These my habits, I lend to you

Every day as we go about our lives, we pick up ‘signatures’ from others that unknowingly become part of our style whether in speech or gestures.  When you spend a lot of time with a particular person, you unconsciously pick up their mannerism down to all the minutest inflection.

 You’ve been observing and absorbing their behaviours,  gestures and style from the sidelines, sometimes even making fun of them, when one day, suddenly out to the blue, you say something and your mind pulls the brakes and you have the “what the hell just happened” expression on your face. You’ve just reacted like some you know.

A few days ago, I caught myself saying, and with all the style that this colleague does, “One day I will kill him, literally” and I went Whoa! All this time I’ve been laughing at him and mocking him and here I was saying his stupid little sentence. Even the exclamations and interjections we pepper our daily interactions with tend to get coloured by the company we keep.

Over the years, I’ve picked up words like ‘babes’ from a client’s assistant who would call me every hour (which I have happily shed now), ‘pavam’ (poor boy) from a friend and words like ‘aiyo’, ‘aiya’ and other culturally influenced words. At times, I’ve caught myself leaping, clapping and doing random body gestures that were never part of my limited mannerisms, and when I do catch myself mid-(said borrowed)gesture I can only speculate which of my friends I have to thank for polluting what should have been my unique reaction.

Sometimes, these unconscious pick-ups also extends to laughter. Yes, laughter. Funny as it may seem, my laugh over time has changed, depending on the company I keep. My laugh has always been loud, gurgling and unstoppable; sometimes my close mouthed laugh resembles a ‘puppy yelping’ (or so I have been told among other not so polite descriptions),  so when I find another kind of laugh coming out, I stop and reexamine who I’ve been spending time with. I love my laugh, and I draw the line at my laugh descending into a witch-like cackle or a hamming villain from a C-grade Hindi film.

Everyday battlefield

Life is a battlefield. Every day we literally dodge bullets, hide from enemies, cross borders, enter hostile territories, lie waiting tense, alert and on our toes. We take on each day knowing that we have a long day ahead, a fight to finish off well. It may not necessarily be battles with guns and tanks, it could be short swift jabs with our hands, legs and pretty much anything we can get. We wear an armour of indifference and insolence most often and cowardice and fear at times.

We hide from friends whom we ditched last minute or have something to hide from instead of confronting them. We keep our guards on and put on our most defensive stance at work, we gear up for the commute battle ahead, we strategise, make plans and plot lines that will tear people apart or join them forever, or teach someone a good lesson. And every night we pray and hope that we live to see another day.

Since when did living become so difficult? Why does every day have to be this drudge to bear? We protect what is ours with a fierceness that is terrifying and we pursue brilliance, money, power with unrelenting desire. What happened to taking each day as it came? I think it’s our need to be better than the rest, to prove ourselves better contenders for whatever race we’re participating at the moment—mom of the year, best friend ever, superstar at work, business whiz kid of the century, brightest mind of the millennia, breakthrough artist/scientist, saviour of mankind.

The going is never easy, but we are prepared to do battle, we always have been. Ever since we were kids, we knew that we had to be strong and not let others get ahead. We may not have been the typical bullies but we were all determined to do better than our friends, even our best friends. And as adults, the battles just got fiercer and dirtier. We have been taught to survive, to be street-smart and tough.

That’s just one half of the story. We have also been told to watch out for the ones who are not so tough, the ones who get walked over on, to be caring of people, to share and respect and love and do good deeds and more. And that’s where the problem lies. How do we maintain balance between peace and war? Our natural instincts move towards the survival of the fittest or that’s how Darwin would like us to believe. So we try to be nice and befriend people and curb our ruthlessness. It’s a difficult thing to keep doing, it’s like saying, “I’m-sorry-to-beat-you-to-the-taxi-even-if-you-were-here-first-but-I-need-to-get-to-work-on-time-and-to-hell-with-you-actually!”

