*Dedicated to:
Keerti(_007) whose suggestion made me write another sequel.*
Keerti,
I’ve written half-a-dozen “review series” so far. And I’m adding another one to the list. At this rate, I’m confident that when I finally trespass the campus of heaven(whence I shall be uncharitably prosecuted for doing so), I shall be given a “My Life-Part 2” by the Prosecutor(I’m in for trouble now)… Now won’t that be interesting?
*# # #
== Importance of Self Appraisal ==
PSYCHIATRISTS, COUNSELLORS and general public** urge people to be “confident” for a very basic reason. A person’s position in any society is determined, to a very significant extent, by what he thinks of himself. The impression that a person has about himself(or herself) gets expressed in his(or her) behavior, which ultimately decides his(or her) standing in society(which is fortunately neuter… curses to the new-age insistence on using gender-non-specific pronouns).
One does not expect someone wearing a shirt with straps to hold it’s sleeves on, a large pair of Tom Woody specks, a hanky pinned to the front and a pair of trousers that allows the brand new socks to show, to be anything significant in a gathering. But remember: someone who throws his chest out at any instant and brays his opinions like an erratic cricket in mating season gets the same treatment as, say, a very irritating boil on the rear(or worse).
One must fortify one’s confidence with the barricades of one’s qualities, soften one’s ego with the silk of humility and illuminate one’s personality with the thirst for self-improvement(ah, “one” the number-pronoun that can be effectively used as a gender non-specific third-personal demonstrative!)… It is important to remember therefore that being able to peel an apple with a simple spoon is nothing more brilliant than digging your nose with your right toenail, and therefore a conflict of egos in this context is avoidable. At the same time, a person who has researched the effects of the consumption of a certain class of food-items on the immune functions of the human body must profess his superiority over a person who suggests scorpion semen as an effective cure for infertility in human males. That conflict of egos is necessary(to safeguard the sanities of the onlookers).
Just to stray from the academic discussion we’d indulged in just now, and to yield to the purpose of this review, let us see how a person can design the person’s profile to convey the point, the person desires, across. If the person(I’m tired of gender unbiased writing) intends to make the person-self look like a serious Mortician, it’s best the person(puff, puff) writes nothing in interests or “About Myself”. However, if the person(must—look—for—alternative—energy—source—or—shall—die) intends to portray the person’s self(may Jesus smile forever… may Mona Lisa envy him…) as a fun-loving type, it’s best to use humor as the tool. It has a better effect than saying—“I love to have fun. You want to help me out?” especially if another person of the opposite sex is reading it.
So here are five prototypes of funny, well-meaning(now there’s a catch to that) profiles… read on dear reader!
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(I’ll just use myself as the example so it doesn’t hurt anyone).
(1) Humility
People have been calling me several things ranging from the mollycoddling sweet to the remarkably non-vegetarian, time and again, confusing me about my identity quite often. But I have remained firm and obstinate: I still sign my letters as “Laxman Phansalkar”. In an exactly similar fashion, I have been accused of being the descendent of several kinds of people(and as often as that, a mutation of several species of other creatures), been told several different amazingly myriad locations as my rightful birthplaces and ultimate destinations. Yet, I continue to live in, and say that I live in, So-and-So City and have very few plans of changing my address to anywhere less terrestrial than that, especially places whose names start with ‘h’ and end in ‘l’.
I prefer to wear simple clothes and a kindly smile on my face, though I often end up spoiling those normal clothes, and being given a reason far too many to wear a look of strict irritable neutrality on my face. The permanence of that look, arising purely out of the way others treat me, has made me somewhat popular in that section of the society, which needs help to tie their pajama strings, while needing an esc*rt to guide their 40-years-old selves in toy stores, seriously debating if a GI-Joe action figure would be better or a four-foot-large stuffed Wooly Bear.
(2) Aggression
I normally don’t like to speak about myself. But disobedience is a permanent feature of my way of life. When the very home page URL demands my mouth shut, I choose to speak out. Ironic, isn’t it? My name is Laxman Phansalkar, but you don’t have to conform to it, like a million others haven’t. You could choose to distort my name the way you like, provided you don’t mind having your nose jutting out the wrong end of your face, thank you very much.
(3) Hooliganism
I’m a Libran by Zodiac, Phansalkar by birth, Laxman by christening, and intelligent by no means. I tried my luck at several different hobbies in my life, did well at nothing, got rejected from every single one of them and then realized I had found my hobby—trying out new hobbies. I’m compulsive and erratic and you’ll find me as clichéd as clichéd can get. But I advise you not to say so, since I do work out five hours in the gymnasium and have an extraordinary liking to hunting people down and sharing a piece of my mind with them.
(4) Truthful
God said, “Let there be light”. And then there was light. But before he created anything, he had said, “Let there be no necessity for reason”. And then there was me. Hello, fellow mortal!
(5) Frank
I was born in the tenth month of the year, 8 days after it began, 13 years before the turn of the 20th century, with an incorrigible liking for arithmetic and an incurable dislike for clarity that hasn’t quite left me yet. I live in a city that is at the same distance from either significant side of the country, where the temperature is five less than half of the boiling point of water in the Celsius scale in summer. I am learning that field of science that involves abstract concepts devised by jerks that thought they had great applications in practical situations, making this world confusingly deterministic. There are as many people in my family as vertices in a square, including me, and as many men as diagonals in the same figure. We don’t however bisect each other at home.