The Most Courageous Thing A Person Can Do
A short postscript.
If you’re anything like me, you grew up with stories of courage that gave you goosebumps:
the boy who stood on the burning deck,
Abhimanyu’s final and desperate fight in the chakravyuha,
the musicians who continued to play calmly as the Titanic went down.
One thing they all had in common was that showing bravery required certain death. (The Param Vir Chakra, given to the greatest act of valour shown by an Indian soldier, can only be won posthumously.)
It is only in recent years that I’ve begun to think of the heroism of ordinary acts:
the manual scavenger who defies death regularly as he burrows himself into a hole in the ground,
the woman who has to endure the taunts of boys and men on the daily bus trip to work,
and the farmer who has no choice but to take his own life in order to save his family’s, and his family, who have no choice but to fight on.
It’s been a few days since I published the Kumbalangi Test essay. I proposed that in order for a film to pass the test, a man in it:
a) should speak to someone
b) about any vulnerability
c) other than anger or victimhood.
I will follow up with a separate post about the reactions to the essay. For now, however, this is a short postscript about a tangential issue.
So while I was thinking about angst-ing about the precise wording of the Kumbalangi Test, I wondered: what is the most courageous thing a man can do? I thought of several things, including the bits you’ve already read. There’s more below.
a soldier forced into battle and doing his best to fight,
a boy standing up to bullying,
a man saving a person from danger at high personal risk,
a woman speaking up for the oppressed when doing so can cost her her place in society and,
a woman speaking up against or protesting injustice, to people who are her oppressors.
If we were to do even one of these things, we would have exhibited great courage. I think we all know this.
But there is one thing that demands a lot more courage than normally acknowledged. It is this: being vulnerable.
By vulnerability I’m not referring to the state of being vulnerable/weak/open to attack in a particular area, as in “the ship was vulnerable to air strikes” or “this pan is vulnerable to rust”.
No, what I mean by vulnerability refers to the stuff that happens between and among humans. When one person is prepared to say, hey I can be hurt by your reaction to what I’m going to say, but I’m nevertheless going to open up.
A casual Google search brings this up:
“Being vulnerable in a relationship is letting your guard down to connect in a raw and open manner… It means putting your heart on the line, even if that means heartache.”
Here are some examples of vulnerability as extreme courage.
A reticent father tells his faraway son, “I want to talk to you everyday because it is important for me to hear your voice everyday. It doesn’t have to be for long.”
A newly-wed man can tell his wife, “the truth is, I’m scared that I won’t perform in bed and you will think me less of a man.”
A parent tells his child, “I screwed up when you were a kid because I had many assumptions that turned out to be wrong. Can we make a fresh start when you’re ready?”
A man confesses to his childhood classmate, “I mismanaged my finances. Can you give me some advice on how to get back on track?”
Because such acts require a great deal of courage, being vulnerable can be very hard work. And even then we need one more ingredient: trust. It is tough for any of us to be vulnerable if the person we are being vulnerable to is not in a position to receive our honesty. A long time ago, a friend of mine opened up about being gay to me and a bunch of other people. We thought we were being supportive, but I wonder if we did or said enough.
There is a reason why the Kumbalangi Test celebrates vulnerability in films. Masculine narratives focus a lot on physical acts of bravery. How amazing would it be if we all realised that vulnerability is courage as well? When we celebrate male characters being vulnerable in reel life, we can learn from them, and get cracking on vulnerability in real life as well.
The Kumbalangi Test is therefore, not just a test of healthy masculinity, but also of courage.
p.s. I’m doing a series of videos on the Kumbalangi Test, including one on Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), which I will share soon. A respected writer asked me why I didn’t base the test on that film. The ‘ZNMD test’, she said, “has a certain ring to it”. She continued, “I’m not even sure how to pronounce ‘Kumbalangi’.”
Should we call it the ‘Kumbalangi ZNMD Test’? Lol.
But seriously, tell me if it’s a good or bad idea.