individuality left it would be her own triumph, aided perhaps by education and technology. All systems are designed primarily for their own perpetuity, not the well-being of its members. Society changes at a geological timescale but the individual can rise above the primordial muck, it only takes a lifetime and a lifetime is all we have.
- Punit Pania
