This one is an article I wrote for Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle around an year ago. The editors edited it a bit and so I really wanted to post the original version. Originally I titled it 'The Habit' but it came out as 'I give credit to Freud and Pamuk for my words', which makes me look a little smug but I kinda like it anyway. So here it is 'The Habit' original version:
Winston Churchill once said,”
Habits are what make a person, like yeast makes cake. It’s hard to imagine that
something as parasitic as yeast can actually do something this constructive”. There’s
something about habits that makes people accept them in a negative way. The
only word that seems to go with a habit is ‘weird’. Needless to say, every one
of us has those things called ‘habits’. And I don’t mean activities like
smoking, drinking, nail biting or anything like that but habits that people
don’t usually notice. Something like a guy’s habit to gnaw at his tongue every
3 minutes, 45 seconds and 7 milliseconds (weird?).
To be honest even I have a ‘weird habit’
myself. I tend to give the credit of my own words to someone else, someone more
known. Like if someone asks me about a particular quote I used in one of my
essays in school, I would say, “Oh, It was Freud.” Or “Oh I just read a bit of
Orhan Pamuk, so ‘modified’ one of his lines”, when the fact remains that those
words are my own even though you might take it as a type of plagiarism or quite
the reverse of it. And so is the quote I used in the beginning of this…I
believe you would've guessed it by now. I really don’t know why I do this.
Probably because it’s easy to believe on something said by someone famous then
someone who isn't Why don’t we want people to see us the way we are? Why do we
want to change ourselves for complete strangers? I don’t know. I guess we deliberately hide some things for
a ‘respectable image’. And by the way, dear reader, would you care to wipe that
silly grin off your face? Heavens! Blimey, where are my manners?
