This is the famous song from Disney's Mulan which, to me and some of my friends, had been worthy of a heated debate over dozens of cup of tea on a fiery summer evening.
We debated over how the song portrayed a biased view of worthlessness of girls over boys. A few reasonable souls tried to explain how the whole plot was designed towards dismantling this very biased view, but some of us were too agitated to listen to anything sane and went on saying that the song should never have been created in the first place.
What does it take to make a man, though? I asked myself. Sure, the song went into rhetorics while describing the qualities of a true man, but was there any scope of ever witnessing them in our everyday life? I was not sure.
Then an unusual incident took place one day.
In those years I used to travel to my place of work by local train. These trains had two coaches reserved for women. Usually they were very crowded and noisy. So I used to travel in unreserved coaches.
These trains usually carried people who travelled on a daily basis to their places of work. So we generally knew each other by faces. But I did not interact with my co-passangers who were mostly men and used to talk and debate among themselves. I had made it a point to listen to music all the way by using headphones.
One day while I was thus travelling, two girls boarded the train and came to sit in the row in front of me. They were an unusual sight as they were white Caucasians. They were dressed like local young women, still their foreign look attracted people's eyes.
The seats in which they sat were facing me. So I could see them clearly. I knew that there was an NGO in a nearby place which had an international collaboration for social work. These girls must be heading there, I thought.
In this coach, there were some youths who looked like they were going to work in a factory or in the fields. They had been talking quite impudently all the way.
These boys came and sat in the empty seats beside these two white girls. They started passing comments and touching them inappropriately. The girls looked like they would burst in tears at any moment. They were so traumatised that they could not shout or get up from their seats.
I was stunned to see that so many men and a few women present in the coach turned a blind eye to this whole incident! Not even one of them cared to pay a heed to what was happening there.
I could not stand it any more.
I stood up and shouted, "Don't you dare touch them!"
I kept on shouting. First, in English, to assure the girls that there was someone standing up for them, and then in the local dialect.
All on a sudden, the men around me seemed to have woken up from a deep slumber! They started to shout at those youths and threatened them with dire consequences if they did not stop immediately.
The youths seemed frightened. They had not expected such a reaction from these people. They got up and went to another part of the coach.
The girls were tearful and thanked me again and again. I was too ashamed to look into their eyes. I could not forgive myself for not standing up for them a bit earlier!
I went down at my destination and found myself in the company of a woman who had been sitting in the same coach a few seats away from me.
This woman had clearly followed me and caught up with me.
Walking side by side with me, she said, "Didi (means elder sister), you are quite a man!"
I could not believe my own ears. The word she had used for 'man' was a strong word in the local dialect and therefore, was all the more meaningful!
I thought of my outside appearance. A young woman, hardly five feet tall, with small and delicate features. I did not even have the sturdy features that might resemble a man!
"Why do you say that?" I asked her.
"Because you could speak out where all others were afraid to say anything", she said.
Then I realized what it actually takes to make a man out of a human, be it a boy or a girl.
It is courage. It is strength of mind.
It is the ability to stand up for others.
In that sense, 'man' is a word without a gender based meaning.
What It Takes To Be A Man
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SummerForest
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