Who am I?   

 “Don’t ask me who I am and don’t ask me to remain the same”- Michael Foucault (miʃɛl fuko)

I am a copywriter by design and a writer by default. My poems, short stories, and articles all in Kannada have been published in some leading dailies and magazines. Once ‘The Times of India’ published my contribution in the slot below the editorial (titled Brief-case those days).Again, the website www.afaqs.com carried my article “Chocolate Diaries’ in its “Planning Room” page. Apart from these, there is nothing on record to claim that I am a writer! And the copy I write for a living, does not meet the standards of scholastic or prosaic writing and I am fully aware of that.

Before I dissect myself...

"One doesn't have to be one thing or the other. One can be many things at the same time."- VS Naipaul   (as stated in Vijay Times-now defunct newspaper- on 09-11-2006)

Very true! I am my heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, blood, bones and bone marrow…and the millions of cells constituting me… dying and regenerating now and then. The DNA I am made of. The instruction manual I followed in my mother’s womb to shape myself, my body, my skin colour, hair follicles, IQ, EQ all without my knowledge…simply because I was not even born when I was shaping myself… or He was doing all this…(then why blame me, for ‘me’ being what I am!)  And the neurons! The synapses ( the connecting point between two neurons, where memory is stored)! That part of my brain which controls my breathing, heart, and balancing, all without my knowledge. And that part which I suppose is in my control ( sorry folks, for the time being please set aside the debate whether we have a free-will or not) which we call the consciousness, always at the mercy of my subconscious mind, which mysteriously and mercilessly acts weird and bizarre and influences the later without my knowledge. And the food, water and the air that formed me. Ultimately the quality of the soil that had a bearing on the quality of the food that formed me is what I am and that soil is nothing but the Earth and Earth is a part and parcel of the mystery called universe…and hence I am the universe! ‘Aham Brahmaasmi!’ I was born eons ago since I am nothing but a continuation of the BIG BANG. I am not an observer of this universe. Myself, my senses, my body everything is a part of this universe. I am the universe. I am a mystery. We are all players and spectators at the same time in this colossus of a doomed drama. What are we? Where are we? Who told us that we are human beings? Who? Is it not the human beings who told human beings that they are human beings?

That’s me! Yet that’s not all! There is more to myself than what meets the eyes, ears, nose and skin. I am a porcupine that got evolved into a human being! I had quills in place of hair when I was a child.  Hence only a few could resist the temptation of bullying me with titles they thought most appropriate. Some even exposed their ignorance by calling me mongoose! That one made me go even wilder. I used to bear it with a grin! That grin, like a scar, is etched there in my visage. Like Woody Allen said somewhere, the more stoically you endure your childhood, the more brownie points you score in your literal front or something to that effect. But then, it is a different matter that I failed to score the brownie points you need to bring your melancholy to the brim and look great like a sage. The art of brooding and fallibility remained as my strong companions.  When I die please do what they did in Egypt thousands of years ago, burying the dead along with their inseparable belongings… myself, my melancholy and my corpse! That’s me and yet that’s not all. (to be continued)