Tears in heaven

Since when did we start deriding people for crying at funerals?

You couldn’t possibly have missed the brouhaha that erupted when George Osborne, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, let one solitary tear escape down his cheek at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher.

The Internet went into instant meltdown. Some derided him for this show of ‘weakness’ (you know how ‘real’ men ‘never’ cry, right?). Others dismissed his tearing up as a cynical ploy to show just how good a Thatcherite he was (after all, what was he weeping about, given that he had met the Iron Lady on less than a dozen occasions?). There were those who agreed that yes, the tears were not genuine, but put them down to the Tory leader trying to create a more ‘caring’ image for himself (remember, this was a man who was booed at such a feel-good event as the London Olympics). Amidst all the jokes, jabs and jeering, there were only a few who said what I was feeling: what is the world coming to if you can’t even cry at a funeral?

Full disclosure here: I am one of the blubbers of the world. And yes, I cry at funerals. It doesn’t really matter how well I have known the deceased, or how many times I have met them. There is something about funerals that brings out the tears – well mine, at any rate. Sometimes it is a particular bhajan being sung as part of the service; sometimes a tiny detail that evokes memories of funerals past (of those I was particularly close to); sometimes it is the thought of how I would feel coping with a loss like this one; and sometimes it is just the sight of close family members of the deceased trying to pull themselves together even though they are clearly falling apart.

At a time like this, sympathy segues seamlessly into empathy, and you can’t help but cry for the universal sorrow that is bereavement. This is not something any of us can escape. At some time or another, we will have to mourn our grandparents, bid farewell to our parents, experience the loss of a sibling, see a close friend succumb to illness. If we are very lucky, we will never know the gut-wrenching sorrow of losing someone of the next generation, who should by rights have been the one to mourn us. But no matter how life pans out, bereavement that is something that all of us will have to bear, sooner or later.

As the saying goes, grief is the price you pay for love.

But what is the acceptable face of grief when you lose someone you loved, or even just admired from afar? And has it changed over the years?

In India, at least, I would have to say yes. Growing up in a traditional joint family, as a child I was witness to the spectacular outpouring of grief that everyone indulged in when there was a death in the extended clan. There was weeping; there was wailing; on some occasions, there was even some beating of breasts. It was loud, it was disturbing, it was even melodramatic at times. But everything said and done, it was undoubtedly cleansing.

After such an outburst of grief, you felt that you had really mourned someone. There was no buttoning up of your feelings. There was no concession made to sparing the feelings of others. There was no embarrassment about letting it all hang out. In a sense, you were given permission to grieve as publically as you saw fit; as loudly as you wanted to. And nobody judged you or condemned you as an incontinent so-and-so.

In the old days, certain Indian states like Rajasthan even had professional mourners, called Rudaalis (the subject of an eponymous movie that earned lead actress Dimple Kapadia a National award). These were lower-caste women hired to mourn (as loudly as possible) in an explosive public display of grief. This worked at two levels. One, to express the sorrow that the family may have been shy of exhibiting in public and two, to goad them into have a proper cry. Because sometimes there really is no better catharsis than tears.

But that was then. Now, tears at funerals are seen as bad taste. It is considered somewhat repellent to make a public exhibition of your grief. If you must cry, then cry in private. You must not shed tears in public in case you make other people uncomfortable. So, chin up please (and make sure it’s not quivering). And let’s see what the British so delightfully describe as a ‘stiff upper lip’.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being told that a display of emotions or the appearance of tears at a funeral (or anywhere else, for that matter) is something to be ashamed of. That we must present a stoic façade at all times, or stand condemned – as George Osborne was – of everything ranging from emotional incontinence to hypocritical cynicism.  

Honestly, it’s enough to make a grown man – or woman – cry.

Sob story

There’s nothing quite as cathartic as a good cry, is there?

Tears. They’re a tricky business. Keep them all bottled up and you risk being seen as a heartless so-and-so. Turn them on whenever you feel overwhelmed and you are in danger of being dismissed as an emotional wreck.

