I think it was class VI when Geometry was first introduced in our school syllabus. The teacher asked us to buy Camlin Geometry boxes and some of the kids got some other kind. Some had elder siblings and they concocted a full set from here and there and put them in a normal pencil box. The teacher asked everyone to display their Geometry sets and those whose boxes did not read Camlin were asked to go out of the class and stand in the corridor. Same compass, same protractor, scale, divider. One even had an advanced set from an engineer at home. Still he had to stand outside. Only a Camlin box would do. In English, only a Collins Gem dictionary would do. Not an Oxford, not even a large dictionary with twice the number of words. Only that. Our English teacher would make us play a game to see who found the meanings fastest, and only the kids with her prescribed dictionary could play.
Some years later, I went away to college in a north Indian city. Everything was different! I mean everything a 16 year old holds dear! To look cool, I had to learn to wear long sleeves checked shirts folded till the elbows, over a pair of jeans. Nothing else would do. Shoes were mandatory. Sandals were frowned upon. I learnt that to be cool meant allowing anyone to take your shirt, or trouser, or underwear, or socks off the clothesline to wear themselves. Over time we never knew how many shirts we came with and where they were. I’m not kidding when I say that I used to come home in the holidays with atleast half the clothes I brought home not being mine. Shoes too. In order to fit into others clothes, you had to all be of a similar size. Anyone over or under the average weren’t part of the group. You wouldn’t bathe too often; or risk being called a neat freak. Just apply hair gel and saunter out. You had to enjoy Chai several times a day even if you came from a coffee family. You had to only play Ricky Martin (those days) and Ali Haider every single day even if your own upbringing allowed for a variety that would boggle their minds. An original 1000+ page copy of Lord of the Rings somehow made it into my room from some leaving senior’s stash, and it got noted that I read huge books. And that got me semi-accepted into an intellectual group in college. I had no clue what Tolkein wanted to convey till I saw the films many years later. But to stay accepted, I would read snippets here and there and stitch together just enough to appear knowledgeable.
I got a job right out of college and my father bought me a bike that first week. He made me promise to always wear a helmet. So I would wear that helmet till I got close to my workplace and then remove it because it wasn’t cool to be seen in one. For some, even today they’re still stuck in that era and the helmet is still a sad accessory for their bike. You would go to bars and pubs even if you didn’t drink and listen to the same old ‘love’ stories till 2 am because you wanted to be a part of the group. You wanted to be promoted at work and become part of the management, but yet that had to happen while your colleagues and staff felt that you were on their side. So you would speak to the personnel manager about better salaries and facilities, and also give jazzy presentations in management meets about cutting costs 🙄 (Much like our country does to us every single day).
This is the story of every man and woman growing up everywhere in the world. Circumstances could be different, the actors on your canvas would be different. But the struggle for acceptance is ingrained in the society we grow up in. Not taking MPC in +2 was a sure-shot way to alienate yourself (and your parents) in your community in our times. Quitting a job and getting into business for yourself was (and probably still is) a gunshot method to get estranged from everyone — family, friends, acquaintances, everyone! If you turn out to be a success, everyone comes back with a ‘I knew you could do it’ backslap, but by then, you are out of that yearning to gain acceptance, and smile kindly at them. If you fail, you’re an outcast forever.
Getting married, not getting divorced, buying a car you can’t afford, buying a second car you don’t need, buying a house, buying a second house, investing in land though you have no clue about what you’re getting into, going abroad for a ‘little trip’ to post pictures on social media, going to Ladakh on a bike though you know you can’t ride for 10 hours a day and actually hate the cold, buying a MacBook (and then loading Windows into it because you can’t figure out iOS and because your work software doesn’t work on it anyway), getting kids admitted into a school way beyond your means not because of the education but because of the pedigree it offers, moving into a gated community, going abroad because everyone else is doing it though you don’t want to leave your parents alone, joining a Golf course or horse riding or squash or pilates, voting for the majority party even if they’ve lost their way…. there’s no end to this list of things we do without really wanting to.
In many ways, we never really grow up. That Camlin Geometry box and that Collins Gem dictionary are now replaced with a Triumph or Harley and a fancy Amex card that costs ₹45000 in annual fees. Then it was termed ‘compulsory’ by a teacher; today we enforce it upon ourselves in order to feel accepted into whichever niche group we strive to hoist ourselves into.
You go through the steps of moving up, buying stuff you don’t need, getting into things you don’t care about, forcing yourself through events that bore you, all for the sake of acceptance. And then the move into ‘simplicity’ is expected too. You try to look simple, talk about filter coffee and dal-rice being better than Jamaica blue and Peking duck even if you don’t actually believe it. You stock your homes with scented candles and organic conditioners. After all those years of striving to be accepted by those who have something you don’t and reaching a stage where you can get most of those, then you strive to be accepted by people who can have all the things they can but choose not to! This is worse than the earlier stage 🤯 Whether you like it or not, you are called on to donate to causes which you have no clue about. Then you want to be termed as ‘spiritual’ and not ‘religious’, pushing aside all the things you’ve grown up on. In order to be called ‘cultured’, you read up on Murakami and Marquez. You’ve not grown beyond Twinkle Twinkle but get a couple of stanzas of ‘Miles before I sleep’ memorised. Reading the whole Bhagavad Gita is out of question, so you create a prominently visible home library with hardback copies of all our epics and carefully chosen selections from Vivekananda and Bhagavan Ramana, and then read up Wikipedia articles on them all, making sure you know ‘yada yada hi dharmasya’, which you can quote as the gist of it all.
Don’t take me wrong. We may truly enjoy some of these things. If so we do it without wanting to impress those around us. That is wonderful 👏🏼
It is incredibly difficult to get out of our struggle for acceptance. Incredibly difficult. You are either with or against the tide. And those against the tide also are part of a group and they’re visibly against the mainstream. This is true for every single sphere of our life. Resisting the pull of both these sides and charting a path that you truly want is a monumental achievement. For many, if that struggle is removed, there is nothing left at all. Because then you will have to answer the question — ‘who are you?’ Dancing to a tune that only you can listen to is unbelievably exhausting in these times of overpowering noise. But when you do manage to zero in on that ability, there is zen, and then it becomes effortless. That is real acceptance — of what we are meant to do (or not to do). Things become more meaningful, we derive more joy out of everyday. There is no overpowering urge to be liked. There is no internal struggle to play to an audience. There is no confusion of which character we are to play today. And then life is lived.
