Unknown Authors & Other Under-Achievers...

“Sitting silently,
Doing nothing,
Spring comes,
And the grass grows by itself”
- Basho

After all these years, the “About Me” columns are still the hardest to fill…

“Who am I?” is not just a bad Jackie Chan film – it’s the 8000 year old haunting question. Any answer to the question feels false. A big lie - a bigger ego-trip.

What reflects me? The t-shirt I wear? My job? My qualifications? My interest? Or, is it the type of coffee I drink? While the guys at Seiko will have you believe “it’s your watch” – you know it’s a lie. I don’t even wear a watch! I guess, that makes me a nobody.

I once said: “Art is in the process of creating what you create - Not what you've created...”
I went ahead and used the quote at the back of a brochure a few months later – quoted as “Author Unknown”. I was the author – however, I knew, “Unknown” will have a better impact than “Sushil Kumar”

“Unknown” will make people focus on the quote – the readers would see the content, not the glass it came in! My name would lead to: “before I buy this, who is this Sushil Kumar?”
He is nobody. Who cares about what a nobody has to say? An “Unknown Author” would have greater value…

If Oprah says “smoking is good for you” – while some of the viewers will lose interest in her, most of them will pick up a cigarette!

We live in a world where a step-by-step guideline has been setup by a society that we comprise of. The founders are its servant.

I remember viewing an animation a few years back – Corporate Puppet by Tony Bailey. It’s odd, the plot is something so simple and, perhaps, deeply enrooted in the back of everyone’s head – however, we just never made it vocal.

The story is of a young man, who, after years of ass-kissing, finally gets to shift up the corporate-ladder. However, the higher he went, the higher was his fall…

While such an animation and similar-themed films will hit the audience real hard, I doubt most of them end up doing anything about it. It’s odd, we are so used to complications that the simplest thing seems extremely complicated to attain.

I am expected to run, simply because everyone around me is running. “If you are not part of the stampede – you’ll be crushed.”
That’s reality.
That’s life.

Posted by: Unknown Author