There was a time when walking away from a fight felt like defeat.In college, we were guided by a strange mixture of ego, anger, boredom, immaturity and false bravado. Unofficial groups had formed on campus, and loyalties sometimes mattered more than logic. A stare could become an insult, an insult a challenge, and a challenge a fight.
One night after dinner in the mess, I walked out with two juniors. We had exchanged heated stares with two seniors from a rival group. Nothing had been said, but enough had already been communicated. A little later, while walking along the road outside the hostel, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.
I turned. It was one of those seniors.
“What’s your problem?” he asked.
There were many sensible answers available to me that evening. I chose none of them.
“What’s your problem, dude?” I shot back.
He kicked me hard on my left thigh.
At barely five feet five inches and around 50 kilograms, I was physically no match for men who were considerably taller and heavier. We were soon overpowered. One of my juniors virtually surrendered out of fear. A senior from our group intervened and landed a heavy punch, but he had been drinking and could not control the situation for long. I was eventually dragged back towards the hostel, being hit along the way. Strangely, what hurt most was not the blows. It was the humiliation of seeing fellow students watching me being dragged past them. Then matters became far more dangerous. A close friend and junior rushed out and attacked one of the men with a broken tube light. The fight finally stopped.
What had begun with a stare had ended with blood. The following morning, one thought kept returning to me:
What exactly had I been trying to prove?
My parents had spent their hard-earned money to send me to college. I had come there to study and build a life, not to become the leader of some imaginary gang or defend an ego that had no real value outside those hostel walls. Six months later, another major clash erupted between the same groups. This time I had no role in starting it. But the violence became much worse. Sticks were used. Students ran for safety. Some even jumped from the first floor, fortunately managing to catch hold of tree branches. The police eventually intervened.
I had not started that fight, but my past reputation had not disappeared. Along with students from both groups, I was ordered to leave the hostel so that peace could prevail. That taught me something I had never considered before: sometimes the consequences of a bad decision arrive long after the decision itself.
I thought I had understood the lesson. Life tested that assumption almost two decades later.
I was around forty and returning with my five-year-old son from his group therapy session in New Delhi. We were driving through a village-like locality with narrow, uneven roads when a tractor turned abruptly and badly damaged the front bumper of my car.
I got out furious- for obvious reasons.
The argument with a young, muscular man outside the house quickly became heated. He went inside and returned carrying a heavy wooden rod. The tractor driver joined him. Then other villagers gathered. Within minutes, an argument over a bumper had become a fight with a crowd. I managed to strike back a few times, but numbers have their own mathematics. Blows were coming from different directions. Years of regular gym training probably helped me remain on my feet, but physical fitness could not change the basic reality: I was one man surrounded by many.
Some parents who had also come there for their children’s therapy eventually pulled me away and persuaded me to leave. While driving back, my mouth suddenly became completely dry. For a short while, I struggled even to speak properly while calling my senior for help.
Then came the question that should have come much earlier:
What if I had died?
Not while saving someone’s life. Not while protecting my family from an unavoidable danger.
Over a car bumper?
My son could have lost his father. My wife could have lost her husband. My parents could have lost their son. And all of them would have been left carrying the consequences of a decision I had made in anger. Repeated visits to the police station afterwards brought the lesson even closer to home.
A fight may last a few minutes. Its consequences can last much longer.
The two incidents happened almost two decades apart. On the surface, they were very different. In college, I was young and immature, caught up in group rivalry. At forty, I was a husband and father.
Yet underneath both incidents was something remarkably similar.
Ego.
The younger me thought courage meant refusing to back down. The forty-year-old me had enough physical confidence to believe that I could handle a confrontation.
Both versions of me were mistaken in the same way. Perhaps this is something we need to talk about more openly with boys and young men. We tell them to be strong. We tell them not to be afraid. We admire toughness, confidence and the ability to stand one’s ground. There is nothing wrong with courage. There is nothing wrong with physical strength either. But somewhere along the way, strength can become confused with the inability to step away.
A man does not become weaker because he refuses an unnecessary fight. He may actually need more courage to walk away.
It is easy to react when somebody insults you. Anger provides its own momentum. The more difficult act is to ask yourself, in those few heated seconds: What am I risking, and for what?
A stare.
A careless word.
A parking dispute.
A damaged bumper.
How many tragedies have begun with something equally small? Today, if I could speak to the college boy I once was, I would not tell him to become timid. I would tell him to become stronger—but I would give strength a different definition.
Train your body. Be confident. Know how to protect yourself. Do not live in fear.
But train your mind even harder.
Know when to speak. Know when to remain silent. Know when to seek help. And above all, know when to walk away. There are battles worth fighting in life—for family, dignity, principle, justice and those who cannot defend themselves. Save your courage for them.
A broken bumper can be repaired. An insult will eventually be forgotten. A bruised ego will recover.
A life may not.
It took me two fights, separated by almost two decades, to understand something I wish I had known much earlier:
The strongest man is not the one who can defeat the person standing in front of him. It is the one who can defeat the anger rising within him—and still return home to the people waiting for him.
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