Log Kya Kahenge!
“Log kya kahenge…”
Ye sunte sunte — ab log kehne lage hain…
Sawal ye nahi hai
ke log keh kyun rahe hain…
Ye to unki fitrat hai — wo kahenge!
Sawal ye hai ke —
kya tum sun loge? Poori zindagi…
agar unke mutaabik zindagi na chuni to?
Sawal ye nahi ke —
log samajhte kyun nahi…
Wo tumhe nahi samjhenge!
Sawal ye hai ke —
unke sawaal tumhe dadolate kyun hain?
Sawal ye nahi ke —
unki nasihatein tumhe jachti nahi!
Shayad kabhi jachengi bhi nahi!
Sawal ye hai ke —
tum kabse “log kya kahenge”
issey sharminda hone lage?
15th May 2026, 08:59 AM
There comes a point in life when you realise that “Log kya kahenge?” was never just a sentence.
It was conditioning.
A silent inheritance passed from one generation to another — disguised as concern, morality, guidance, respectability, even love
Slowly, without noticing, many of us begin editing ourselves around that fear!
We rehearse our choices before making them.
We dilute our opinions before expressing them
We hide parts of ourselves to remain digestible to people who were never going to fully understand us anyway…
As a 36-year-old queer cis-male — partly out of the closet and partly nonchalant about it — I still get asked when I am getting married, or whether I will marry at all.
For years, my conservative mother carried the anxious narrative of: “What will people say if you don’t get married?” And in the recent past, I have been called out for “still” being single. Called out for my orientation. Called out on my character — by people, by neighbours…
And perhaps that is exactly what my mother was always worried about. That is where these lines came from:
“Log kya kahenge sunte sunte, ab log kehne lage hain…”
But tell me something… Don’t you think, people will talk nonetheless? Whether it is about the choice of career, love, the person you love, getting married or not, having children or not — people will always talk!
They talk when you fail!
They talk when you succeed…
They talk when you stay!
They talk when you leave…
Sometimes, they even talk simply because your freedom reminds them of the life they never had the courage to choose for themselves…
There is even a psychological term connected to this fear — Allodoxaphobia, the fear of opinion. And perhaps many of us suffer from it silently without ever realising it. Not necessarily because we are weak, but because we were conditioned from childhood to associate acceptance with safety, and judgment with shame. So eventually, people stop living authentically. They start living performatively…
Not asking — What do I truly want?
But constantly asking — How will this look to others?
And somewhere in that process, individuality slowly begins to disappear!
Like Gurudev His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says: “Don’t judge and don’t worry about what others think of you. Whatever they think, it is not permanent. Your own opinion about things and people keeps changing all the time. So, why worry about what others think about you”
Maybe freedom does not begin when society stops questioning. Maybe it begins the day their questions stop defining you…
Because at the end of it all, the real burden was never “log kya kahenge…”
It was how deeply we allowed those voices to become our own.
Journal entry
15th May 2026, 07:47 PM
— Dr. Krish
Orthodontist | Mindfulness coach | Author
