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.

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.

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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.

I’ve had many discussions with people on whether our online world is the real world. People who breathe facebook and twitter will look at you with contempt if you bring this up. Surely you aren’t insinuating that spending all their time on FB is fake!

The debate of what’s your real life and what’s just ‘timepass’ is not about to die anytime soon. There are enough social media experts (there’s one behind every twitter ID) who’ll scoff at the very suggestion that the virtual isn’t real.

I frankly don’t care about that debate too much. Everything’s real if that’s how you feel about it.

However one thing does bother me. And it’s been written about plenty but this is my blog so I’m allowed to repeat it

It bothers me that we aren’t who we really are online. To be precise, we aren’t who we really are on social networking sites. I’ve had the most real conversations on chat or any such medium where it was a one on one or where my closest circle had access. However what makes a social networking site like FB so unreal is that it doesn’t have the circles of trust that help us define our social circle.

I admit that I don’t know all the options and settings available on FB so you’ll have to overlook that.

Here’s what I think. In real life (or offline if you will), we are joined at the hip with some people, hold some at an arm’s length, others we politely nod a hello to and some we just don’t know. I am willing to tell the first and the last in that list about my latest heartbreak because the first will care and help me and the latter will be faceless and allow for an emotional outburst with little or no consequences. It’s the ones in the middle that I’ll have to be careful about.

When a status message/picture of an intensely personal nature finds itself in the facebook stream of all your friends, I wonder if it’s been put there because of what you want to project about yourself and your life or whether you are truly that close to the 498 friends on FB that you want them to know everything about you.

Let’s face it. Unlike the young people today, we weren’t born breathing the internet. We adapted to it and made it our own. So perhaps we still struggle with define our circles online.

Your real friends know who you are. They know where you went for new yr’s eve. They may not know what you wore, so it’s fair to show them your pictures. But why does that old classmate from class 4 who you haven’t met since need to know that you wore a black halter? And why does it excite you to see all your friends rave about how hot you look, as you reply with ‘thank you’s at lightening speed. You were waiting with baited breath to watch people admire your lifestyle no? Waiting to be told how awesome you are?  You knew you looked hot in that picture else it would have never made it on facebook. I’ve seen enough photo-sessions that end with ‘don’t you dare put that on facebook!’

So when so much of what we do on facebook is to project a happy and happening image of ours does that make it real? Are we that happy and happening?

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?

human bull dozers exist.
it is a fact.

we have seen them.
been bull dozed by them.
and some of us may even be them.

perhaps it is only my experience, but most bull dozers tend to be middle aged aunties, not more than 5 feet in height. elbowing their way through a crowd with their head ducked low so as to enhance the bull dozer effect, I suppose.

They have a very purposeful look on their face. their eyes fixed on one imaginary point ahead, to which they must reach within seconds.

Upon reaching this imaginary point of course, and having elbowed scores of people in the process, they stand nonchalantly, as if they had been there all along. Their ducked head finds a dancer’s height as their noses now reach for the sky in a futile attempt at regaining dignity.

you’d think she’s the sweet next-door aunty who smiles and helps little kids along. But then your crushed toes and bruised ribs tell a different story.

here are a few tips on how to avoid the bulldozer

1. look out for sudden and magical separation in crowds. much like moses and the sea. you’ll know a bulldozer’s heading your way.

2. quickly check the people around you. if there are any middle aged women under 5 feet, try and steer clear of them.

3. look out for anyone with their elbows out. they look a bit like angry chickens out for revenge. also they tend to charge the most when trying to catch a bus or train.

as for me, i’ll just buy a relispray. Does that help with bruised ribs?