I'm a Karela. I Love Me.

When I wrote my first blog post, I thought I’d write a post every week. I decided to maintain it like a public diary, where I could write just a few paragraphs on the things that I would notice on an everyday basis, vent out a little and feel good about the fact that I no longer feared being judged on how I wrote or chose to express myself. My first blog post met the objective pretty well. I’m really happy about the things I’ve been writing about so far. But lately, I realized how I shun away the thought of putting up anything which may seem ‘flimsy’ to an audience of around ten people, who read my posts after a few requests to do so. A few of them may have liked a previous post, which made me think of how I should keep writing on things that appeal to my friends. It’s like trying to live up to certain expectations and adopting an image that may be perceived as praise-worthy by just a few of my close friends.

It’s funny how it’s not just my blog. We all try to live up to some image that we choose to believe the world expects us to portray. If you’ve topped your class once, you want to do it again. A lot of times, it’s not because you feel like working that hard towards it, but more so because if someone else scores more than you in the next semester, you’ll be called “Rank 2”, and it’ll make you feel as pathetic as The Rock in your 2001’s deck of WWE trump cards, which introduced Brock Lesnar as the undisputed God of World Wrestling Entertainment. I’m sure that whenever you’d get The Rock or even The Big Show in your set of cards, it’d make you cross your arms at the wrists and hit them hard on your pelvic area shouting “Suck it”, or hold up a faux mic in the air, thinking of yourself as a dude much cooler than Himesh bhai, and asking the world if it can smell what you’re cooking. You were so happy, weren’t you? You were happy ‘cuz you wouldn’t need to suffix a “clash” after you’d read out how much their biceps measured. You knew that in your deck of cards, The Rock had the biggest biceps. The Big Show was the tallest. Mark Henry weighed the most. They were your prized possessions. Even though Mr. Mark Henry didn’t have anything to boast about other than his purple jersey that read “Chocolate” and made him look like a giant mutant Cadbury’s Éclair, you kissed his picture every time that you won a card after calling out his weight in pounds (and mentally calculating how much 470 lbs measured in kgs). You didn’t care if they were Rank 1 or not. They were just special in their own way.

The women wrestlers made you cringe if they’d ever pop up while you were engaged in an intense session of trump cards. But, they’d be goddesses you’d love to ogle at if you were age seventy in the year 2000, and TenSports showed them wearing a garment which could not be differentiated from a birthday suit. You see how there were reasons for which you hated them, and reasons for which you could not. They’d be put away as Jokers in a game of trump cards, ‘cuz their chest measurements wouldn’t match those of their male counterparts, but Hugh Hefner would still approach them to pose for his magazine ‘cuz their non-wrestling counterparts couldn’t match their chest measurements.

When I think of the days when I would watch wrestling on TV as a kid, I still remember The Rock as the champion of all. He must’ve been Rank 20 when he retired from the sport. He went to Hollywood later and made another name for himself as Dwayne Johnson. I don’t remember much about Brock Lesnar, apart from the fact that he was Rank 1 on my set of trump cards. That’s probably been his only achievement in my eyes, and I don’t care. My younger cousins would hate to watch any fights that involved Hulk Hogan, but my elder cousin would still tell me about how he tore away his vest in Hogan style, with gleaming nipples. Uh, eyes.

We all judge others to some extent, even if we say that we don’t. It’s ok. It’s human. It’ll probably be unfair to not expect others to judge us, or compare us to others and themselves. It’ll be unfair for us to try hard enough to do something, not doing which will lead to others judging us. It’s uncool how I still care to take off my geek glasses whenever I’ve to go meet a girl friend. It’s crazy how I’d still freak out thinking about what shoes I’m wearing or what place I choose to eat at, the next time I make a lunch plan with a gay friend. It’s crazy how I still have to mention “gay” ‘cuz that’s the only way people will know that it’s understandable for my friend to be considerate about such issues. It’s crazy how I’ll keep trying to look for things that will make me stop shedding hair and not go bald in a few years from now. It’s crazy how I believe that people who love me won’t care enough when I’m probably not as decent looking as they think I am. It’s crazy how I’ll throw everything that’s lying on my bed into my wardrobe every time that a friend visits me. It’s crazy how we judge to such an extent that we become oblivious to the good in ourselves and judge the reflection in the mirror more than Anu Malik has judged the contestants on Indian Idol.

We may be the Tori Wilson to a ten year old who goes to school, or the Tori Wilson to an eighty year old who chooses to publish one of the world’s most popular magazines. No matter what, we’ll still be Tori Wilson. We’ll have fake body parts, but hopefully an honest accent. We’ll either be loved by thirty year olds for tearing off our yellow vests before we get down on the rink, or made fun of by fifteen year olds.

I respect Mr. Reshammiya for singing because that’s what he wants to do. I respect one of my friends for being proud about being gay ‘cuz it’s nice to know that he’s comfortable about his identity with himself. And, I respect a karela ‘cuz it doesn’t matter to him if I hate him or not. He doesn’t wish to be everyone’s favorite aalu. He’s happy to know that apart from being nutritious; he looks like the most beautiful geographical state on the map of India, which has a name that sounds similar to its own.

Image Source: malayalitoday.typepad.com