Dear Rannvijay,
“Science” lessons litter Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal, covering important definitions like that of an “animal”, the ideal body type for pregnancy, and prelapsarian gender roles — so here’s one of my own. The concept of the alpha male partly originated from a 1970 book, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, by American biologist David Mech on wolf behaviour in captivity. He concluded that packs develop a hierarchy through infighting, with the winner at the top becoming the alpha wolf. Years later, however, Mech disavowed his conclusions after new observations in the wild, saying, “Most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack… they are merely breeders or parents.”
Sorry, Rannvijay, that must sting. Not only does that shatter your pseudoscientific defence, but it exposes your father for barely meeting that criterion. He gave birth to you and checked out. You had a mother, a very present and doting one, in fact, who always defended you against his tempers, but you were more interested in silencing her and punching anyone who raised a question about him, including your wife, whom you also almost shot with a machine gun. It must have been a difficult childhood, as you voiced anytime anyone asked. “You weren’t around, so I had to be the man of the house,” you said, when he slapped you for assaulting your sister’s molesters. “If you think my violence was a crime, then this is a crime too,” you said, referring to the slap.
Your justifications for your behaviour often called back to a pre-modern and pre-legal past, when “men roamed free to hunt and gather”, “women stayed home and looked after the kids”, when might was right, and “weaker men” had to come up with cerebral disciplines like poetry, mathematics and business management — for which you express ample disdain — to climb the social ladder. Your approach to helming your father’s steel mill is red-eyed, teeth-bared bravado, shouting down anyone who says you need to become more personable before sitting in a boardroom. “Why are you bowing to these politicians when you are running such a powerful company?” you yelled at your better-adjusted brother-in-law. You are lucky to fall in love with a woman just as gullible and guileless as you, who enthusiastically nods when you propose your theories to her and says she would choose your biceps over her fiancé’s Harvard degree any day if there was no such thing as a criminal justice system.
You don’t leave her much room for self-actualisation, of course. You wag a threatening finger at her whenever she questions your father. You interrupt her, repeatedly, when she expresses apprehension about having sex in public. You ignore her, berate her, cheat on her, lament losing control over her when she gets upset that you are missing hospital appointments for the numerous bullet injuries you sport through the movie like pus-filled badges of honour. Your father and cousin are no better: The former is constantly spraying spit at his wife and the latter (predictably one of the only Muslim characters in the film) rapes his. Your sisters want nothing to do with you and you see that as respect. Your daughter wails awake when you point a gun at her mother. The cycle repeats.
As for the blood and gore of your movie, enough has been said — and said again. Even by your own family. In the hands of a better director-writer, your fall could’ve been tragic rather than comic, evoking pity instead of hilarity. But that was not to be.
We are at a moment in the cultural zeitgeist when artistes are fed up with the demands made by a progressive and unforgiving audience, slinging to an opposite extreme, rejecting centuries’ worth of meticulous feedback to prey on our basest desires for sex, wealth and violence. One can only worry for the men who learn from you. The time of alpha males is gone, yet, it’s still a man’s world, as you greedily proclaim while mocking your wife’s menstrual pains. Is this how you will lead the pack?
I am sorry, but I think not.
Sincerely,
Not an alpha male
udbhav.seth@expressindia.com
