Jargogled Impressions.

There was a boy in my school who was the first ‘rebel’ I may have ever met in my life. He pummeled his time in school with a streak of nasty and gross pranks and irreverent ticks that annoyed students and teachers alike. Wild eyed, girthy, with big frame glasses. He was fair, very fair – as if from a foreign land. And somehow, he used to drive a scooter to school. A scooter, at his age. I used to wonder what his parents were like, and what being friends with him would mean. He did not stick for long though – I don’t know what happened to him but within a year he stopped coming to school, and after a further few months, I forgot all about him. 

But surprisingly, every time I come across someone that I cannot make sense of, someone who seems to be actively defying the mores of the society or disregards the etiquettes we normies consider sacred, I am reminded of him. It’s a vague recollection, figments from my long-term memory seeping back into my conscious mind. 

There was a bully in Kota – a city where I simmered, preparing for JEE. 6’5” tall, wide, with grizzly hair and thick, bushy eyebrows. A manic energy in his eyes, one looking for trouble or creating one when none exists. A few skirmishes I remember with him, petty, non-material ones that shoot away from memory before it can register itself. I don’t remember him, mostly. But I do recall vividly, the sense of awe with the theory of the mind. I did not know it by name of course, but I realized what peeking into someone’s mind offered. Especially someone with a unique sense of entitlement and endowed with biases via privilege and access. 

A friend of a friend in New York. Tall, lanky, with deep-set eyes and short, cropped hair that belied the small-town upbringing. Gaming headphones forever around his ears and a wild, restless energy bounded within the confines of his mortal container. A predisposition to dark philosophy. A mind for trivias and quizzing. I learnt from him the ways to get away with posing to be an outsider, a ring-fencer, an observer, while actively participating amongst the commons. 

It’s not often one meets an outsider, an outcast, a drifter in this world. Most behaviors today, in any case, are assimilated to a good extent; and subcultures that we become aware of are already in the mainstream. Unless we try and actively reach out in the dark to explore the unknown. Our definition of outliers, in such cases, starts being reformulated as we limit ourselves by surrounding ourselves with people not unlike ourselves. I wonder about how the circle starts shrinking as we grow older. How that, in turn, molds our views of the world around us. And how that leads us astray as we try to make sense of the changes in the wider world around us. 

An outcast is different from a strange foreigner mind you. The latter is unknown, but expectedly so. The former is a package of surprises as they don’t tether to identities that are known to us. How often do you meet an outcast in your life? 

Billionaires are outcasts, I suppose. Getting to that level of riches isn’t a passenger train anyone can ride on. Social media today has, to some extent, exposed the lives and times of the richest amongst us. We are privy to much more details about their lives than was previously possible, and that has, inevitably, brought these moghuls closer to our known parts of the world. But that’s likely a deception, a conceit. A large part of what gets left out in the biographies and in the tabloids and in the fawning blog posts make up for what goes into the essential ingredients of the person. And looking at the public information in isolation is too simplistic. 

It would be an interesting exercise to assess which professions attract the largest segment of outcasts. Although, arguably, in every profession, success comes to those that are outcasts and are able to think differently and act differently from the others in the horde. But some professions, in how they are erected and designed, may attract more of these eccentrics. In fact, in the realm of business and commerce they might actually be a smaller population set. . 

“To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question “Why?” To be an artist is to risk admitting that much of what is money, property, and prestige strikes you as just a little silly.” – Julie Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Artists – like poets, painters, movie makers, writers, musicians – translate complex emotions like anxiety, grief, melancholy, nostalgia, etc. into expositions. The artist’s way, I suppose, calls for a vantage point that is immersed in life, but also, while creating, stepping away from it. Seeing an artist at work – the daemon at play – can be a jarring experience. I have not seen any, outside of hearing about them through second-hand channels. Knowing what gets lost in the translation, I am wary of such translations, but they seem to be my only source. Some of these artists I admire are active bloggers too. And that brings some sense of intimacy with their raw thoughts and emotions. Even so, writing it down brings a structure that isn’t necessarily so IRL. 

I wrote about wonder and its place within education and learning in the previous post. Wonder at the feats of individual and collective human potential. A slight tangential wonder is recognizing our propensity as human beings, to accommodate, and even celebrate outcasts, and providing them with means that lets them look within themselves, probe deeper into life’s deeply-held interiors, and society’s foibles, and the enveloping human condition. This natural symbiosis is a vital ingredient for making sense of the world around us and I find it fascinating to see it unfold at scale across generations. It’s kind of a meta-wonder – about the passion alleys, outcast pathways and avant-garde institutions that we take for granted, but are, within themselves, source of wonder.