Taking life with a pinch of salt

It was around 12:10 in the night yesterday... and i was closing all my chat conversations so that i could hit the bed asap...

me :k i gtg...cya..tc
friend: me too.... EURO calling..btw,who is your money on???any favourites???
me :hmmm.. i don't really follow euro... not a fan of football at all for that matter...
friend: woahhh! really...? oh ok.. thats really wierd.. anyways cya bye...
me :hmm...bye ('phew!glad it did not go further' I thought to myself)

It was a warm April morning... I checked my watch... It was 3 40 pm...I decided to buy myself a coffee from the IC before I left for my mup class... Though I struggled a bit(thanks to the heavy rush there) I did end up buying one strong cup of coffee and settled down along with two of my Music Club friends on a nearby table... and the conversation unfolded...

Friend1:"So you mean to say you have never seen Hidey?"(I hope I spelled it right)
Me :('oh shit! not again.. I am in no mood to explain!..ok...watever...u need to say something but do choose your words right...ashwin')hmmm...No not really...as in.. I never really liked cartoons.. Never watched them as a child you know...
Friend2:"OMG Ashwin... How is it possible?? How can a child not like cartoons??? Thats like the most insane thing on earth!!!
Me :('Shit i told u to choose your words right'..you could have said an 'I donno' and ended it with a sheepsih smile' But NO you had to spit out the whole thing.. LOSER!.. now at least give a sheepish smile and end it..')"HeeHee"
Friend1:"Thats true... I am really surprised... How can ......."(I turned a deaf ear to the conversation and it did not end until we entered the class)

Two days before I had met a long-lost friend(LOL) on my way back home from class and after the mutual "hey"s and "where r u"s and "wat r u doing now?"s we drifted off to our discussion on friends...

Friend:"Oh He bought an Apachi... "
ME : "Huh? what exactly is that??"
Friend:"Ashwin..you havent changed a bit.. Have you???"
Me :('Get ready dear... thats the next one coming up!!! all the best... start off with a stupid grin.. we'll see where it goes')"HeeHee..."
Friend:"ok.. FYI ,its this new bike........('Yeah right!It took me around 2 months to by-heart my own car's name and you expect me to know some random bike???') ....... "

Oh!You might be wondering what kind of an association I am trying to make with these 3 random incidents that happened to me..well some of you might have already guessed it.. (for all those intelligent ones... please be patient until i explain it to the rest or move on to the next para.. :P i know u wont though.. lol) and to the rest... hmm... here we go! Well I often had this feeling that life had been unfair to me in many ways!Especially when it came down to scenes as typical as these where the conversations were all about "woah"s or "omg"s let out in tones of surprise or contempt(or sometimes a mix of the two) followed by "How can anyone... "s and "You haven't changed a bit..."s. All that was different about each of them was that the people who i talked to, changed and the Hidey/Apache/Euro were replaced by either a hot-selling car in the market or some gaming-talk or maybe even an action-movie... (the list is pretty long and it is not at all as trivial and as materialistic as it sounds... it has a lot to do with my thoughts and views that i basically live on.. but i don't want to mention them and add weight to the already-heavy blog! :) )anyways...

Verdict: I don't necessarily have the same interests which my friends do(which unfortunately happens to be the most-sought-after interest for a person(or a guy as the case maybe)of my age) neither do I hold the same views about life as them. ..hmm... or to make it even shorter.... I AM DIFFERENT!!... wait a minute... now thats a word i should use with a little caution because it is highly deceptive for quite a few reasons(which i shall mention later on)...but i suppose you got the picture anyways and thats enough to read on!

The worst part of the whole issue is not being left out in a group.. neither is it those lecture sessions when your relatives comment on how a stereotypical boy of 20 should be... but its those moments when you realize that even your closest of friends question you about the way you are and fail to ACCEPT you for what you are!!!(after all..i was not hurting anyone by having a few individualistic interests and thought...!)ooh not to forget those kill-joy irritating ones who love taunting you, making it a point to bring the topic in especially when you are in a group!(yuck.. i hate them)

It is always tough for anyone to go against the flow and I did have my share of troubles too... There was a point in my life when I thought I had an abnormal childhood and another,when I hated myself so much that I decided to give myself a try being the more-acceptable one! But it definitely did not put me into a comfort zone and i decided to switch back! and days of confusion followed...

It did take me sometime to put myself into a single piece to realize that I am THE BEST the way i am and i should be proud of it and that i could probably be an exquisite piece in the entire world :P... I have absolutely no idea how and why i came to this conclusion..maybe it was an optimism-instilled-deterministic attitude that i developed or maybe it was just that these things kept happening so frequently that i had got immune to them... but whatever it was, i had gone through a lot of trial and error experimentation methods until i hit upon the right set of reactions that would work in my favor whenever unpleasant discussions dropped in... sometimes it was a sheepish smile..hmmm...sometimes it was a sudden change of topic.. and yeah sometimes even being a little pretentious worked!:P(and... boy!it was fun to watch the disappointment on certain faces when i conveyed the fact that I simply loved being MYSELF!:P)

And I also did realize that there will always be people to love you and accept you for what you are... It might not necessarily be the same ones you expect.. But there always will BE at least a single soul out there to help you find your way out(As in my case it has always been true and as a true-optimist should, I would like to continue believing that :P)

(Note: The next para is gonna be highly philosophical.. and there is no compulsion u should read it :P...you wouldn't miss much if you skip this one.. lol ..but those who wish may read on)

The fact that every individual differed from the other and the even more obvious fact that everyone was aware of it but still continued to group up and behave differently to the "different" ones always perplexed me because if it were really true then everyone should treat the other indifferently! right???I really don't know if I found the answer for that... but I think its mostly because people are assured a certain kind of safety being one in a million and its simpler to go with the flow than against it.. and so the psych of a human being always searches for commonalities with the environment around himself which would leave him the most comfortable with the least complexities... and thats pretty much a reasonable explanation as to why one wants to stereotype himself and why he expects the same from others... but as i went on analyzing people, i felt that the types of people were not just 2(the daring ones and the stereotyped ones), it was 4... Type 1-the stereotyped ones who prefer to follow the majority.. Type 2- the ones who have stereotypical interests who wish to be different but are not(trust me!such people exist.. the so called 'pseudo-intellectuals' probably come under this.. and yeah if u r one of those ..please contact me!we can trade our personalities at the earliest!Lol)Type 3-the ones who are different who wanna be a commoner and type 4- who don't care a bit about being different!Ofcourse, there are lots of people with mixed characteristics as well... and maybe I would call myself a mix of type 3 and 1!(i really dunno :P) ... of course the factors that affect which group you fall into are also interesting!!! You can pretty much divide all your thoughts and actions into 2...one group of actions or interests where you are allowed to choose your individualistic taste.. another where you ought to follow what the mass does and its the percentage of each group that decides if you are DIFFERENT or not(phew!mission accomplished!)...(and that would explain why some of my friends who claim to be different are actually not and some who think are not, are!:))

Well to wind up... hmmm.. i ll tell you why i wrote this.. It was definitely not to gain your sympathy hoping you would understand me and treat me better.. all of u r just perfect the way u r (as i said b4)... it was definitely a sincere attempt to let my readers know what kind of a person i am but more than that it is for those sad souls who have been/are in the same state as me and have had problems liking themselves! :) .... maybe they would learn a lesson or two from this and start liking themselves...

P.S I would not really wanna have a chat with anyone as to whether i have had any incident similar to those 3 ones, with them.... :)