Light Within

Making sense of blogging and social media

My Identities
Friday, 7 September 2007

I was home for holidays; in village Mong that is situated in the foot of Salt Range and that is where I get treatment like a king every time I go there. There it occurred to m that I have three different lives; different identities; Rural, Urban and Cyber.

In village I am same old village boy. I speak same language (Punjabi), dress like them (Chadar Kurta), eat like all others (in our village, tea is taken when some one is unwell. Similarly, chicken is slaughtered on a very special occasion). Every one is know to each other. You call elders saying Chacha, Mama (uncle) or Chachi, Massi, Phunjbi (auntie). Life is slow, simple, caring, loving, and sharing.

Life is different in city, where I live now. I dress formally, speak Urdu (mostly English) or Pinglish as Adil Najam calls it. Here we address each other like hey, hi, hello, Mr. Madam and some more titles that are coming in. I go to clubs instead of Dara (village community center). Chicken (and other meat) is major part of meals and tea and coffee is a usual drink in the city.

My life in the Cyber World is altogether different. There I have friends from Romania to Albania and America to Africa. I do not even know gender (or age, or name) of some of my friends. We do not need that. We discuss every thing from weather to political weather and are very close to each other. Some time it is very comfortable to share secrets of life with other who are complete strangers. They come out with the best points of view; completely unbiased and straight from the heart.

posted by S A J Shirazi @ Friday, September 07, 2007,

8 Comments:

At 8:46 PM PKT, Marz said...: Beautifully written, Shirazi. We may have many identities but at the end of it all, we are one person answering the human call to relating to each other and fostering good relationships!
At 4:00 AM PKT, Anonymous said...: It's so true, we all got many identities, one at home, one at work, and when we travel, but you mentioned something really important, our online identity, we all are strangers to each others online, yet we might talk in the most personal things and listen to each other's advices, sometimes actually we feel comfortable talking to people who don't know anything about our lives. so weired yet so true..
At 10:49 AM PKT, Deb S. said...: You write this with so much color and eloquence. It's definitely a keeper. I hope everyone clicks on the link to "treatment like a king." Both posts are keepers.
At 3:22 PM PKT, Sidhusaaheb said...: I too have the same three identities!

:)
At 7:22 PM PKT, EXSENO said...: Nice post Shirazi, very well said. I guess we all have more then one identity.
At 9:46 PM PKT, Jaya Schillinger said...: Beautifully written. It's like you opened up the curtains onto different scenes in a play. Thank you for sharing this with us.
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