I don’t claim to be the sharpest tool in the shed. No I have no intentions of being the most intelligent being on the planet. What is my intention of life then? Remaining just the way I am. And prey what is that you ask. Well I like to call my state of stationary mental evolution as the state of being “Comfortably Dumb”.
Of course you want to know the symptoms of such a degenerate state for fear of relapsing into it yourself but don’t worry it isn’t so bad after all. Once you realize that all the people surrounding you have faculties that far outstrip yours in whatever sense you wish to imagine, there comes a time in your life of profound realization that no matter how much struggle and kick, you are never going to make the cut to the podium anytime in the foreseeable future. It is then that you succumb to reveling in being the average Joe (hope Joe doesn’t mind). And I know it sounds like the lamest defenses ever but it really isn’t all that bad. Not having to live up to any expectations or conform to any standards of performance actually has quite a charm of its own. Of course you get to sip the soda from the sidelines while the actual superstars garner all the glory but who said clapping for the players on stage doesn’t have its own advantages? For starters you can hoot and pass comments. How’s that for compensation? The journey to such a profound realization though has been long and winding and a little hard on the small ego that I harbor but reality has taken so much of a toll that it now rarely ventures out into the open. Here’s how it went for me.
When I was a kid, it was quite the fad to be an all rounder. Back in school, you were standing in a row of uniformly clad zombies in the morning assembly when suddenly out stepped this guy all smartly decked to receive his prize that he had won for reciting the third verse of the fifth chapter of the Bhagvad Gita in the fifth note of the third octave at the 23rd All India Geriatric Convention. What I neat idea I thought. All I had to do was do something that the other kids were not thinking of and go and win a prize in some obscure event organized by the street’s rummy playing association and of course stand up to receive the prize at the morning assembly in front of the whole congregation. What my small little brain failed to foresee was that the kids next to me in the x and y coordinates had also latched onto the same idea and just my luck that we all aimed at the same Rummy player’s association. So went my first crack at stardom
By the time I hit middle school, I realized that physically it was impossible for me to have the remotest possibility of performing in the sports arena without endangering the entire neighborhood with a 7.8 earthquake. So I decided that I would seek specialty in the game of the mind which is so popularly called quizzing. Big mistake that one. Realized quite late though and I was once again left clapping as the guy who was able to correctly identify Mel Gibson in drag from the visual clue claimed the prize.
By the time I hit high school, I was getting desperate for my shot at success. I wasn’t doing too badly in class and fortunately for me my parents had decided to put me through some musical instrument training right from childhood. In my desperation to be conspicuous, I hit the road to the school orchestra and decided to make my mark there. Oh I was conspicuous alright and the only reason my music teacher didn’t kill me was because I left the school.
College was where the realization that I was a good for nothing hick finally beginning to sink in. Being constantly around guys and gals whose IQs were always more than double the square of mine was quite a humbling experience. But I guess there was still some strand of DNA in me which thought of giving it a final try. So I hit the drama circuit as a, would you believe it… background musician. Doesn’t get any lamer than this. I wasn’t Romeo romancing Juliet on stage. I was just the guy who played C# when he did so. I wasn’t Ram battling Ravana in front of the audience. No siree, I was the all important drum beats of the Monkey army! Finally it hit me that I was doing some irreparable damage to my already non existent credibility by continuing on this path and some drastic measures were in order.
Of course you want to know the symptoms of such a degenerate state for fear of relapsing into it yourself but don’t worry it isn’t so bad after all. Once you realize that all the people surrounding you have faculties that far outstrip yours in whatever sense you wish to imagine, there comes a time in your life of profound realization that no matter how much struggle and kick, you are never going to make the cut to the podium anytime in the foreseeable future. It is then that you succumb to reveling in being the average Joe (hope Joe doesn’t mind). And I know it sounds like the lamest defenses ever but it really isn’t all that bad. Not having to live up to any expectations or conform to any standards of performance actually has quite a charm of its own. Of course you get to sip the soda from the sidelines while the actual superstars garner all the glory but who said clapping for the players on stage doesn’t have its own advantages? For starters you can hoot and pass comments. How’s that for compensation? The journey to such a profound realization though has been long and winding and a little hard on the small ego that I harbor but reality has taken so much of a toll that it now rarely ventures out into the open. Here’s how it went for me.
When I was a kid, it was quite the fad to be an all rounder. Back in school, you were standing in a row of uniformly clad zombies in the morning assembly when suddenly out stepped this guy all smartly decked to receive his prize that he had won for reciting the third verse of the fifth chapter of the Bhagvad Gita in the fifth note of the third octave at the 23rd All India Geriatric Convention. What I neat idea I thought. All I had to do was do something that the other kids were not thinking of and go and win a prize in some obscure event organized by the street’s rummy playing association and of course stand up to receive the prize at the morning assembly in front of the whole congregation. What my small little brain failed to foresee was that the kids next to me in the x and y coordinates had also latched onto the same idea and just my luck that we all aimed at the same Rummy player’s association. So went my first crack at stardom
By the time I hit middle school, I realized that physically it was impossible for me to have the remotest possibility of performing in the sports arena without endangering the entire neighborhood with a 7.8 earthquake. So I decided that I would seek specialty in the game of the mind which is so popularly called quizzing. Big mistake that one. Realized quite late though and I was once again left clapping as the guy who was able to correctly identify Mel Gibson in drag from the visual clue claimed the prize.
By the time I hit high school, I was getting desperate for my shot at success. I wasn’t doing too badly in class and fortunately for me my parents had decided to put me through some musical instrument training right from childhood. In my desperation to be conspicuous, I hit the road to the school orchestra and decided to make my mark there. Oh I was conspicuous alright and the only reason my music teacher didn’t kill me was because I left the school.
College was where the realization that I was a good for nothing hick finally beginning to sink in. Being constantly around guys and gals whose IQs were always more than double the square of mine was quite a humbling experience. But I guess there was still some strand of DNA in me which thought of giving it a final try. So I hit the drama circuit as a, would you believe it… background musician. Doesn’t get any lamer than this. I wasn’t Romeo romancing Juliet on stage. I was just the guy who played C# when he did so. I wasn’t Ram battling Ravana in front of the audience. No siree, I was the all important drum beats of the Monkey army! Finally it hit me that I was doing some irreparable damage to my already non existent credibility by continuing on this path and some drastic measures were in order.
I took the leap of faith alright. I leapt into oblivion. I left the stage never to return. I took my seat in the audience and started watching the masters at work. And finally it dawned on me what I was good at. I was a keen observer and a good critic. So what if I couldn’t gather up the courage to face the crowd as Seleucus Nicator, I could trash the ridiculous skirt this guy was wearing. So what if I couldn’t for the life of me appreciate the fact that Don Mclean’s Starry Starry night was a tribute to Vincent Van Gough, I could cheer my classmate when he gave the correct answer and grab the chocolate as he came down from the stage and decided to share his loot with his roomy. So what if I couldn’t keep the beat in even the simplest 4 by 4 routines, I could tighten the last bolt on the snare of the drum set and feel elated as the lead guitarist let me hold his E string when he needed to take a leak. Yeah baby I had truly arrived! Some people might have seen me hamming as the drummer of a rock band but believe me that was just a passing phase. So you see that I had finally found my calling in being…. Nothing! All my life I strove to be something and I found peace in quite the opposite. I had existed in the hope of making excellence my credo but realized that a change of credo was the order of the day. All my life I thought of scaling “The Wall” but today I am “Comfortably Dumb”.
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