Beam Me Up, Momma !

Of late, I've begun to have serious doubts about myself. I HAVE! Don’t take this lightly – this is truly a serious issue.

The closer I look, the weirder I appear to be. I'm not talking about the occasional pimple or my tendency to grow mooney with the full moon and even the fact that I hide important things in unusual places and then NEVER find them; in that respect I'm no different than your average filly. I'm referring to what lies within.

My inner soul, if you will. An assortment of questions have popped into my head - now with growing frequency, and, probably liking the roominess of the cozy cerebral cavity, refuse to pop back out again.

Who am I? Where have I come from? I don't mean in the overall sense of 'where did life originate?' or 'what is our purpose here?' and the Big Bang theories…I know the answers to those! (But I promised someone I wouldn't tell, so…) My problem is that I don't think I'm a human being.

This suspicion didn't stem from my discovering a slimy green tentacle snaking out from someplace scaring passersby; I have much better reasons than that. Actually, the first suspicion started when I compared myself to people around me… not only in office but with people I met in my quotidian interactions. Now as a rule, I don't do that. I find it futile and petty, and a waste of time.

But on this occasion, the exercise was forced on me by my dearest childhood friend, Tanya, who, in a moment of disgust and possibly rare divine insight exclaimed, "Bix, why can't you just be normal like other people?" Now if you knew Tanya you know how hilarious this concept is coming from HER! But we’re talking about someone I know very well, who knows me even better. I started to dispute her basic assumption of other people's ‘normality’, but I saw her point - she was saying that I was different, an odd-ball, and I was determined to find out why I had this air of non-conformism around me!

I began to grill her on how I compared to the common public - my pros and cons. The pluses and minuses of my alleged ‘odd-ball’ personality which had vexed her so. “On a scale of 1-100 with 100 being - Rate my Oddity!”, I demanded of her. More dicrete questions like rate my propensity for the strange on a scale on 1.24-7.64 and so on. She looked at me with apologetic eyes and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you!""Upset? Who's upset?" I responded, wondering what she meant. And that's when it hit me.

I fret, I fume, I worry about others but I don't agonize over myself (Yes KC I don’t… not until recently)! I doubt I've ever really sat down and been disturbed about my life! What about the time when I was all set on becoming an artist and life (read: dad) intervened? What about the time that my Stats grades in freshman year were – well, statistically LOW? I remember worrying about having to take the exam again to improve my grades, but no worrying. What about the day I lost my mum’s wallet, ID cards, money and tickets to the Jahaan-e-Khusarau concert? I wondered what she'd use to murder me, but I wasn't upset about it. What about the day I skipped my __ well, never mind! There it was – the more I thought about it, the more bewildered I became.

I started with the whole list of emotions - Jealousy? Nope, not really unless you count eyeing my 12 year old niece’s the bigger Hot Chocolate Fudge at Nirula’s. Cowardice? Nah – I jumped out of a plane at 15,000 feet with a strip of plastic attached to my back… (Some insist that should be deemed as Stupidity though) Bravery? Nah, not even that! Resentfulness? Morbid Suspicion? I was getting really freaked out now! Fanaticism? Insecurity? Inner Serenity? Nothing!
"Baby," I told myself, "You are one boring human being!" And then, slow as the 3rd moon rising on the planet of INSEAD QUOI S6 in the Googloidian Galaxy, the doubts began to creep in.

What if I wasn't human at all?

I thought about it some more. And the more I thought about it the more sense it made… Being un-human (as opposed to inhuman), might explain a lot.

My dancing, for example. I don't mean some sort of complicated Flamenco steps or the FoxTrot; I'm talking of your regular jerk-your-body-around-to-the-beat kind of dance. I'll be on the dance floor, trying to get some kind of coordination and rhythm going. "Come on, guys! All to the left!" I'll say, addressing my limbs. "Good, now everyone to the right. Now left again for variety!" At this point my right leg will decide to assert its individuality and move off to the right, resulting in my doing a surprised and painful split. Or sometimes I'll be doing some kind of fancy step when my elbow, who's been quietly watching someone else on the dance floor, will suddenly take offence and hit them in the eye. In my haste to apologize, I'll forget to stop moving and my other elbow, keen to join the action, will proceed to ram somebody else in the face. In the chaos that follows, I'll manage to wrap my legs around each other, tie my arms in a knot, and step on my own head, in that order.

Now that I analyze it, my ineptitude is probably due to the fact that this isn't my normal body. Imagine trying to do a cartwheel inside a caterpillar's body. Sigh! No one understands us aliens. No one understands what we go thru – I think I’ll suggest an acclimatization course at QUOI 6S.

Another convincing factor in my reasoning is the fact that I have a memory span shorter than that of a forgetful goldfish, (i.e. 9 seconds). My brain just has no storage facility for memories or past experiences. In fact my memory is worse than that of…oh, I already said that. See what I mean!

Here's a typical conversation: In class, English lecture, around 9:40 a.m.

Teacher: …and now for some questions. Ambika, would you please stand up!

Me: (humming) Da da dee da!

Teacher: Ammmmmbiiiikkaa!

Me: Huh? Oh, wait, that's me! Yes sir?

Teacher: Sir? Sir? I'm Mrs. Mehra!

Me: Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot. The mustache threw me off!

Teacher: I'll throw you out if you don't shape up. Now tell me, who is Hamlet?

Me: (Having totally forgotten, look around the class for a Hamlet-type person) Him! It's him! That guy with the sly look!

Teacher: Huh? What nonsense! I'll ask you again, who is Hamlet?

Me: (Memory wiped clean again, look around for Hamlet-type person) Him! That guy over there, the one with the sly look!

Teacher: OK! Never mind! Tell me, who killed the King?

Me: It wasn't me, I swear it! I think it was him (pointing)! I don't know his name but he's got a really sly look!

Teacher: That's it, leave the class, Ambika!

Me: (humming) Da da dee dum!

Teacher: You! I'm talking to you! Get out!

Me: (startled) Y-y-yes, sir!

(Actually something like this never happened to the class-monitor-nerdy me – but I think it adds character to the Boring Human Life that I sadly chose)

Obviously, my brain was not meant to be cluttered with useless memories. On my planet, we probably need the space for galactic calculus or interplanetary algebra. None of this wimpy 'who killed the king’, what was I dad’s favorite movie' kind of junk.

And I BET we're better looking than you humans are too! I mean, come on! Take my ears for example. Have you ever seen anything uglier? And if one wasn't bad enough, one has to have two! There's no escaping them whichever side of the body you approach from! I can't wait to get out of this cheap body and back into some good quality designer skin!

Now that I'm pretty sure I'm not from this world, I'm going to see if my 'parents' have any idea where I came from. I bet they stole me from some Royal Space Cruiser when they were out moonlighting in their youth of the Seventies… maybe Flower Power was really synonym for Space Pirates.

I've never really believed this whole respectable marketing guru in the cement industry act of my dad's, and my mother seems to know just a bit too much about planetary formation (along with everything else on Earthand now i know off Earth as well).

So, until I can return to my home planet, I'm going to waste Earth's natural resources, shamelessly pollute the environment and fight with everyone around me just because they're different.

Oh, wait…. That would convince everyone that I’m human after all!!!

I’m brilliant and the big Red also says so!