If I Were a Man

If I Were a Man

In one of the hallways of the Vikaasa World School where I am teaching here in Madurai, there is a hand-written copy of Rudyard Kipling’s well-known poems, “If” taped up on the wall. Kipling holds a rather interesting position here in India as he is somewhat scene as half in and half out of the culture, somewhat in a no man’s land. Kipling was indirectly responsible for an early childhood interest in India for me with the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the Jungle Books. I don’t have many memories of my paternal grandfather, but he spent two years in India with the American Air Force during WWII and was involved with the airlifts of supplies over the Himalayas. One of the things I do remember about him, however, is telling me stories about Shericahn, the great tiger of the Jungle Books. Shericahn was the bomb for me as kid. Whenever I needed strength for something, I would call upon the “Shericahn” inside of me to get me through it. Perhaps I still do to a certain extent.

Whether or not his son, my father, picked up an interest in Kipling from him or from some other source, I don’t know. However, Kipling again came up with my father for one of his favorite stories was “The Man Who Would be King,” which was a famous movie starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine as well. In the story and contingent movie, Connery is mistaken to be a god, a role that he eventually comes to play all to willingly, ultimately to his downfall, despite Caine’s warning that he is abusing his power. My dad saw it (or, at least when he communicated it to me) as one of toughest questions, how do we know if it is divine intervention, or ineluctable exigencies that are at play, and when we have responsibility, what are we to do with it (think Caine’s turn as Alfred in the Christian Bale-led Batman movies...)? Though my dad had his shortcomings as a father, he was dedicated to the last day of his life to the Hippocratic Oath that he pledged and lived every day of his life as a cardiovascular thoracic surgeon. For, in a sense, that profession can border on the responsibilities of what may be seen as God’s own.

But, for the rest of us, what do we pledge an oath to for life? At the school here, there is a “pledge of allegiance” to India when the flag is unfurled at the assembly. In American schools growing up, we also said our “pledge of allegiance,” which has now been discontinued (as far as I know) as a result of the prohibition of church and state. What does that mean to pledge one’s “self” to a country then? Is that not the height of all ideology? Yes, but, what isn’t when it comes to just the very idea of a nation, politics, or religion. Aren’t these all ideologies? Is it escapable at all, or is congenital to the very concept of trying to unite people in some fashion, or to extract a sense of duty to something greater than the individual? Can we recuse ourselves from a pledge to a country if we don’t believe in what it asks of us?

Beyonce’s hit single, “If I Were a Boy” is a rather scathing, though quite accurate lament about double standards of the sexes in modern life, but does beg an interesting question. What is it that makes one a “man” or a “woman?” Besides genitalia, what is expected of us? Is there an oath, a condition, a prerequisite?

Kipling’s poem sets out an interesting list of “ifs” for us to ponder this question on. Being a man, his poem is male. If he were a girl, perhaps he would have thought of other “ifs,” I don’t know, though I can surmise as such.

At my father’s memorial service, my sister read Kipling’s poem, “If.” I had heard it before, but it held a great significance for my father and her reading of it made a lot sink in for me. My father had struggled with “being a man” in many ways, and by God, he was a “man’s man,” often to his detriment. However, seeing that poem on the walls in a school here in India gave me pause. It was the power of poetry at work. That poem, copied out in a child’s hand, brought me back to that moment, hearing my sister reading, thinking about the fate of my father’s struggle to be a man. He was fiercely “American” and along with the Hippocratic Oath, he believed that it was his duty to serve his country, sadly often to his detriment as well. But, he did believe, and he did live his oath.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;

If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!