The Search for Id!

I envy all those people who manage to see the ‘positive’ in every situation, every context and who can ‘laugh at themselves’. I envy all those people who can make the tears run down your legs instead of down your eyes when they see you going boo hoo hoo over something that may be really a ‘mountain out of a molehill’ situation. Because they’re the positive, life brimming, happy, meaningful, smart, ‘moving forward’, forward thinking, sunshiney, smiling, ‘swallow their tears but see the bright side’ kind of people. Everyone likes them, everyone wants to be around them, everyone wants to be them.

And then there’s the other side. It’s everything that the ‘positive’ is not obviously. It’s called being ‘negative’ and it has many connotations, many facets, many attitudes.

So as I was sitting in darkness literally, because a modern 21st century city in the India Inc. story has power failures everyday and it’s so de rigueur that no one bats an eyelid just blinks rapidly to get adjusted, I had an elucidating question.

Honestly, for those enlightened and pontificating and mature individuals, this would be an inane and honestly stupid question. But to me in that moment of darkness it seemed to be the most important.

When you go to school, you’ve got a ‘roll number’. “Present miss or present sir” used to be shouted out loud on hearing your id. In college, it was dinned into our heads, ‘don’t forget to write your roll # clearly at the top right hand corner (or left hand as the case may be)’. At the time of distribution of papers après exams, the heart would begin a drumbeat enough to drown out the pygmy drum beat of Phantom folklore and then the familiar ‘roll number 23” would be heard and you’d get up shakily to pick up that important piece of papyrus. Then you get to be an adult. You stand in queues all your life – if you don’t know what I mean, just listen to the radio commercial for the Airtel sponsored KBC and you’ll know what I mean – a brilliantly produced commercial as it’s really a litany of the various queues we stand in all our lives – very well rendered by the VO (wonder who it is). Queues usually translate into numbers, usually consecutive.

Even the places you work in, you’re really a number. You have an ID card at the end of a lineyard and you have a silly photograph of yourself below which is your number first and then your name. Detour - talking of lineyards. For those who work in offices or have at some time in the past, especially the so-called urbane, progressive, glazed tiles, polished floors and fancy cubicles and the most uncomfortable chairs kind of ‘plush’ offices, I have a simple question to ask. It seems a night for elucidating questions or perhaps illuminating answers. Whatever the case may be, the question being – why do men usually and generally, wear those wretched ID cards, the ones that are not at the end of a lineyard but attached to a round button with a ‘free stretch’ kind of springy string, near their crotch? Firstly, we’re all numbers. Secondly, on the rare occasion when you are compelled to address one of those numbers who happens to be male and you don’t know whether he is consecutive, random, sequential, primary or complex or a square root or what have you, you have to perforce look down at his crotch to gauge and unravel this perplexing question. And then you’re confronted with the embarrassment of looking at a very sensitive part of the male anatomy and sometimes even stare for more than 20 seconds as the number is not visible (dammit!). Holy Crotch, I mean cross! Is it about attracting the ‘female gaze’?

To come back to the original ID path, after having taken a minor detour, sitting in the darkness, the question that wormed its way into my usually befuddled mind was, not ‘Who am I’? That was a basic question and of course all those who have found it have gone on to attain nirvana or become monks who sold their Ferraris and wrote about alchemy and alchemists and the secrets of success. No. I wasn’t about to embark on a multi-million dollar, self-fulfilling fantasy about ‘and then there was light’ moment of revelation.

My question was really simple – ‘What do I mean?’

And then I drew out the question like drawing out a smooth sabre from its sheath. I turned it over. Saw the glint. Squinted at it. ‘What do I mean?’ Not ‘what am I saying, can’t understand me’ mean. Not ‘what I intend to do’ mean. Just ‘what do I mean?’ To my universe. Of friends, colleagues, acquaintances, peers, neighbours, teachers, parents, siblings, the whole shebang. What do I mean to them? And thus to me?

Oh I know that this could be interpreted as 'Ohmygodshe'sinsane - she bases her whole life on what others think of her'. Hold on a second. Think about it. No I don't mean that at all.

However, if I can answer that one question, it would put the lid on all the incessant questions that are born time and again in the bottomless pit of my mind. I guess if we could all answer that question for ourselves, we’d all be brown belt masters at unraveling, understanding, sharing and being completely fulfilled human beings.

After all, we’d have figured the meaning of life.

Hah!

(I think I’m going to be sick after this post).