Saturday, April 08, 2006

Endangered Species

Human beings as such are nowhere near being an endangered species. Even if by any chance you get such feeling during your summer trips to Godthab (the capital of Greenland) or the occasional expeditions to Antarctica, you can always come back home to India and feel safe about the long future we seem to have. But one major mistake we commit is taking the human race as a species. I vehemently object such generalization. I will die, and reduce one of my quizzing species, but not accept that perpetrators of violence (or terrorists if that makes them sound worse) and noble men like myself belong to the same species. There is something terribly wrong with this entire classification system. So after starting with the kingdom and finally coming down to species we should further classify based on characteristics and qualities. So if we follow this logic each of us can belong to more than one species, like lets say I will proclaim loyalty to the honorable species of Lazy bones, Trivia Hunters, Sufferers of Verbal and Written Diarrhea and many others.

With this new definition of species I will say the most endangered of all species are those people who do not use/require names to be themselves. I am sure that did not make any sense at all, so the further explanation. Most of the people we meet will tell you the huge multinational he/she (their spouse) works for, the countries he/she went to for his/her last vacation, the institute he/she passed out from and endless such information before coming to less important facts like his/her name. So we have largely become a species of name droppers and one who uses these names/brands as crutches to prod through their dull lives.

The species which has become endangered according to me is the one who can well carry on a conversation and become your friend (giving you the benefit of doubt that you belong to this endangered species who won’t mind making friend’s whose name and interests you know but none of the big names/brands he/she is associated with) without bombarding you with snippets from his CV. These are people who do not require these established names to prove that they are also a force to reckon with. I mean these are people who will work for companies as large as Google maybe, but still not mention it in any of their essays.

2 comments:

Sumitra said...

Ha ha! I like the last line!

Suhel Banerjee said...

@ Sumitra - I had to read the last paragraph twice to get the joke! Thanks:)