Representation

Last week I attended a session where there will be 12-13 guys sitting in a semi circular fashion, and each person has to go to the front and face the remaining people, and everyone will start asking questions to this person. The questions can be as personal as we are comfortable with. When I faced the group I got questions from my hobbies till south Indian culture vs North Indian Culture. I was put on spot and only thing that was coming in my mind was I am representing India and every word matters, because not even a single person was from India and they all were so interested in India. It was a good session but one question I started asking was ‘How important Representation is’

Another instance is last week’s corporate party. The dress code was black-tie party wear for guys and cocktail party wear for ladies. Till the day of event I had decided not to attend the event, as I was not willing to wear a blazer or a suit. Somehow my friend pushed me hard and made me attend the party. Now the question came “How should I represent myself”. Finally I wore suit and represented myself in proper attire.

Few days back I had an umpiring assignment in our cricket tournament. 2 players from our team had to go as umpires to a match. On that day my friend and me were representing our team on we were well aware that One wrong decision will have negative impact on our team. Same thing happened also; there were few instances in the match where we made some close calls, and players were complaining it’s bad umpiring and they will put it on FB mentioning our team.

One fundamental question is ‘How much representation matters?’ Why cant we be ourselves even though we are against some of the basic principles of things, which we follow. Consider food habits, people from Andhra Pradesh love Biriyani, if a person from Andhra Pradesh is asked about Biriyani he has to think about his representation, whether individually he likes Biriyani or not he has to answer as per his representation. South indian people don’t eat Parathas daily and for Punjabis parathas are like daily routine. There are many such general statements; like Indians marry a person, whom his/her parents choose; Sikhs do not booze or are vegetarians; guys are interested in electronic goods etc etc etc.  

If I am an Atheist, and if I am in any group of people where nobody is from India then I have to talk from Indian’s perspective, as whatever I speak will make an image on India. Should I talk from my perspective or should I talk from Indians perspective as a whole? If I am representing Karnataka and if I am in a group of Delhites then should I represent Karnataka or should I represent myself whose thinking might not match the people of Karnataka? How important representation is? Why should people judge their place or religion or his company or his parents based on one individual? We see a person and start judging something he/she belongs to, lots of things goes on in our head. We tend to think all people from that people religion are same, all people from his state are same, all people from his company are same, and sometimes we think his parents, his friends all are same. Why is this human behavior? Why is this generalization? Why do we think a group of people will be same? There is a proverb “Birds of same feather flock together”, does this holds good with Human beings? Can one human being think and act the same as other? Is it something that human beings never accept or never try to think? Is representing something actually kills the individuality? For many questions I do not get an answer

PS: All my statements made here are very generic and there can be many individuals who might not fall under these statements' blanket.