What Is My Identity....

Working in a foreign country brings a whole lot of new understanding and insights about our life.. We get to see a new culture, new places, new food habits and new beliefs.. And if we try to, then we also get to discover some facts about ourselves which we always knew but never paid attention to.. A usually unquestioned question which more often than not gets an unsatisfactory answer is “What is my identity?”

My Passport says, I am Rajeev Kumar Jha with so and so date of birth and a citizen of India.. But most significant identity which it adds with me is my Passport number.. My PAN card gives me another identity number.. From religious point of view, I am a Hindu and on caste lines, I am a Brahmin whose mother language is Maithili.. From my family’s perspective, I am a son and a brother, may be a good one.. From my friend’s point of view, I am an understanding and caring friend (I hope).. Looking from Accenture’s perspective, I am Software Professional with Java/ J2EE skill set.. For the client here at KL, I am a GCP resource whom they have called from another country to get their work done.. From my colleague’s point of view, I am a team mate, who might or might not be co-operative and the one with whom he/ they need to work with.. From the perspective of the nearest Indian restaurant from my flat here, I am a customer who mostly looks for vegetarian food.. As I have, each one of us are by default attached with a set of identities which may be religious, social, professional or general in nature.. And we all are defined by multiple sets of identities.. Not marking this statement as conclusive and final, barring a few, our identity mostly depends upon other's perspective.. So identities do have important roles to play in our life.. But problem arises when we start giving them the undue attention.. When I think about few of the basic problems back home in India, I feel that somehow, we have let some of these ethnic identities rule our mind and control our lives.. There are quite a few of these ‘set of identities’ which have been in attention for all the wrong reasons.. We don’t get divided over the professions we are having.. We don’t hate people who work for any other company, even a rival one.. We don’t really care about the fact that if we studied and went to the same college or the different ones.. But we do get divided over ‘Religion’, ‘Caste’, ‘Language’, ‘Region’.. Let’s look into these very quickly..

Religions came into existence to bring ‘Me’ and ‘You’ together and convert them into ‘We’.. Today it has again become ‘We’ and ‘You’.. Are we really ‘following our religion’? Caste is probably most misunderstood of various identities that we carry.. It’s just the name of the profession people were involved in years ago.. But ironically, over the years, their generations carried that thing as an identity which took shape of ‘Caste’.. Ever thought of calling kids of an Engineer as ‘Engineer’ or the child of a Doctor as ‘Doctor’ just because of his/her parents profession? Basis of a caste system is as simple as that.. Then why do we continue to divide and discriminate over this ages old baseless thing? Ironically, most of us are doing that.. Coming to language, isn’t it something as simple as ‘medium of communication’? Then why do we see ‘Mine is better’ or ‘Ours is more rich’? No matter which God or faith or religion we follow, we have certainly not been given the power of speech by the creator so that we can spit venom and demean others.. Language is a need, a vital one and its importance solely depends upon the place and people we are interacting and working with.. End of story.. But many people tend to read in between lines and many others know how to manipulate things for their own advantage.. No wonder we have people spreading hatred on the basis of language as well.. Then comes in the ‘Region’.. Yet another dividing factor and has some of its roots in previous three factors.. And there has been continuous attempts by some political entities as well to fuel the issue deliberately to keep their pot boiling.. This has been made a sensitive issue needlessly.. Only thing I want to state is, if we are Bihari, Bengoli, Marathi, Gujari etc first and then an Indian, then we are not Indian in real sense.. But reality is, this aspect is there to stay specially because we have regional political parties which will always use regionalism to spread hatred for their own gain..

So here we are, in the 21st century, and still clutched in the age old beliefs and letting our actions being determined by these meaningless facors.. Some conscious efforts at individual level can certainly make the things improve.. A person doesn’t become good or bad, successful or failure because of the religion he follows, the words he speaks while praying, the Gods he worships.. A person doesn’t become intellect or dumb on the basis of language he speaks.. A person doesn’t become respectful on the basis of caste he is from but because of the deeds he has done.. A person doesn’t become superior or inferior because he belongs to a specific region.. The biggest truth is, we are human beings, an intelligent specie.. Let’s do some justice to this fact.. What was the caste or religion of the people who discovered fire? Or what was the language spoken by the people who set the first wheel rolling? Does it matter? It doesn’t.. It is just about and it is all about the legacy we leave behind by good things that we do here when we are alive.. It need not be a great invention or something on similar lines.. It can be something as simple as treating everyone equally and leading our life in a way which helps in taking the world closer to real harmony even by the slightest extent.. It is about compassion, it is about tolerance and more than anything, it is about doing our work with sincerity and in the right way.. It is about caring and adding smile to an anxious face.. If these words seem to be superfluous, I will try to make them a little simpler.. We all want to be happy in life.. Life is all about an honest attempt wherein we are living happily and giving an honest attempt of trying to make others happy as well..

Anything which pulls me towards negativity and makes me prejudiced is not a part of my identity.. So what is my identity? I am Rajeev, a human being.. I am Rajeev, and I believe in doing my work with sincerity and try to be a helping colleague.. I am Rajeev, and I hope to be a good and caring son, brother and friend for my family, relatives and friends.. I am Rajeev.. and I love to look into the vastness of the infinite sky and its blueness and at night the twinkling stars and the reflection of the moon in water, the same way all of us do.. And I am Rajeev, and love to listen the innocent giggles of kids and watch the smiling faces which sets a real sense of pleasure and fulfillment inside us....