Confessions of a dangerous (pseudo) intellectual

Who am I? I am a self-proclaimed Intellectual. Often found wandering aimlessly, as I put my left foot ahead of the right, labouring along a road less travelled. When I am lost, I sometimes put both feet into my mouth – it is quite therapeutic. Where can you find me? Anywhere, really. I am hard to pin down to a particular profession, but, generally, you can find me dabbling with clever words and profound thoughts. I can be a writer with an insignificant reputation, a retired diplomat or lawyer, a journalist with an opinion, an extraordinary mortal who knows my Picasso from my Picasa or a denizen of the corporate zoo who has risen to his level of incompetence. I have been crawling out of the woodwork lately, dignity intact. As also popping up on your Facebook wall, or sharing with you my third rate views about someone else’s hand-me-down opinions over 140 characters. A bit of twittering tittle-tattle never really hurt anybody, right? A week ago, I was busy shooting the breeze in the land of the Hawa-Mahal – or I know someone who was. [caption id=“attachment_199019” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Do not snicker, but I do have a defining trait: Reuters”]  [/caption] My defining trait? Do not snicker, but I do have a defining trait. I have a way with words. Many ways, to be honest. The written word, or the word spoken – does it matter really? Very often I know nothing about everything; an endearing reality which rarely stops me-vainglorious-me from sharing my knowledge. I am also known to be extremely tolerant of diverse points of view and multiple opinions. My own, especially. Of late, I have been found using 4 words where zero would have sufficed. No-holds-barred freedom of speech with little or no accountability is something that I cherish. Like you hold your dogmas dear, darlings; and, you there Sirs, your myths and ancient texts. I am deeply religious in my own way, quite a fanatic fundamentalist actually..…just that the myths and deities I worship are cloaked in abstract modern concepts. With apologies to Groucho Marx, if you don’t like my defining trait, I have many others. What/Who do I stand for, lately? The over-achievers within my fraternity. That way, some of their individual (or collective) achievements rub off on me by association. I recently hitched my wagon to the Rushdie engine; poor guy, he took a few potshots a couple of decades ago, rather sensitively at that, at characters from another book. Fortunately, I have read neither of these two books – but I vaguely remember someone who has. I also stand for eradicating evil from all sections of society – most of this cleansing can be achieved by dialectic, regulation, standards and accountability. In Politics, Business, Religion, Healthcare, Armed Forces, Insurance, Sports, Judiciary, Education etc. But please DO NOT talk about regulation, standards and accountability when it comes to my profession, whatever that might be. And my dreams? I dream of writing a bestseller someday. I have a modest opinion about my own writing ability, as is obvious by the fact that I think the only difference between me and P.G.Wodehouse is that he was just plain lucky. This secret ambition of mine explains why I live vicariously by associating myself with other Intellectuals. I am sanguine my dreams will come true someday, being the incredibly talentless and competitive person that I am. In fact, I did appear for a few of those competitive exams – fortunately for you, they said time was up before I turned the first sheet over.   The book that I am tantalizingly close to never writing will certainly win the Man Booker at best, the Woman Hooker, at worst. I am entitled to my carnal dreams. My tool-kit & Modus Operandi? I quote liberally just to prove a point; even when I don’t quite have a point. In fact, I will end this write-up with a quote so “famous” that, most likely, you have not heard it before. Context?? Show me the rule-book! I am deeply sensitive and dismissively tolerant. In fact, only last week, I formed a club of 3.5 humans and 4 amoebae (myself included) – we protest against the injustice perpetrated by the local municipal corporation against those ferocious canines (of a gentle demeanor), who insist on jogging next to, and sometimes up the legs of, early morning walkers in my tony neighborhood. The dogs, of course, expressed deep resentment at being denied their daily dose of non-succulent sinews from the just below your patella. If you think fighting for the rights of those sorry beings who keep committing suicide in their fields is more important than what 7.5 of us are espousing, it just shows how screwed up your priorities are. I am not a snob. It is only when you behave like an inverted snob that I turn into one. I am also a closet non-conformist. Especially when such non-conformity becomes the norm within the all-are-welcome exclusive club which I patronise. I blow in the wind, shifting and floating, this way and that – till which is which, what is what and who is who gets lost in a blur of words. Catch me…if you can. You zig, I zag. You say Tolstoy, I say Advaita. And when you say Shobhaa, I say Zadie Smith. You will rarely catch me saying Taleb, Ariely, Dawkins, Russell etc. though – I have an irrational disdain, epitome of tolerance that I am, for those who don’t suffer fools gladly. My views on Change, Harmony etc.? I aim to change this entire world; there is so much that needs changing. And I can do it from right here. My arm-chair. And don’t you mock me when I call the electrician to change the light-bulb. (My Light-bulb moment: Screw-on CFL’s do NOT go into clip-on sockets).If you are done smirking, please listen to me now– my big-picturesque delusions are grander than yours. I love 3-ply corrugated sheets. My favorite pastime is taking those sheets, and making little boxes out of them. And then I put you into those – very soon I have divided the species of Sapiens within the genus Homo into so many sub-categories that humaneness gets all muddled up and you all start fighting over whose box is bigger, or more Enlightened, or more Liberal or more Secular or more Intellectual. Needless to say, I hold the view that our Politicians should stop dividing the voters along caste, ethnicity, religion etc. Ah, terrible. I detest commercialisation of most things. I have some magnificently useless ideas on how to deal with this malaise, this mammon-worshipping curse of society….this, this cancer which needs an oncologist like me. I will share my grand non-plan with you; meticulous, save for some important details, the moment I am done computing my TRPs and readership numbers or FB likes or re-tweets – surely, there is a way to monetise those doggone integers. And listen, the advance for my next book, just went up manifold - take it or leave it. As I promised, here is that “famous” quote; quite out of context actually, which is why it makes eminent sense to bung it in here. It is attributed to Sir Peter Medawar, Biologist, Rationalist and a Nobel Laureate who Richard Dawkins once called the wittiest scientist ever…”The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought”.