 It’s funny that we try so hard to be nice and all in situations when we just want to rip out someone’s head. I guess that’s the price you pay for being a part of civilized society. We strive to maintain some kind of armistice, a protocol of good behaviour even in the fighting ring. And just like the soldiers of the Western Front during Christmas 1914, we work out an unwritten understanding to respect boundaries and extend the hand of goodwill, peace, love and cheer. Or at least we try to more often than not.

Deindividuation

(I had written this piece more than a year ago and forgotten about it. I’ve altered it a bit after a recent article I read.)

We all understand how the virtual world provides a cloak of anonymity and many of us are grateful for it. A year ago I read an article that spoke about ‘moral disengagement’, which simply means that “the further removed we are from the consequences of our actions, the easier it is to emotionally separate ourselves from our own behaviour”, and I realised that what we witness on the internet on a daily basis in terms of comments is a perfect example of moral disengagement.

Last week, I came across another article that explained how, “The shield of anonymity strengthened by pack mentality leads even ‘normal’ people to let out their most violent avatars on the internet.”  Psychologists now call this ‘deindividuation’, (a word I don’t personally like and Word does not acknowledge).

As more and more sites encourage participants to express their opinions, a large number of people are finding that the anonymity of the internet is a perfect tool to vent frustrations. The vitriol that is spewed in the name of comments is unbelievable. Nothing is sacred and nobody seems to be scared. Scathing rants bordering on the abusive are heaped on everything and everybody. It’s almost like graffiti artists, you know the ones who perfected the art of defacing good pieces of furniture or walls to express their opinions, have found a never ending platform to voice opinions.

Trawl through the comment sections on any site or forum and you’ll find tons of examples of fantasised violence and rage coming from seemingly normal people, who are really normal people in their regular lives but morph into ‘trolls’ (as they came to be known) in the virtual avatars, that makes you wonder where all this comes from or where it will lead. Personally, they seem to expose the rampant xenophobic behaviour of people that is becoming all too common in the modern world. Good, healthy debates and legitimate counter arguments are drowned out by often ridiculous arguments, personal vendetta and slights. At times you notice a pattern, with a certain group of people constantly barraging each other and you realise that you’ve just witnessed cyber bullying happen right before you.

For some people, the internet is a God-sent miracle that allows them to express their frustrations; most of this can be legitimate annoyances while for others it can be just sheer delight in attacking from behind a veil. Getting annoyed, throwing abuses around, ranting and raving in public spaces can damage your reputation, often irrevocably; on the other hand online forums or sites can ban you only to have you resurface as another identity with no damage whatsoever to you personally.

I guess that’s the problem with anonymity. It creates lions out of lambs; and in a space where nothing can really harm us there is no telling the limits we are ready to cross.

Anger

Anger, the emotion we all underestimate, is surprisingly powerful.  Most of us don’t consider it a threat at all, categorizing it as something we can control, something we have control on. But that’s the thing with anger, it’s deceptively devastating. Whether it is a slow, simmering, seething kind or the one that flares instantly, anger has the potential to destroy and damage. After all, if it’s among the seven deadly sins, then it must be because there is more to it than we would like to acknowledge.

Like all vices, anger clouds our judgement, but the thing with greed, lust, pride or sloth or any of the other vices is that the danger is mostly to one’s self and a few others. Anger on the other hand has more far reaching impact. Anger almost always drives you over the edge taking a whole lot of others with you as well.

Under your spell

I have been sitting on the piece of writing for the past four days. Every time I sit to write this out, my thoughts go on a different direction. This time it’s not me and my errant thoughts that are a problem, but rather the topic; the topic lends itself open to various interpretations and treatment. Keeping it leashed to what I want to actually say is the problem.

I just want to focus on words that I spell wrong, as simple as that, but apparently not so! The dangers of misspelling words are huge; nightmarish if it goes out to a larger audience and red-faced-wish-the-world-would-split-open-and-swallow-me-whole moments when you know that audience personally. Spelling errors do happen, but when that gets an embarrassing or suggestive tone, you wish you had spotted it earlier.

For me, I always dread spelling public as pubic. Seriously, every time I type that word or edit files, I’m extra cautious.

