Robi Won; When Shall We?

“Ei Je, Baiji Je!”

Laughter erupted as one of the guys in the group commented. This was a disaster. Perhaps Robi wasn’t prepared for this, or was he? This wasn’t happening for the first time with him.

“Ki go, ektu naach dekhabe na?”, perhaps another guy commented with a smirk, nastiness clear in his eyes. Another ripple of laughter, louder this time, was heard again.

Robi stood there shattered.

It was his first day of college and in disguise of calling him a Baiji, a female dancer, those boys refused to acknowledge that he was a man. In plain English, he was being bullied; his gender identity was being dragged in to humiliate him. In a class full of guys, he would be suppressed from now on always as ‘he wasn’t a man really’ while others were.

He thought to himself, “Not again.”

But, to his sheer despondence, it was happening again.

This boy with long curly hair, soft-spoken nature, and a stark tenderness went down his memory lane. Those were his early days of school — — he was a mere kid back then. From his very childhood, Robi had overflowing love for literature; his teenage years saw him write poems that pierced souls. He was a true bard.

However, his classmates didn’t seem to love him for who he was. Let alone encouraging and inspiring the poet in him, his classmates bullied him. Bullied him because he wasn’t ‘manly’ enough.

“‘Manly’ enough? And what’s that supposed to mean?”, many a time Robi thought to himself.

As it turns out, perhaps for his classmates, prudishness and manliness didn’t go hand in hand. ‘Men’ were supposed to be ‘bold’, ‘valiant’, ‘sporty’ and what not!

‘Men’ should be out in the fields doing ‘manly’ things like playing sports with fellow men; to them perhaps writing poems was typical of ‘lonely housewives’.

In their eyes, Robi was not a man. And that’s why they asked for proof. He reminisced that time (and countless others) when his friends asked him to jump ‘high enough’ to prove that indeed he was a ‘man’ and not a woman or a trans man. His years at school mutilated his soul. His classmates were lewd and their discussions involved obscenity. Robi’s sensitive, intellectual, and morally upright nature didn’t allow him to take part in these lecherous gossips and as a result, he drifted away.

He was quite different from his classmates; perhaps they didn’t quite get his genius and for that very reason bullied him. Bullied him so that he felt miserable, and that’s pretty much what has been happening since the Big Bang: a group imposing themselves over individuals who in their schemes didn’t fit in. Robi’s wasn’t the first.

Sick and tired of the daily harassment, indecency, and narrow-mindedness of both his classmates (boys) and the neglect of his teachers (men again) Robi gave up eventually. He dropped out of school and never walked back in ever again. By this time, Robi had grown to be a rebel. A rebel against many and especially gender stereotypes.

Gradually his fear of his contemporaries not accepting him as a man (given his temperament) faded and it was time for college. Perhaps his expectations were high, but were they? He just expected tolerance; he just wanted to feel included. Was that too much to ask for?

This wasn’t happening for the first time, he thought yet another time.

Another round of laughter and Robi jumped back into reality; perhaps something even more perverted was attributed to him this time. All for his appearance.

Robi had had enough; “This is not where I belong.”, Robi thought to himself.

The dystopic first day showed him the reality. And he never walked back to college again. Robi had one thing very clear in his mind: he wouldn’t yield to the unjust demands of the society.

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Now, maybe you would ask, who was Robi?

Robi was the first Nobel Laureate of India, Rabindranath Tagore.

These incidents of Tagore’s life are referenced from the book ‘Rabindranath at Mangpu’ (‘মংপুতে রবীন্দ্রনাথ’) written by poet and novelist Maitreyi Devi, protegee of Rabindranath Tagore.

Such are the shackles of patriarchy; it feeds on hate. First, it oppressed women who spoke up, then it started oppressing men who wouldn’t conform.

Men who would love men, men who didn’t want to identify as men anymore, men who were not men at birth, and the list of people who were oppressed by patriarchy goes on. This society intoxicated with the filth of patriarchy crushes each voice that wouldn’t give in.

We don’t know for sure, but perhaps the day Tagore was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature, his bullies were silenced forever. Each person who questioned his masculinity and tried to reduce him to a subject of crude humor, ultimately had all their attacks backfired.

In the end, Robi stood invincible. In the end, it was Robi who rose to prominence and not those men for whom one way of flaunting their own virility was the same as diminishing someone else’s.

This pride month, let us pledge to fight for equal rights for every human regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Let us pledge to fight for every community and individual that is being oppressed. Let us pledge to retain ourselves irrespective of society’s countless attempts to make us oblivious of ourselves. Let us pledge to make the world more tolerant and inclusive.

The world has bled for too long, and only love can put an end to this.

Rebel;

All lovers that ever existed will rebel someday;

I believe.

Rebel for love;

Rebel for peace.

And when they do, tales of butterflies, flowers,

Bird chirps, sunshine, showers,

And rainbows will be told, till the world ends.