Unoffended and unimportant

Recentlty Irsquove begun to feel unhappy with my staggering nobodyness Itrsquos not that Lord Vishnu stuck his tongue out at me and showed me my overall place in the cosmos But itrsquos increasingly evident to me that in order to be important you have to be offended by something Or at the very least you should be indignant blooming periodically like an angry flower to show how much things matter to you hence how much you matter Otherwise you canrsquot blame folks for not listening Irsquom not lagging behind in the contempt department but I suspect most of my contempt is diffused in idle gossip Clearly I lack a personality which can be successfully migrated from the cafeteria to public space In this I am a disappointment to my family the teachers who considered me promising and indeed to myself Irsquom sorry Illustration Amit Bandre Of course one must be careful about saying sorry too I mean look at David Cameron who said he was sorry for British behaviour in the Jalianwala massacre He just made Sikhs in the UK feel bad that he hadnrsquot said sorry for Indian behaviour in the 1984 antiSikh riots Irsquoll confess now I did think of writing this column about Arindam Choudhary and IIPM Something oblique and suggestive which would not require me to go to Gwalior or Assam to deal with a court case Just enough to have me blocked by the DoT If the UGC website can be blocked for simply stating the fact that IIPM is not a university surely a discussion about ponytails could put me in the running no Because I get that you have to either be offended or offend in order to be a contendor For what I donrsquot know yaar Just generally Or arenrsquot people who are generally allowed now That might be a possible offencetaking point come to think of it But then I began to feel I could not really mock someone elsersquos hairstyle given that I donrsquot even have a hairstyle at all to start with If you have suggestions of what I could do on this count the offence taking not the hairstyle I welcome them Also to be frank I want to enter the game with something new All the topics seem to be taken Even fish Some years ago some Bombay vegetarian fundamentalists were offended because they chose to move house next to a fish market and therefore demanded that the fish markets be removed This week Delhirsquos got onto the game Fish sellers were moved from Jama Masjid to a new market in Ghazipur which is named for the freedom fighter and Urdu poet Ashfaqullah Khan This has offended Mr Ather Faroqui a leader of the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu Hind too According to him naming a fish market after a freedom fighter is a ldquohorrendous faux pasrdquo Wah what oratory However the fish sellers have taken offence to his offence Whatrsquos wrong with selling fish they ask People like fish and thanks to fish sellers they will remember Ashfaquallah Khan everytime they buy some Around Ghazipur anyway Irsquom torn between my admiration of Mr Faroquirsquos thundering phraseology on the other by my liking for fish So far the descendents of Ashfaqullah Khan as well as the Fish have not stated offence but surely itrsquos a matter of time If I search deep inside my heart I have to admit that I am strongly offended by pigeons But I fear them even more than Arindamda After all they live on my window sill So itrsquos best I embrace unimportance in peace Paromita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevicom The views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paperu00a0