You can see tears in a hundred different ways. They are the mark of a sensitive soul. They are a sign of emotional incontinence. They are the weapon of last resort for women. They turn men into helpless puddles of contrition. They are a sign of weakness, the preserve of those who don’t know how to keep their feelings under control.

Oh, and did I mention that men aren’t supposed to spill them at all. No, never ever. That is not the ‘manly’ thing to do. It doesn’t matter if their feelings are hurt or their knees badly scraped. Boys are not meant to cry unless they want to be asked, “What are you? A girl?”

Well, what can I say? I am a girl and have the tear-stained handkerchiefs to prove it.

I have to admit it doesn’t take much to make me cry. I well up whenever I am singing the national anthem. I get all teary watching soppy rom-coms like Sleepless in Seattle. I cry with laughter while catching up with the new season of Modern Family. I blub when I hear a particularly moving bhajan. A beautiful painting or a perfect sunset can move me to tears. The spectacle of Barack Obama being sworn in as the first African-American President of the United States had me sobbing on my couch.

My tears are very versatile. They can express almost every emotion across the spectrum: anger, frustration, sorrow, joy, love. Which, I concede, can sometimes get a bit overwhelming for people who are trying to figure out why I am welling up all over again.

To be honest, though, sometimes I don’t quite understand the process myself either. Why is it that I can sit through a regular tear-jerker of a Hindi movie and find myself completely unmoved? And yet, the sight of a man sitting down to a lonely dinner on a table set for one on a TV show makes me feel all weepy? Go figure; I certainly can’t.

In fact, sometimes the smallest, most insignificant thing, can set off the tears. The wizened face of a grandmother as she holds the hand of her granddaughter and helps her cross the street (or is it the other way round?). The toothless grin of a baby. The strains of a long-forgotten song.

Hell, on one embarrassing occasion, I even had tears rolling down my cheeks because a bowl of chilli in a Washington restaurant wasn’t quite as I remembered it. Yes, I know, it’s silly beyond belief; but there you have it.

But whatever the reason for their appearance, my tears are invariably cathartic. As the cliché goes, there’s nothing quite like a good cry to make you feel better about yourself. There is a complete cleansing of emotions; an overhauling of your nervous system that leaves you feeling both light and exhausted, both wrung out and ready to take on the world.

The only problem is that crying gets a very bad rap these days – especially if you are a woman. If you are arguing with your boyfriend/husband and begin tearing up out of sheer frustration you will be accused of playing dirty. “Ah, here come the waterworks.” (Don’t bother explaining that you’re not crying on purpose; that you simply can’t help it. Nobody is going to believe you.)

And don’t even think of letting the tears flow when you are at work. Not unless you want to be dismissed as a hysterical, hormonal, pre-menstrual/menstrual/menopausal (choose any one that fits) cry baby. Just do the smart thing. Retreat to the ladies room whenever you feel your eyes welling and your chin beginning to tremble. Lock yourself in and let the tears flow. Then blow your nose, wash your face, re-apply your make-up and head out to face the world again.

Strangely enough, though, even as women are being marked down for being emotionally overwrought and teary, men are increasingly being applauded for being in touch with their emotions when they let a tear or two escape their eyes. Clearly, political correctness has come a full circle on this one.

Our hearts well up when we see our cricketing heroes like Yuvraj Singh and Sachin Tendulkar with tears flowing down their cheeks as they celebrate their World Cup victory. David Beckham’s confession that he gets all teary when he looks at his daughter, Harper Seven, is enough to make all of us go, “Aww, how sweet!”

But while I am all for men being in touch with their emotions and expressing them in a honest way (and what could be more honest than tears?) one part of me is a little scared that this may just open the floodgates. Remember that Friends episode when Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) finally gets her boyfriend Paul (Bruce Willis in a hilarious cameo) to open up and express his emotions? And then has to drop him because he simply won’t stop blubbering?

Well, none of us wants that now, do we?

The crying game

Why is it only the actresses who get all teary at the Oscars?

