A Window To Perceptive Journalism

Bismarck, SP Singh & Personal Websites

Bismarck once said that God looks after fools, drunks, children, and the U.S.A. I am not in the U.S.A., I do not drink, and haven’t been mistaken as a child for many years now. Almost crossing over to the right side of 40 in times when the premium is on being young, but still nursing an alter ego so inflated as to include a wish to have a personal website, I must be falling in the category of fools. For, after all, God did take care of me reasonably well, or I wouldn’t have survived thus far, considering the reckless way I have lived my life. 

A personal website is an alter ego. And for some strange reason, this page is called homepage. As if homes have anything to do with pages! 

Personal websites are, in fact, about exhibitionism. Indians are pretty good at it, just as Britishers are good at being eccentrics. Indians would perform poorly on eccentricity index (most are so predictable), just as Brits would be clumsy at exhibitionism.  

Wellspring for both eccentricity and exhibitionism must be common -- the difficulty to get noticed. Brits don't bother about the man next door, and there are so many Indians around that your turn to get noticed doesn't come even when peeping into the next man's life is a national characteristic behavioral strain. 

Ours is a loud culture. We don't cry silently, but beat our chests publicly. We don't celebrate over a glass of sparkling Chardonnay wine and polite conversation as great raconteurs but indulge in loud braggadocio talk over hard whiskey, or in case of those afflicted with inverse snobbery, the home-brewed desi. 

At times I think if I was struck by the idea of having a personal website, it could most certainly have its roots in my Indianness in having a braggadocio streak. 

So, please put down my audacity of inviting you to partake of the spread here to this streak, much the same which caused Brits to invent hobbies, those muffled pastimes as train spotting and collecting beer mats. 

The British enjoy anonymity, but we hate such a quieter state of being. Think of the long line of eccentrics in British literature. The Canterbury pilgrims are nearly all so. Think of the bard's Falstaff. Think of Dickens' Miss Havisham, Miss Flite (in "Bleak House"), Mr. Dick (in "David Copperfield"), Mr. Pickwick and his friends. Think of Wodehouse, whose characters are eccentricity unbound. 

But now think of Indians. Think of Sheikh Chilly, think of Mulla Nassarudin, think of Ravana and all the other demons, why, think even about all our gods, the Shiva, the Vishnu... 

I am only reflecting this civilisational trait by putting up this website, but if you still aren't convinced, okay, please put me down to the only category I can fit into in Bismarck's quote.■

Summer 2006

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