Friday, June 28, 2013

Introducing: My Alter Ego


My creative partner Manu and I were talking about writing some original quotable quotes, so he suggested I should think and write as my alter ego. Of course, he thinks I am all kind of crazies, with all possible psychological doodles in my brain. But this one I am not or should I say, I was not.

I went to the fountain of knowledge (Wikipedia) and found “An alter ego (Latin, "the other I") is a second self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality”. And started the Godisque effort of creating someone from my imagination, Joe Weed(adding a googled pic to help visualization; similarity with any Hollywood superstar is unintentional).

Let me introduce Mr. Joe Weed to you. His eyes have a stillness, a peace, a non-judging, non-calibrating, non-needing, non-seeking, non-longing simple vision; a vision to see through the smoke of everyday clutter, through the screen of fake busyness, images, beauty, faces to impartially observe life; his words speak to express facts as they are without the robes of kindness, political correctness, compulsion to be understood or agreed with; his heart harbors no hurt, looks through joys and walks away from pain, he can tear apart from jealousy, acceleration of successes, despondency of failure, itch of despair and has mastered the ability to forgive in order to stay free. His mind is beautiful. He does not worry about his future or the future of his loved ones. He doesn’t relive the past. He thinks simple, unattached thoughts, observed analysis, no affiliations and no restrains.

He is wise enough to know that the life need not be hoarded, be scared of or be in awe with; naïve enough to be excited at its unfolding and skillful enough to sit beside it, enjoying the company.

I can’t wait to get to know him better. He seems worthy of my headspace.

Thursday, June 06, 2013

Racially Yours!!

So a friend from Mangalore teased a friend from Tamil Nadu about his love for curd rice. My tamil friend got seriously offended and branded my mangalorian friend as “racist” …

Now I am thinking that how can “fish-rice” (manglorian friend) teasing “curd-rice”(tamil) be so unacceptable when most “daal-baatis” (rajasthani’s) and “chola batura’s” (punjabi’s) still think that below “vada-paav” (Mumbai) everything is “rice & coconut oil” (south india)… 

Racism is bad and severe. But this episode is not racism, its a cliché. Cliché’s about color, culture and race are not offensive, though decisions based solely on them are.

When we see people with white, black, yellow, brown skins, when we hear male-female voices, when we notice ethnicity and nationalities; known cliché’s run in our minds. And if we don’t have any, they are made as we go through life, … a lot of people make up their mind with their experiences like working with a micromanaging Indian manager or friendship with a i-speak-my-mind New Yorker or very efficient Asian store attendants or good Venezuelan car salesman or coupon savvy Mexican teammate or crafty IT contractor.

If all stand-up comedians are to be believed, cliché’s can be funny; old people say cliché’s hold wisdom and talkers skillfully use them as funny icebreakers. Though I think it’s just human nature of find patterns and do hasty/whimsical classification of events and people.

Anyway, I say clichés fun. And if we misname them something sinister like racism, they don't cease to be fun ...