My Experiments with Manhood

It feels funny to say the least. Having decided to write. Anyhow, there is a story that deserves to be said. I have never put it down on paper and I think it is forcing its way through. I think I'll finally tell the story of the when I rediscovered crying. It takes effort trying to force things out, but sometimes it is worth it.

The story starts with my music teacher. A man of about 30 called Mr. Madhukar Malvea who taught me the guitar. We in school called him Sir. Or maybe the story begins with the guitar. The first guitar I had was a Hawaiian guitar converted into a Spanish. There is a thing called the nut one has to take out of the Hawaiian to convert it into a pathetic Spanish guitar. The strings were an inch above the fret board and pressing them down would hurt like mad. One day we people, a gang of about four who used to learn from him, got a scolding from him for not practicing too hard and that touched some deep part of me. That day I played like there was no tomorrow and I overdid it. My fingers were small and soft and my ring finger bled. I was twelve.

That did it. I remember Madhukar Sir hugging me and later dressing my finger, feeling terribly guilty and telling me it was absolutely fine if I practiced less and that I should have told him when it hurt. Then finger somehow didn't hurt very much. It was numb long before it bled. But I remember that some strange bond developed that evening. Sir always had this soft corner for me since then. Add the respect and the love I had, and he was among the people I felt closest to. Ever since, I have been driven along my quest to play the guitar by the way Madhukar Sir played it. It is still the same. I still have to play it like he did. The sad part is that I don't remember anything that he played or the way he played it. I just remember it used to be really good. When I was in the eighth standard, Madhukar Sir had an accident. He had a massive head injury and was in a coma for a long time. In the end he survived. He lost his memory for some time and he could not play the guitar as well. The following year he had some kind of a relapse and meningitis. This time he died.

Seeing him dead felt funny, maybe strange. I had unconsciously always associated death with trauma. When I saw him, however, it looked the peaceful sight I had ever seen. He looked divine except for the cotton in his nostrils. People hugged me and wet my shirt. My mother cried. I somehow didn't. It was not like me trying to put on some show of strength. It just didn't come. I think I did not believe the whole masquerade in the first place. I didn't know if he was actually permanently dead. I actually doubted at one point whether I really adored the pin-up of a music teacher I thought I worshipped. Many a time I had even tried to force myself to cry. I eventually couldn't.

Often after that I felt something between funny and sad and sick and heavy in my chest, but only at times. About four months later I had a stupid argument with my parents on one of those juvenile topics I now forget, something like the phone, or friends or studies or something. Now, I used to go out to the terrace whenever I got thoroughly pissed at life. Thoroughly pissed I was, so up I went. And I cried. I was crying for some time when some part of the brain floated above the whole scene and sensed something ridiculous about it. I stopped.

This was funny and not just because the reasons were trivial and not worth crying for. I calculated and found that the last time I had cried - and I remember this because that was the biggest dry macho period in my life - was in the fourth standard. This was the end of the ninth. The glorious period was now over. I suddenly knew that funny-sad-sick feeling I used to get all this while for what it was. I felt that lump in the throat I had read about in stories. I felt chocked with some bulb I could not gulp down or soothe with deep breaths. It was there. All I could do was either ignore it and go about normal life, or force it out. On its own, it seemed to have decided to stay right where it was, not letting me breathe. A moment of calm thinking, and I took the disinterested decision one takes for pimples and scabs growing back on scars. I didn't like it, and I wanted it out.

I closed my eyes and thought about it all, about life and things… about Madhukar Sir. After this, it was all easy. I just sat there, tears running down. I was strangely detached from the whole scene. Crying after such a long time was almost interesting. I remember there was no major change in expression, no loud sounds, just tears… the lip quivers though. I never knew I could cry that much. The floor was wet when I stopped. My nose was stuffy. I felt good. It felt light. I got up and took a deep breath, and went down to look at the mirror.

In hindsight it was simple, I had known for a moment what I wanted to do and had gone ahead and done it. I felt more like a man than I ever felt in life.