I don’t want to be like you

Days have this strange habit of throwing different sorts of people towards you… and this is why I call them fun to be with. I mean earth days, of course. Not sure if this happens on other distant planets as well, but here on earth, I can open a sleep laden eye and see Specky, my wife smiling through a glass of tepid lemon juice.

‘Wake up! Time to rise and shine,’ she says, mimicking Alexa, her biggest opponent.

I blink thrice as I usually do and smile.

And then in less than an hour the sequence gets faster. The doodhwala, the maid, presswala, and the car-safai wala come spraying my life with different flavours. The doodhwala mundu is a small kid obsessed with wearing a girlie hairband and forever muttering something to someone on his phone. The maid always looks around for any new device lying around as it gives her the opportunity to say, ‘I need this. Can you give it to me?’ I obviously say no and go on reading the fourth page of the fifth newspaper in front of me. The car-safai wala simply extends his hands which I interpret as ‘give me the keys fast’. And then comes the time when I move out and am literally thrown inside a circus… and I see jokers littering the streets, clowns in sunglasses leering at girls who aren’t making any passes, columns and rows of zombie souls just waiting to enter their routine and come out of it at five, drivers who scream as the brakes of their cars screech, bosses using intuitive pulleys choose the least smart subordinate to bully, friends who go on and on about another uninteresting subject, relatives who look at you while talking to their sibling, and strangers who appear stunned that another day has finally got going. Will someone tell me why I would want any of these men and women to rub even a small part of their quirkiness on me? I’m happy being what I am. And yet, our interactions shape our universe, some believe. Really?

A friend who is a psychologist, spends the better part of any day talking to criminals. Do I expect that one fine day she would finally do something that reflects the way she has been spending her time? Our garbage collector has been interacting with doctors, teachers, administrators, managers, journalists, writers, and scholars for decades now without learning to even write his name. A primary school teacher goes back home and never plays childish pranks on her neighbours. And yet we believe what Tim Mcgraw wrote about us taking ‘different paths in life but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere’.

However, if you look close enough, you may discover minute changes in behavior that may add to one’s personality. The garbage collector may not have developed enough confidence to understand the alphabet but would have picked up nuances in ways people talk… and this change may be noticeable in his own home. If we assume that this fellow is punctual and does his work without missing out on any details, the others who tower way above him in education and position, may notice, appreciate, and remember this during moments of their own professional laxity. The psychologist, for instance, may be privy to not just the evil streaks in her subjects but would also get to know all the good that they may have done in their lives despite adverse conditions. There is certainly a lot to learn from everyone. But do I really want to become a curious mix of multiple personalities? No. I am happy being what I am.

Evenings too come laden with a zillion people wanting to rub a part of their eccentricities on my. Look at what Arnab does to those who prefer to surf to Republic channel. They get brash and loud and irreverent and simply incoherent at times… and they love it. I’ve seen people return from their office and behave differently for a while until a glare from the wife calms them down. I remember reading books by P G Wodehouse and bringing in words and expressions that made me sound so unlike me. Watch a movie where Salman Khan bares his chest (or even a replay of that cricket match where Saurav Ganguly removed his jersey and waved it around) and for time you’ll have this irrepressible urge to go out gyrating like him and bashing up the liftman for no reason. This happens when we assume that we are under obligation to let others rub their oddness or weirdness on to us without signing on any legal contract.

No, I would not like to take a little of everyone and carry all this added baggage all my life. I am happy as I am. I don’t want to be like you.

#InseverableTraits

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Arvind Passey
12 June 2019