Tell Me You Love Me

Can you do that if you're a man?

My oldest friend, a woman who’s known me for 11,173 days, sent me this Instagram video today:

drchatterjee

A post shared by @drchatterjee

In a clip from a conversation with Dr Rangan Chatterjee, Nihal Arthanayake says:

I think men find it very difficult to tell other men, I love you.

What is stopping every man listening to this podcast, watching this podcast, from going, I miss you. I love you.

Men have bigger social groups in their 20s than women. By the time men get into their 50s, they’re nonexistent. I wonder if some of that is to do with the fact [that] we just don’t pick up the phone and say, I miss you.

This is a theme I’ve often spoken about on The Seen and the Unseen, of course, but watching this I realised that I’ve also never said those precise words, I love you, to a male friend.

The Loneliness of the Indian Man

My episode with Nikhil Taneja called The Loneliness of the Indian Man is the second-most downloaded episode of The Seen and the Unseen. (No 1 on that list is The Loneliness of the Indian Woman, which tells you that everyone is lonely.) The central theme of that episode is this: men are also victims of patriarchy. We are trapped in a role assigned for us: of being a provider, of being macho, of never showing emotion.

The tragedy with this is that most of don’t even know it. Women have frames with which to understand the world — there is enough feminist literature and discourse online, to begin with. But most men don’t even know that they have a problem. It’s unseen.

Nikhil revealed that in his time as a teacher, he would ask his students the question, What is your story? It was a great unlocking mechanism within each gathering. You can present the sanitised version of your story, as you want the outside world to see it; or you can tell your truth, as you yourself see it. And sometimes, as you tell your story to the world for the first time, you realise you are facing up to it for the first time yourself.

It’s remarkable how much we don’t know about ourselves.

I’ll ask you to sit back now and ponder what is the story that you tell yourself about your life. Are you happy with that story? Does any part of it ring false?

Male friendships are a casualty of this. I have often envied women for how deep their friendships can be, and the sisterhoods that can form between them. When men speak to each other, our conversations are often so shallow. Did you watch the cricket? How’s the stock market doing? What’s the wifi password?

A few times, I have recorded an episode of The Seen and the Unseen with an old friend and realised I hardly knew them before this. The format of the show, in its current avatar, opens us up. The friend I mentioned at the start of this post was struck by my episode with Chandrahas Choudhury, for example. She has witnessed my entire friendship with Chandrahas. I didn’t know you guys were such close friends, she said. I replied, Neither did I.

This isn’t just about male friendships. It works across generations. In the last decade of my dad’s life, I would visit him once every few months and stay for a few days. One time, perhaps on one my last visits, as I put my luggage into the waiting cab, he made a vague gesture that was basically him offering to hug me — or even asking for a hug. We hugged. It was awkward — and it was important. And yet, in that moment, it was more awkward than it was important.

And yes, I spoke about my father in this recent post as well. I suspect I’d be thinking of him less if I’d spoken to him more.

Intentionality

Another theme I’ve explored in my recent episodes has been intentionality. We move through too much of life in default mode, letting things happen to us, not examining the world, not examining ourselves. I have often asked guests about the things they are intentional about. I have tried to work on my own intentionality.

For example, I try to be more intentional about my days. I keep quoting Annie Dillard: How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. I am intentional about shaping them according to a related dictum I took to heart recently: How we do the small things is how we do the big things.

We need to be more intentional about relationships as well. We live our lives trapped in the main character syndrome, behaving as if we are the center of the universe, and everyone else is a prop, merely instrumental to our purposes. Intellectually, I agree with Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” But do I act like that in my life? Isn’t it impossible to?

I try, to whatever extent I can, to be intentional about my friendships — including with men. Most of them get this. In fact, I don’t know whether we get this because we are friends or we are friends because we get this.

While talking about my introversion, I sometimes quote Sartre: Hell is other people. But the deeper truth is that without those other people, we would be in hell. Things: they will lose their value once you are used to them. Experiences: you will forget everything as memory fades; it is inevitable; and then what pulao can you make with experiences?

People: people are the whole damn thing.

Aftermath

To experiment with my new sensitive soul in the 30 seconds before it vanished, I went on Whatsapp and told a few male friends I loved them, adding the Instagram link from the start of this post. On the Everything is Everything Whatsapp group, I said this to Ajay and Vaishnav. Ajay’s response:

:-) yes

Sigh. To use modern jargon, looks like I'll have to do all the emotional labour here!

In the moment, of course, I made the excuse for him that as an economist, he would argue that his revealed preferences made words irrelevant. ‘Revealed preferences’ is also a great pretext for spouses not expressing their love for each other often enough. Nothing illustrates this economic concept better than this great song from Fiddler on the Roof":

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Illlustrations by Simahina.

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