Yes, the World.

you extremist you! *pulls cheeks*

The rush to create a personal brand online is leading us to define ourselves in black and white.  The internet has given us so many places to voice our opinion that often we have the means but no opinion and force ourselves to have one.

Are you with Kolaveri or are you against it? Do you think that was a flashmob or not?

Slot. Slot. Slot.

Clearly you can’t say you’re a musician and then go on twitter and not have an opinion on every piece of music being shared. You may not even have an opinion on A R Rahman’s new piece but to build your brand, you must.

God forbid you have mixed feelings about anything. God forbid that you should want to comment on a post without sounding like an extremist. With 140 character profile descriptions and your life laid bare online, there is an urgent need need to define your brand.

Comments, likes, posts, tweets and status updates seduce you into giving an opinion. Any opinion. And Quickly.

No wonder then that all you see online on forums, sites, social networks are angry, pissed-off people who either rush to embrace the next new thing or shred to pieces anything that they don’t instantly love.

Read this disrespectful comment on someone’s post – ‘You are either joking or your ideological-obsessiveness has made you stupid.’  Or just look at the unprovoked nasty messages Chetan Bhagat gets on twitter.

And it doesn’t matter that the extremists have no real reason for hating anything.

Why? Because online you either love it or you hate it. There is no in between. No one wants to engage with a moderate voice.

Moderation makes not a good brand, I suppose.

The question of beauty

I met a 13 yr old girl once in order to interview her for some research work. I can’t remember her name or where exactly she lived. But I’ll never forget the way she sat in her living room with her hair neatly tied and her course books lining the background and looked me in the eye and said, ‘i’m not beautiful like my friends’.

Her matter-of-fact confession seemed such a statement of fact than an admission of low self-esteem that it shook me. I don’t think I said much to comfort her. She wasn’t looking to be advised or comforted. She was simply stating something that she believed to be true.

What makes a 13 yr old beautiful girl accept with unquestioning loyalty, the thought that she is not beautiful?

Over the years, many people have spoken about the beauty within. Or about beauty that lies in the eye of the beholder. The trouble with these concepts is tht nobody will listen. These statements demand far too much work from the listener. For one,t his concept demands that you be okay with just inner beauty. When I buy a new shampoo I’m buying it for my hair. I’m buying it to change something about me for the better. The desire to change and to improve is so strong at that moment that no amount of beauty I may have stuffed inside me will help me change my mind.

So if millions of women across the world aren’t listening to this advce, maybe then, the advice itself is wrong.

What really is the trouble with beauty today? There’s nothing wrong with a teen girl wanting to cut her hair short so that it shapes her face beautifully. But there is something wrong with an 8 yr old girl trying botox. Perhaps the notion of beauty as an ideal state needs challenging. But then as humans, we’re always aspiring for the ideal. Perhaps then the notion that there is only one kind of beauty, needs challenging.

Real beauty, then, is perhaps really about acceptance. Accepting your grey hair. Accepting that those stretch marks are a part of you. That they add character and tell the story of where you have been and what you have experienced. Real beauty is in knowing that the acne marks don’t need to be scraped off with chemical peels because they speak of your struggles during your teen years. Wiping your body clean of its past will not always give you a fresh start, it might however wipe away parts of you that make you who you are.

Real beauty is about accepting your body, your soul for what it is. There will always be scope for improvement. You can always try and be a better person or one that you consider more beautiful. But the day that desire to improve comes from a sense of inferiority, you’ll end up chasing a dream that was never really yours.

If I could go back to that 13 yr old girl, I’d say this – find the time to love things about yourself and you’ll be surprised at how much beauty you already possess. I’m sure she wouldn’t listen. Perhaps then as adults it’s our duty to not point out every thing that we think young girls don’t have. It’s time we put up neon signs to show them the amazing things they already have.

______

For those who believe in the cause, look for Project Beautiful Me on Facebook. It’s a small something I’m trying to do.

