I have gotten into the habit of walking these evenings to stay fit. And that brought a lot of free time to learn about myself, listen to self-discovery podcasts, understand how people think about their own life. More specifically, to develop my sense of what kind of person I am at PRESENT, and I have been in PAST, and the kind I want to be in FUTURE. The hidden credit to this blog will go to a person more than just a friend to me - AJ. No other person has had such a deep and profound impact to shape my life than her, other than of course my family. Hers has a magical connection, at times very deep, an emotional roller coaster, but super duper positive.

[Present] Kind of person I’m

I am not very shy, also not very outspoken. I have been trained all my life to push and pursue what I want, and ONLY what I want from life. To discover what I want I think around certain metrics. Like how much money it will bring to me! Will saying a certain pros/cons about issues change it for good? Is there the slightest chance that I can suffer? I only do something when I am convinced that I will gain.

Surprisingly, this tendency has been super productive for me and the next section will brief how I reached here and was trained to be like this. But the following are the consequences that I am observing in my behaviour:

1. I do like helping others, but I cannot do that silently. I would atleast brag about that to my parents if not too many people. This helps me satisfy my eagerness that I proved to my parents that their son is a better human. My desire that my parents should feel content with me is satisfied at the moment when I express what I have done. This includes giving money to any school or donating for any cause among others.

2. I tend to back off from doing any good work if there’s a little disruption if I feel it’s taking too much effort and could potentially be mocked at. It may not be such a bad thing, but it prevents me from achieving much good and/or significant.

3. I would never speak against any injustice, and rather take refuge in something else around me. This even includes bullying myself, open discrimination, injustice at the workplace. I push myself to not be that guy who suffered because he wanted to be brave and become a hero. I kill my morality at that time but I feel sad and disgusted about my life because of that. Something in me feels pain when I am bullying someone, or not speaking against bullying myself or mocking and supporting an injustice.

4. I have been getting habituated to supporting all the wrongs, for examples, casteism, religion-based extremism, dominate introverts. I stay in denial all the time, so much so that at times it takes someone else to show an angry face, or humiliate me, or refuse to take the effort to make me understand just so that I can realize there’s something wrong with what I did/said.

5. I cheat everyone. I cheat myself too. If I am sad, I am scared to show that face because who will want to stay near a sad person. I would give a euphoria to myself, smile all the time. Laugh hard at ridiculous things so that people around me could feel that I am such a joyous person. But inside I am that Raj Kapoor’s Joker, who is pained, deeply pained.

I was never this kind of a human :’(

[Past] Kind of person I’ve been

I have always been a very open-minded person and influenceable (read gullible). I never use my existing knowledge to judge anyone. And I used to be a strong believer that there’s a learning that we can take from every one, no matter how good/bad one is AND from everything, no matter how good or bad it is. I had no filters in my eyes, ears and actions. If anyone says doing something is good, I will bloody hell do that. No matter I am good or not, I will keep toiling at that idea and make sure I gain out of that person. This went well in sports, learning new skills, at the job, earning skills or money. Everywhere it worked insanely well when people around me were able to share something good. Because I would not waste energy and time to doublethink. I feel to have always been super productive. I somehow managed to come from nowhere to build a decently successful career, life and people around me, because of this attitude.

However, with every jump that I took in my life people around me changed. A consistent pattern of change followed with the moves that I took from my home in Patna, to roaming with friends in School, to Super 30, to IIT Patna, to an internship in Bangalore, to Microsoft in Hyderabad, to NTU University in Singapore and continuing with jobs in Singapore including at Facebook. I am today in a very far away country both physically and culturally where I feel I have little left in common with my nativity. This has been also aggravated with being stuck due to COVID and a fear that my parents long for me daily while dreaming chitthi na koi sandesh, jane wo konsa desh, jaha tum chale gaye.

With each set of friends I have been super receptive, each helped me become a better person. But also have given their contributions to my language, behaviour and my irrationality. No one has been able to identify and tell me that I need to develop a thought process of my own. Wrong or right, I can get it rectified in due course of time. My family has completely ignored my immaturities due to my cuteness maybe.

Things turn sad when friends start suggesting awkward things and I didn’t speak against it. The bullying started and me being younger, inferior to my peers was grilled into me. I was finally a backward caste person, who is vulnerable! It had been on my face all the time. How can I support/oppose reservation system when everyone is opposed to it. I felt stressed about me being shorter in school, fitter in college and less manly by the time of graduation. I can’t now be held back in everything that a man is expected to do. I saw others and learnt what I am supposed to do.

I will protect society, oppress others, establish morality like a male king, bully everyone who comes in my way. I am a MALE lion and I have to show that. I can do everything, because I go out, enjoy more freedom, earn money for everyone else associated with me. I can also have as many intimate relationships or intoxicate my body for pleasure, or be abusive to others, or measure everything in terms of money. If I earn money, I am the King. Finally, my name had started to make sense!

There have been also very good people around me. And I do tend to get attracted ideologically to them. But even those good quality were blocked by my ill-theories. I started to finally judge people based on money earned. If a person is in college, I will judge them based on their employment potential. I see everyone as human capital or a money sink. I tend to doubt every good intent. There is nothing like society or morality left in me. I see ONLY money.

As of writing this blog, there’s nothing left which is immoral/wrong for the world and that I haven’t done or supported. My views turned so toxic that I see those who judged me as losers. I called Indian Muslims as bloody Bangladeshis before joining Facebook, I realized how wrong I was! I abused my freedom and misused priviledge to bully others. I want the government to be a superpower and crush all dissent cruelly. I see maternity benefits as a loss to any company, also periods as a design fault with females. Females are meant to be enjoyed! I supported slavery also, even though my whole country was a slave merely a couple of decades ago, including my lineage.

I learnt all the wrong things !!

[Future] Kind of person I’d be

Suddenly, a plethora of good people surrounded me, and there was one special person - AJ, who would spend extra energy to not just understand me but also fix me. I listened, argued, broke up, abused, but finally gave in to the goodness. Before I begin to promise a future for me, dear reader, please pause to understand that I am at my absolute low. Nothing can justify my thoughts and actions.

I accept that I have become what I never wanted to be. I can do better!

If the Rains of Castamere feasts over my family, I can only weep at my own wrongdoings. I just cannot justify anything. So, I won’t even try! Instead, my act of putting things in public is my testimony that I want things to change. Once again, I am taking matters and pushing super hard to change, this time for good.

At Office, I will not be silent. I will speak up and give feedback to people who do wrong. When supporting others can help, I will do that. I will be a better Individual-Contributor to the community.

In Society, I won’t speak up to favour anything wrong. Atleast to the people who matter, I will say that it is wrong.

For Relationship, I will be a super faithful, super supportive, super accommodating person. The best person one can ask for. Not by hiding my true self, but by actually being that way.

I just hope I am able to keep up my promise! I am determined to.