Introducing Myself
I rarely care who I am, but when I am asked, it seems necessary to provide an answer. After all I can’t just say that I don’t know, nor can I state ‘I cannot be defined’ in a university application, on my Instagram page, on my resume or my dating profile now, can I? who hires or follows or goes out with a person who doesn’t know who he is?
So when someone asks, depending on who he or she is, I take the world inside me with my fears, my joys, the little techniques I have developed over the years to deal with sorrow-my coping mechanisms if you will, my hobbies and my relationships with other people, my relationship with nature-with my cat (resist your temptation to call me a cat-person and a writer for now, will you? thanks.) and the trees and houses I use as landmarks when I commute… my relationship with the sky and the hills and the flowers in my balcony,my skills and my vices and my work and my life philosophy and so much more…and I compress all of it into one word, or perhaps a sentence or two. And those are only the things that I know about me, that isn’t me at all. I don’t know who or what I am. And the world outside me happily accepts whatever bullshit I feed them.
“I am a man” I imply, when I dress like a man (clothes are somehow a very important part of one’s identity), and when I am asked what sport I play, when I am expected to gain weight in order to look like a man (the gender identity has to tally with the body image). I make up one thing or the other about what I am passionate about now , ‘cause when I start explaining it, which is not even a sport by the way, many people immediately make an image out of it. Explanations can only be given in terms of something people understand. Without a reference point, we get lost in the dark. So I just make something up (without technically lying) that people will swallow, without giving me an awkward pause or a weird look. So I will not tell you either.
But sometimes I do feel like a man, and many times I feel like a boy, sometimes I feel like I’m ancient. On occasion I feel feminine. and sometimes I cannot be defined with a gender or a sexual orientation at all. Not even the gazillion genders they have invented nowadays. And even more often that that, I don’t feel like a human being at all. Sometimes when I look at the sky, I feel like I am it. When I am hugged by my mother I feel like I’m her. When the cat sits on my lap I feel like a cat too! When I laugh with my friends I feel like I’m laughter. And when I lie on the grass, I feel like I’m the soft, green blades. When I paint with red I’m red, and sometimes when I swim, I am water, my friend. And when I sweep my room, I occasionally feel like cobwebs and dust mites.
People who know me don’t know me. In fact no one, including myself, can know me. They know my past. and they define me with my past, with my actions in the past and inaction as well. They define me with my so-called caste, a fictitious group, and my nationality, another fictitious group based on some arbitrary fact like where I was born and to whom. People who know my parents behave with the reference point that I am so-and-so’s son. And people define me as a Hindu even though I don’t even know what that means. Why does my birth define me? And why does my past seem to define me? And why do I use my past to compress myself and give that identity as an introduction at all? It seems that’s how the world works. When I say anything else, I am often labeled a rebel, a weirdo, an eccentric, a know-it-all, an elitist, a stupid guy, or a so-called philosopher (a rare breed nowadays), or a ‘thoughtful person’… which are other labels anyway. Whether they have good connotations or not doesn’t matter. It isn’t the truth.
The truth about who I am can never be put into words. Words and knowledge are all great actors. They act as if they are concrete. And some things are relatively concrete. Those things should be put into words, like these words. But not who I am.
But who I am right now? I will never tell you, because you will label me as that, or someone who says that he is that but isn’t. Probably you have labeled me as you read this anyway. And perhaps the right thing to do is to not write anything. But it is the expression of who I am at this moment. Perhaps I am the word that I am writing right now. And now. Or perhaps I am not.
People are often keen on defining themselves, I see you all introducing yourselves as ‘foodie’, ‘bisexual’, ‘Bibliophile’, ‘dog person’, ‘vegan’, ‘marxist’, ‘CEO’, ‘wife’, ‘husband’, ‘son’, ‘boyfriend’, ‘Indian’ or your name,(in that Indian there is south Indian and North Indian, and South east Asian, and the state and the city and the area in which you live. People are even embarrassed about their postal codes because they live in a slightly less posh area! Geez!)
So many identities. So many herds compared to the Homo habilis, when we don’t even need protection from the wild anymore, and the wild needs protection from us. That’s also a very fashionable identity, to identify with a cause or a political belief. ‘I am an environmentalist’. ‘I am a feminist’. ‘I am a flat-earther’. ‘I am an anti-vaxxer.’ ‘I am a capitalist’. ‘I am a republican’. The list is endless.
Hey, do what you want, do your own thing. I don’t mind eh?
But can you let me be without trying to know me?
If you have to have an answer to the question, here it is:
I am changing.
