Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota

Mard ko Dard Nahi Hota…When statements like these were first quoted, I guess it did make a lot of sense but with time the usage turned out to be something really different from what it was intended. I believe that world is a place where everything is relative be it equality, liberty, civility or anything else. Even pain is relative, the same pain or dard that man doesn’t feel or I should rather say the pain that a man doesn’t face.

By “mard ko dard nahi hota” one must have meant that what a man/male feels is not pain in real sense. If one would reframe and complete the statement it would make much more sense, it must have been “mard ko dard nahi hota, aurat ko hota hai. I know the dictionary meaning of pain is ' highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury or mental suffering or distress' but the pain I am taking about is completely relative.

I do not wish to make my brah, bros, dudes and bhai feel the pain of a fellow bro switching side so I would systemically explain my deduction with examples to relate to. It all started when God created earth with Adam and Eve. Eve had apple and then God relegated Eve, representing woman to a lesser social status and said she'll endure painful childbirth.
Picture this, you took birth and your father asks you to stay away from his car. But you pee inside the car while coming back from hospital; you know old times, kahi bhi kabhi bhi , but wait! Isn’t it still kabhi bhi kahi bhi for many guys, anyways, you peed in the car and now your father is pissed . He curses you to be unofficial servant of the house and that’s it, you are doomed for life. This is basically how women were destined to be in pain for eternity and the funny thing is that if you Google the meaning of pain it uses ‘she’s in great pain’ as example.

How bad is pain of child birth, you may ask? It is equivalent to 20 bones being crushed at the same time. You see this is worse because besides intense muscle tightening throughout abdomen and, sometimes, entire torso and pelvic area,one may feel pressure on back, perineum, bladder and bowels and all of it combines to ratchet up pain. Labour pain usually comes on gradually and it builds up in stages. Increasing intense pain is eclipsed by major pressure as one feels a great urge to bear down and push the baby out. For better understanding visualise yourself during your board examination. You are sitting on the most uncomfortable seat, the questions are getting tougher and tougher, you are writing and writing but you have no idea what, you are restless and tensed and to add to all this you have a person right over your head screaming “likh, likh na, likhte raho, likho likho “. Amidst this I am sure you would certainly “deliver” good result but would that be as comfortable and easy as it is in reality. This is childbirth and the pain for you.

Bas? Itne se kya hota hai? Hume to roz ladaiyo me chot lagti hai!! Kal hi bike stunt me gir gaya Happy uska kya?
I know bro, with Arnab Goswami’s blessings, these thoughts would have cropped up in your brain. To this I would like to move on to the menstruation and the pain (Dysmenorrhea). I am not talking about the pain of the entire social stigma that one has to face as a woman going through her menstrual cycle. Here I would restrict myself to the physical pain because my bro Happy also faces social stigma for doing bike stunts.
John Guillebaud, professor of reproductive health at University College London revealed that research shows period pain can be as “bad as having a heart attack”.  Now imagine yourself sticking to your schedule with a heart attack. A heart attack that has a cycle of 28 days and it stays for 5 days and in some cases it causes heart attack if it gets delayed.

Itni problem hai to doctor ko dikhana chahiye na!! Humari galti thodi na hai…
There you go sir. They should go to doctor but you must know this. Professor John Guillebaud says and I quote, “Men don’t get it and it hasn’t been given the centrality it should have. I do believe it’s something that should be taken care of, like anything else in medicine.” You see, besides the medical term dysmenorrhea there is no such treatment for the pain. Here is an interesting statistic, Men wait an average of 49 minutes before being treated for abdominal pain. For women, the wait is 65 minutes for the same symptoms. It’s thought that this is because women are seen as exaggerating pain and being ‘dramatic’ due to sexist stereotypes, while men are listened to and believed when they express the same pain and symptoms. Indeed, the word ‘hysterical’, itself stems from hystericus, meaning ‘of the womb’, indelibly linking how society has linked wombs with overreaction, incredibility and instability.

This is just a glimpse of the pain that a woman faces just for being woman. This is something that every woman has to bear no matter how rich or how poor she might be. If I move deeper and start mentioning the day to day issues that woman has to face then it would be a never ending saga. Eve teasing, domestic violence, honour killing, dowry violence, forced prostitution, rape and the fear of being a potential victim, acid attacks etc. are well known problems that cause mental and physical pain. Look for terms like stoning, flogging, genital mutilation and breast ironing; and you may feel the pain a woman has to go through.

Pain may or may not be having universal parameters to measure. It differs from one person to another. But the underlying fact is that we all are human and if we, male, fail to empathise with woman around us then we would fail big time and trust me at that time sirf dard hoga, mard nahi.