Men Without Women

Lately, I have become a bibliophile, without knowing the meaning of it in the first place. This year had to be my most productive year of reading throughout my existence, so far. I still remember the day, it started mid year in june. I had taken a book purchased almost eight years back (half-read), for reading on the roads. The title was “Love will follow - Why the Indian marriage is burning”. Yes, the title was catchy and I was a bachelor back then and I wanted to do a research on the same; So I bought and read and thought I understood. But what book can teach you better than a wife! So here I am five years into marriage and wobbling on the tight rope with a stick on my hand for balancing through. 

When you are lonely, books play the best supporting role. That’s how I ended up with a pile of books in the past 5 months or so. The count could rise to 30+. Yes and the book completion rate is an overwhelming above 70%!! Yes, even my eyes cant believe what I’ve typed in! Another book that caught my eye was “Men without Women” by Murakami. So I had to steal the title for this post but I can subtly manage it as “influenced”. 
                                          
                                          

This book, follows the lives of six lonely men deprived of their women either due to death, betrayal, infidelity , other circumstances and their fear of commitment. Read in a time, I could relate very much to my own life, I found it beautifully poetic and melancholy. Even in their lives, women play a part in the only happiness that counts to them. That longing for them, and their fear of commitment put in together an unexplainable feeling, only men without women could possibly relate to. 

So can Men really live without Women? No! Men need them and vice versa. Why do men need women? Apart from the implications shoved in by the society for a respectful living, we, as human beings need someone to share our thoughts, feelings, desires, secrets, passions, lives because we are social beings. Then comes the natural and mutual attraction to the opposite gender if you are straight, luckily. undoubtedly, sex is a big part of our lives, which we hide and shun away, unnecessarily from broad day light.

I tried my hand in living alone as men without women for a brief period of 8 months and failed miserably. I could boast my skill to survive, solitarily and try to erase loneliness from my dictionary. But then, I would be fooling myself and killing myself with depression. Depression is a drug and you can easily get addicted to it. It could persuade you to live with non-organic matters and make you one hell of a poet, writer, reader and plunge you into an ocean of virtuality. The social media clears your way, for a while. But then, you soon realize how you chained yourself to these pillars of non-existence and lost yourself and the key to your liberation.

So men need women, undoubtedly. But are married men and women happy? There are numerous jokes about marriage and the fake existence of happiness after marriage. So I don’t have to prove anything regarding that. Enough had been already said and laughed at. 

So what possible future am I looking at?

Its like, I cant find happiness either way, with or without them.