Pantry without the ‘r’ can make for some very exciting sessions. This is another word that I always double check. At one of my previous organisations, the office assistance sent this mail where the correct spelling obviously eluded her not once but twice! “We’ve noticed that the panty is always a mess. …  Please ensure that you leave the panty clean after you’ve used it”!

Auto spell check is a handy element for words that I always can never spell — privilege, refrigerator and length.  Without meaning to, I always end up making mistakes while spelling form and from, tow and two (my two always gets spelt tow, always, even now, sigh) and surprisingly change becomes chnage (which just got auto corrected).

Ironically, as I type this piece, I had to go back on almost over half the words. Misspelling you see!

Time faster Time

Is it just me or do you agree that time has got a new set of wheels? How else can you explain the whizzing speed of days and years? One minute you are in April and the next getting ready for the New Year! I always feel like I just finished buying my Christmas gifts for family and friends (which can be so exhausting) and don’t have the energy to go through another round of them just yet.

Time is relative said Einstein but I don’t think that’s applicable these days. Time just seems to fly whether or not you are having fun. Try as much to slow down your hectic schedule and you still find yourself huffing to catch up with days. I feel like I’ve lost so many days without knowing how and when they dropped off the grid. I will admit that there are a few days where time seems to drag but overall it seems like the axis of the earth has shifted into some kind of super speed.

A procrastinator like me always pushes tasks for the next week, month, couple of months, year and before you know it, it time for me to come good on promises to myself. I’m always struggling to catch up with my lazier self, it’s like I can never catch a break. Events around the world celebrate their anniversaries and I find myself wondering if it has actually been those many years. In a way, there is no more place for anything old, it is always and always immediately replaced by the new.  Everywhere it is one revolution replacing the other in more ways than one.

Sometimes, I feel that modern living is all about speed. We measure our lives in nanoseconds and get impatient by every kind of delay. A 20-second delay in page loading gets us aggravated (come to think of it, I don’t think we can stand a 3-second delay) or  the 1 minute it takes us to get food heated in the microwave makes us impatient. Is this the reason why we seem to have lost track to time. Once a upon a time now really seems like a time phase really gone.

Writing about this, got me remembering this episode on Seinfeld. Have you seen ‘The Friars Club’ episode where Kramer is trying to copy Leonardo Da Vinci's sleep patterns to experience more life?

KRAMER: Listen, uh, do me a favour, will you? I got a hot date tonight with Connie. Knock on my door, wake me up in twenty minutes, alright?

JERRY: Catnap?

KRAMER: No, no, no, no. This is evolutionary. I’ve been reading this book, on Leonardo de Vinci. See, that means 'from Vinci', did you know that?

JERRY:  That must be some book.

KRAMER: Yeah, well, turns out that the master slept only twenty minutes every three hours. Now, that works out to two- and-a-half extra days, that I'm awake per week, every week. Which means, if I live to be eighty, I will have lived the equivalent of a hundred and five years.

JERRY: Just imagine how much more you'll accomplish.

Tales of this and that

I had this thing to get and couldn’t remember it. All I could hear was I needed this for that. It’s a habit in my family, where we use the words ‘this’ ‘that’ and ‘there’ alarmingly often to substitute words we can’t get at the moment. Mostly, it works; we know what ‘this’ or ‘that’ is being referenced at the moment. Sometimes, it gets you in trouble. One rainy afternoon, I remember being screamed at by mom, for not getting the clothes off the line in time. She insisted she told me hours ago, I was adamant she hadn’t. It then dawned that she did tell me to get ‘this’ from ‘there’. With no reference to put context to either, I fell short.

Regular placeholders like Whatchamacallit or Whatshisname or even Thing'em-bob never caught in my house. We were having so much fun figuring out ‘this’, ‘that’ and ‘there’. My extended family too indulged in the extensive use of these placeholders, which made me wonder if this was some genetic defect or a family tradition passed on. Often, we would deliberately pretend to be obtuse and come up with random, unconnected items to fill in the blanks, much to their consternation, till they would scream, “Pass me the hammer, you dolts!”