Also Dove’s running a campaign where they’re asking people what they think of Real Beauty and I’m cross-posting this there. If this is a cause someone in India is willing to take seriously, then I’m with that. Totally.

the indian middle class & its disappearing status

I’ve been reading mother pious lady by santosh desai and the more he brings the Indian middle class to life, the more I worry for them.

The middle class is in the middle. But of course. It’s in the middle of a sea change in attitude toards money, sex, relationships, television and savings.

It’s being crushed under the weight of ambitions of a constantly changing world. The middle class has always been happy and cocooned, hoping for all the other classes at the extreme ends of the spectrum to take the first hit. Anything that reaches them, they have time to prepare for.

No wonder the new world order scares them a bit. Terrifies them perhaps. Nowhere is it more evident than in a middle class man’s clutching of his social status.

While the rich and the blue blooded might want to lay claim to ‘status’, it’s really ever truly been the mistress of the middle class. In being middle class there is an acknowledgement of class. More than any other social class, it’s the ones in the middle who’re always aware of the classes that sandwich them. The aunty next door still feels it’s her right to talk about her maid as ‘kaamchor’. The professional in a queue for autos still feels it’s his right to employ these lower class people.
With plumbers asking you to book them weeks in advance and autorickshaws passing you by as you sweat your 2 km walk, the middle class is floundering in an increasingly classless society.

Let’s not call it classless, but it’s a class now based on income and lifestyle and not from occupation. Put a middle class Indian in the company of working class and he’ll expect a distance to be maintained between him and the other.

Remember the first low cost flights? The upper middle class Indian clambered on as if it were natural for him to sprout wings and fly while glaring at the lower middle class which seemed to find seats right next to him.

The they-work-for-us attitude has comforted middle class India. It’s been the one constant. The one thing that

comforted them when their pursuit of all things high class was unsuccessful. They work for us. We are the king of something. Something small. But something.

I met Ishwarchand yesterday. He’s a rickshaw driver and unprovoked made the most important comment on our times.

He said ‘ab toh rickshawalla bhi afsar jitna kamata hai. tabhi aap log ko chalna padta hai’ explaining why rickshawallahs have the upper hand and we find it impossible to find one to take us home.

He went on helpfully adding ‘do minute bhi nahin milta. Sawari bahut zyada hi milti hai’.

India is trying to shine across classes. It works for Ishwarchand. For my uncle from mohali, it does not.

Middle class India is accustomed to being needed. The tables are turning. Will they just smile and nod and take it in their stride or sit at dinner parties and crib about their maid’s attitude?

I found myself a new job

If there’s one thing that really makes my blood boil, it’s people littering city as if the world’s a garbage dump.

On a recent train journey to Pune a lovely young (seemingly educated) couple threw a whole lot of stuff out the window into the ‘universal dustbin’ that is the world around us.

I thought to myself… (even though it was bloody hard to think with my temper rising by the second)

‘Maybe I should just stare at him and he’ll get the hint.’

So I gave him the stare. But he just looked confused

‘Maybe I should wait till he decides to chuck something else out and stop him then.’

So I sat and waited for him to start to chuck something out again. God! Those were the longest minutes of my life as he slowly munched his food on his soon-to-be-out-the-window-paper-plate.

Just as he reached out the window to chuck his plate I screamed

“WAIT-WAIT. DONT-THROW-IT-OUTSIDE!”

and I reached for his plate in an attempt to force it out of his hands and throw it in a dustbin. (totally filmy I tell you!)

So basically he apologized, and took it to the dustbin himself (I think!) and went on to tell another kid in our compartment to do the same and not chuck junk out the window.

He said to me

“Thanks for reminding me”

( which of course caused a big smug grin to surface on my face which I tried my best to hide with a book I was reading)

So I’ve decided that since I’m probably not going to be doing anything great for India, I might as well just take on the job of a cleaner.

Last evening I picked up two ticket stubs that this lady threw on the compartment floor. She noticed my clean-up-act but didn’t say anything. As for me, I was happy that 2 less ticket stubs littered mumbai last night.