This is one annual ritual that you can set your calendar by: no sooner is the Oscar for the Best Actress announced than the tears follow as the lucky winner gets all misty-eyed and weepy as she delivers her acceptance speech, sobs punctuating every well-turned phrase.

Of course, every winner has her own take on the Big Oscar Teary Moment. Gwyneth Paltrow went in for full-on sobbing, giving effusive thanks to an endless list of people, hot tears running down her cheeks all the while. Julia Roberts started with a little levity before becoming all choked up as she thanked her family. Sandra Bullock started off strong but it wasn’t long before her voice turned as wobbly as her chin. And then, there was Halle Berry, who started crying loudly the moment her name was announced and never really stopped until she was escorted off the stage.

No matter how much the method varied, however, the madness always manifested itself in the appearance of tears. Sometimes they flowed unabashedly down the cheeks, sometimes they were accompanied by runny noses, and sometimes they were forced back with a determined swallow of the throat.

But for some reason, it was always the leading ladies who turned on the waterworks the moment they were announced the winners. The men seemed to take it all in their stride. They made jokes, they joshed around, they remembered all the people they were supposed to thank, and they managed to acknowledge how much they loved their wife and kids without becoming a blabbering mess.

Now, why do you suppose that is?

Well, if you ask me, I think it’s all down to social conditioning. Women are brought up to believe that it is all right to cry to express emotion, be it joy, sorrow or pain. Men, on the other hand, are brought up to regard crying as a mark of weakness, something that they must never be caught out doing.

In time, each generation seems to buy into this without much thought. Every man who has been taught this lesson passes it on to his own children. And the women are just as complicit in relaying this message to the men in their lives.

Think about it. How many times have you caught yourself out telling your weeping son or nephew as he picks himself off the floor after a fall: “Oh, stop crying for God’s sake! Don’t be such a sissy! What are you – a girl?” Say it often enough (and you know that you do) and in time he will come to believe that crying is something for sissies and, yes, girls.

Quite apart from the hideous message it sends out to young boys – that girls are somehow inferior creatures and to behave like them is to be shamed in front of the world – this also reinforces the idea in the male of the species that crying is simply not an option. It’s the absence of tears that marks the men from the boys. And hence, a dry eye is what they should always aspire to.

And while we can only be grateful for this in the context of the Oscar awards – one weepie marathon per ceremony is about as much as we can take – it is probably not the best message to send out to young boys or even fully grown-up men.

While none of us particularly wants to be caught blubbering in public (or, heaven forbid, on international television), there is no denying that crying serves an important purpose in our emotional lives. We cry when we are sad. We cry when we are happy. We cry when we are angry. And we cry when we are in pain – both physical and emotional.

In all these circumstances, a good cry invariably makes us feel a lot better afterwards. It has a cathartic effect of cleansing all those feelings choking us up. And we feel much more in control afterwards – or at the very least, more at peace with ourselves.

But despite the undeniable benefits of a good cry, we persist in denying that privilege to the men in our lives. Men are supposed to be strong, is the message we constantly transmit. And being strong means that they should keep a stiff upper lip in all circumstances. Being strong means not letting a single tear drop no matter what the provocation.

Is it any wonder then that most men are so out of touch with their own feelings – and by extension, with ours? Or, that they don’t know how to articulate what they feel, even when they really really want to? After all, when we deny them the one honest way to express themselves, then why should you expect otherwise?

It’s not too late to change, though. And it certainly is easy enough. Just make sure the next time your son, your nephew, or just the neighbourhood kid trips over and falls on his face, you don’t ask him to shush. Let him cry, allow him to bowl, permit him the luxury of tears. And soon enough he will calm down, blow his nose, wipe his eyes, and feel much better for that crying jag.

Children know instinctively how to honestly express an emotion. And if they choose to do it with tears, it behoves us to listen rather than mock.

Of course, there’s always the danger that one day these boys too will be blubbing on the Oscar stage. But frankly, that’s a chance well worth taking.