Short Essay: The Plight of Man

It was not the first time that he came home angry, and the very hideous ways and unpleasant looks of his wife and children enraged him further. It was getting really very difficult to hold back the gush of emotions, instigating from everything be it the cacophonic cutlery or the hastily approaching feet, that could drown the whole family at any moment. He kept his nerves under control with great effort. And then one of his boys happened to drop down a water filled steel-glass; it unhinged him by shattering whatever calm was left in him. His hand impetuously hit the guilty, and his lips produced a ranting that was well-known in the house. This extreme outburst was followed by less violent cathartic measures taken by others: one cried; the other complained; and another inwardly cursed the authority.

There is not a single house where such instances do not happen regularly. Almost all of us have been witness to and victims of such episodes. Embarking on a satisfactory explanation is difficult as there is no one cause of such unsettling behaviour; however, the closets one is the financial burden that a man is liable to bear. For centuries man has been lifting the family burden; even when woman shares his load, the prime contribution is usually made by the man.

I was not raised to be a burden. I was raised to be independent, to be self-governing. However, as soon as I started supporting myself, it made me first anxious and then angry. I was angry at my family, at my parents, at my siblings, at the world, at the prices, at the needs, at the luxuries, at the mortality of money and its half-life. I was not tending a family. My struggle was finite and personal, and could be regulated by little effort of self-discipline. Making money in the cyber world obviously did not break my bones, but it did break my heart. Putting in so much effort, for so many hours, for so many days but to get so little felt more like a loss than a gain. And the sense of achievement and fulfillment that the salary bought did not even last a fortnight, for the hard-earned money is easily vaporised. Worse, you cannot complain of being your own bearer!

Now let me step into the shoes of a man who was raised to be the benefactor of a whole family: so many mouths to feed and only two hands to earn. He was treated with a number of stimuli: confidence, ego, encouragement, honour, liberty and pride so that one day he could be easily bridled in the family cart from which he would not be liberated even after his retirement. We feel so sympathetic towards mothers because their job never leaves them alone; we seldom think of fathers whose job never lets them live. The knowledge of being bound, bound for life, is annoying and defeating and demoralising.

Prometheus, who was accused of stealing fire for the greater good of mankind, was made to suffer on a daily basis: there was pain but also the torment of anticipating when and how the pain comes. Knowledge is the harbinger of grief: he knew that the one whom he feeds on his blood would never be satiated; everyday the bird would come to eat his liver afresh. However, if the tragedy of the greatest benefactor of all mankind seems less relevant, here is Sisyphus, who perfectly manifests modern man’s eternally doomed life. Sisyphus was condemned to roll a rock to the top of the mountain so that it could roll back to the bottom, and later it could be again pushed up to the top of the mountain. He did it all day, every day, throughout the year, all his life. The never-ending cycle of home-office-home enervates the very essence of life: even working all life cannot put an end to the demands of a family that are only meant to increase. Since men are raised to take the rock up the mountain only to see it falling back again, a mere waste of toil and time, they suffer when they make money, and they suffer more when they do not make any as it is the very purpose of their being.

Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus suggests that accepting the absurdity of human life can make life happy or (should I say) less tormenting; however, the layman has more to do with experiences than expressions, and seldom cares to reinterpret his lot or to even reconsider the ill thoughts that make his life bitter and his heart bruised. Hence, the poor life of the poor man keeps tormenting his soul, blemishing his face and poisoning his tongue, and when he has no better way to vent out the augmenting agony, he spits all his venom out on the very family he is “cursed” to serve. They are the reason behind his suffering, and they just cannot sit and enjoy the benefits of his hard-earned income: they must suffer as he suffers from dawn to dawn. Even those who are sitting and watching their families being fed by their wives suffer; they suffer not because they are working their way up like Sisyphus but because they are chained to the rock like Prometheus for eternity. They do not have to make any effort but to see helplessly the drudgery of life eating away the little hope and life left in me, without giving them least sense of fulfillment.

Homo sapiens can thrive only by breeding (“the survival of the fittest” in terms of species is no more applicable on us). A man, even today, is not expected to leave off the idea of familydom – kingdom of the modern man – and to die as a spinster. Unlike an old maid whose plain face or poor brought-up is to be blamed for an unfulfilled life, a man no matter how meagre his resources are is always better off with a wife or two wives or even three wives, as long as he can maintain his peace of mind. Man’s animosity is for the wife who brings with her never ending troubles that are so intricately and torturously weaved together that even the idea of getting out rarely stems. Physical, verbal and sexual violence are some of the ways a man opts to vent out the aggression he gathers in the process of running the circle of life, his life and the lives affixed with his life. I am, instead of justifying violence, trying to make sense of it.

One of the most frequent complaints that reach our ears is from those working women who are carrying their own burden and contributing a chunk of their income in the running of family affairs. Since earning through wits is hardest of all, they feel cheated as the wedlock they entered never eased them off these liabilities. Physical chores that might have been performed by a woman while acting as a housewife save a lot of trouble because, firstly, they fulfil the woman as she meets her social role and, secondly, all physical efforts are cathartic and therapeutic. A woman wants to be at ease, at liberty, but the financial burden of the household pulls her back, and she continues to work with greater unease. Even when she works outdoors, the expectations of attending the family never wipes out. Insult is added to injury when the same job pays the woman less and the man more. The vicious circle of needs is so exhausting that the one who pulls in gets pulled down; hence, the working woman refuses to sympathise with the working man. The friction between genders and their assigned roles grows fearsome. Women call men selfish, and men call them back mean.

Humankind, both men and women, have achieved so much that today the world abounds with healthy children, improved crops, preserved food, permanent shelter, convenient transportation and all that is far beyond basic human needs. Since no conscious mind tolerates the mundane physical effort,humans made machines that in return made their work easier. They earn to get things that they do not actually need but need to show-off. They expand their living spaces, extend their needs and manipulate their desires while the struggle needed to maintain these newly-bought, well-equipped, luxuriously-furnished nests also augmented. Now they live in a world where they can choose to either suffer at the hands of those who are better off than them or they can choose to make others suffer by being the patron of success. “Survival of the fittest” no longer alludes to the biological but to the social survival in a highly competitive system where the marathon is won by that Sisyphus who works all day to gather the largest heap of rubbish.

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