Who am I?

Have you ever bothered to stop and turn your thoughts to yourself?

Why do you do what you do?

Why do you behave the way you do?

Take for example, some mannerism of yourself. Say, you start every sentence with ‘Actually’ (many people do !). Were you always like this? Right from the time you started speaking? When did this habit start?

When I think some things about myself (which I do often), especially when I have nothing much to do (like right now ), I realize that I have changed slightly compared to last month ! Along the way, I seem to pick up mannerisms of others I interact with.

In school, I would laugh (secretly, of course) at some girls in my class, who would speak in Hinglish - ‘What happened na, he said ki he will come, lekin woh bhool gaya. I mean, I was soooooooooooooo angry’ - you catch my drift?

There were some others who would translate from tamil/hindi directly to English - ‘You tell and come your mother’ types or ‘You told that no.’ (no substituting for ‘illai’ or ‘na’).

Many more, who would speak in normal sentences, with the tone making it a question. ‘You are coming?’ (meaning ‘Are you coming?’) types.

During one of my sober periods (not that I was drunk otherwise !), I decided to simply watch how I spoke and realized that in the process of imitating or teasing such people, I had ended up using the exact phrases in my daily conversations. For a long time, till I went to college, I would speak in Hinglish most of the time. ‘Chal, lets go. Otherwise, she will tell ki we were only late !’ types.

I teased girls who would use their hands a lot while talking (many times to show off their nail polish and their perfectly manicured fingers) and who would always have a stray strand of hair on their face and what am I doing now? I seem to be using my hands too while I talk. Maybe not as much as some, but I definitely do !!

It is not just things that we make fun of or tease in others, it is a lot of other things, that we do not even realize we have been noticing in others. Even today, a lot of people tell me that my friend of 15 years and I talk exactly in the same fashion, although we are like chalk and cheese ! We are completely different by nature, yet seem to have picked up something of the other over the course of time. A lot of people we meet say that we even sound similar !

My parents have probably changed too, probably because they have picked up things from me.

I would not term this as inspiration, since I do not think any of these things happen consciously. But at some level, we seem to leave something of us and take something of the other during every interaction with other people.

I read a long while ago, that after living together for many decades, husbands and wives even slowly start resembling each other! Some photographs from the past and present were presented as evidence !!

That brings up the question of who I really am. Without getting into any philosophy, I seem to be a microcosm of the world around me, a little bit of everyone I have met in life, a living record of who I have interacted with over a period of time, with the real ME (is there any such person), so masked with layers of others, that I really doubt I exist !!