Let’s assume you are the kind of person who is unable to find someone of your age who matches your interests and tastes. You feel lonely and want some company. So, you decide to follow people of your age in every way. You sing, dance, draw or attend parties with people, thinking they will like you in turn and befriend you. Whether it’s really the thing YOU want to do doesn’t bother you because you want to combat the insecurity of loneliness. And in that pursuit, you lose your sense of who you are and what matters to you. You are blindly aping your peers to gain their friendship.

Sometimes, you dismiss your preference and adopt a new one. Take, for example, dressing; you shun your style and begin to dress like your peers for want of socialising. At first, you might feel happy being accepted or befriended, but it becomes an obsession over time. Before you go out every time, you will begin to feel the need to choose the outfit that’s acceptable to your peers or makes you look like ‘one with them’. Without realising it, you will slowly be eroding your identity.

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An Eternal Crisis

Haven’t you heard a lot of people say that adolescence is a time when you’re lost and are seeking to “find yourself”? Throughout life, everybody is in an incessant identity hunt. You think that you’re searching for friends, craving company and wanting recognition. The truth, in fact, is that you are desiring to understand your mind, accept your shortfalls and establish a sense of belonging to the most important person in your life — you. You are a product of your capabilities, relationships, values, ideations and memories. Without a “sense of self” that stems from these ingredients, you cannot navigate the winding roads of existence or see meaning in any of your experiences. You sense a blank when you look at the mirror because you can’t see through yourself. Why is it such a struggle to decipher, decode and discern who you are? Why the eternal identity crisis?

You Get Disconnected

Let’s recall a time when you were upset because a group of friends did not invite you to a party or involve you in their weekend plan. This has happened with all of us at some point. Did you speak up or were you too embarrassed, distraught, and sad? Did you hide the issue and sense your self-esteem dip such that you felt left out, unloved and unwanted? Maybe you appeased yourself with YouTube or a videogame and just hoped that you would be invited the next time around. Maybe you binged on some snacks that day to lift your mood. You did not want to deal with the discomfort. The disconnection wasn’t as much from your friends, as it was from your own self. You allowed yourself to feel unworthy because you were not connected with yourself.

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Much of the thrashing and bashing that’s being done by our VIPs is because they feel a toll attendant, or watchman or policeman is treating them without respect, “Do you know who I am?” they shout, then use their fists.

In that pathetic cry of asking for recognition, there’s much to see.

We newspaper columnists are quite fond of our bylines and feel mighty proud when someone recognizes us, and sometimes, rare those times be, even quote from some or other of our writings. Says one very famous lady newspaper writer, “It’s quite often I go to a party and introduce myself and expect the person who I’m being introduced to, to be floored by my name, but am stupefied when he says, “Ah, is that your name, and what name do you write under?”

Do you know who I am?

No, we don’t.

We were all hopping mad when Shah Rukh Khan was detained at the New York airport. There he was one of the most famous men in India sitting miserably in a detention room. I had been detained in that same room somewhere in the nineties, for all the wrong reasons, namely my beard, and I know the feeling of helplessness, even hopelessness: In that awful place you are a nobody!

Do you know who I am? You scream in silence at the emigration officer who carries on doing his work, leaving you even more fragile and shaky.

You can make all the money in the world, be the world’s richest man, take the most number of wickets, act in all the Hindi movies in Bollywood, but somewhere, someone in authority cares a damn, because he just doesn’t know who you are!

What do you do?

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My heart is still green at the base, thumping in jerks and keeping me alive by holding onto life yet I’m ‘just tired’ on the outside, dried and pale. Weary of this world.

And this society? It is the harsh wind that drives the strength out of me, compelling me to let go.

But I’m adamant about not giving up. I don’t want to loosen my grip on life. I don’t want my existence to be buried beneath this trodden earth. I don’t want people to trample over me just like a blanket of dried leaves gets crushed under our feet. Because I know it’s just autumn now and the spring shall come someday, when my outsides will shine again with shimmering hues of green. And this depressing yellow won’t be my only identity. Perhaps yes, I will wait until the spring comes someday.

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