While going through a Norman-Lewis vocab book, I came across this word for the first  time.  GAUCH. As my eyes passed on to the succeeding line, my brain refused to move. It identified something with this word. On second look and some more of them convinced me that either I defined this word or is it that this word defines me. Either way, its same. One happy thought about this thing though is that I am not the only one in this world. I used to dread social gatherings but from some compulsive visits, my observation was that in a social gathering you can always find at least one person trying nervously to get along with people around even as he (Yes..its always a he...to this day I have never seen a clumsy woman) tries to find a corner seat where he can just while away the time until the party ends. I am not saying that we are unfriendly (Heckles of FRIENDS type) creatures. But we do value our privacy or should I say we enjoy being left alone. It just feels like back-stabbing when you have to tell ur host how great the party was (and over that we are supposed to flash a friendly smile “effortlessly”). In my opinion no normal human being can go through that kind of pressure. I remember once my father mentioning that this clumsiness comes from the fact that we think too much about what other people are thinking about us. That is very true. Why else would I put so much effort in walking straight and stiff when I can just drag myself around with a bow-like stature. Some people might term this kind of behaviour as being self-obsessive. To them I might say that we respect other people too much to ignore them. We respect their opinions and try to make this world a better place for them. Now if Obama can get a nobel peace prize for just talking, what about us who are actually doing something.

I have seen some people treat this behaviour as some kind of mental disorder. They try to reform you (In fact my mother used to do this all the time and now that I am away from her, the baton has passed to my sisters). But these futile efforts wont last long. Wisdom will dawn upon these self-opinionated people when they will realize that whatever they do, “Kutte ki poonch kabhi seedhi nahi hoti hai”. But they shouldn’t feel lost since we enjoy our own bent ways. I have seen a show about “introverts and extroverts” on Discovery where these people were trying to put the “Awkward” among “people who act as clumsier than Awkward”. They think this might be a confidence booster. But the problem is not confidence. You can put us among a group of penguins and we will come out as clumsier than them. This is as inherent as our blood group or for that matter our skin colour. There are no external parameters controlling our social functionality. Just to state an example..I was going through album pics on one of my classmate’s orkut profile when I came across this group pic with our class teacher, principal and some other guys. Seriously to make my “awkward-even-among-penguins” point, that pic would be like an illustration of all that I have written till now. I have some more pics (one from my brother’s marriage, jokes on which run around the family even now) to clarify my case. I would really like to paste them here but again this would be like a very ironic case of self-violation of privacy. Sorry for depriving u fellas of a very hearty laugh. By the way, thanks to the owner of the orkut profile I was talking about for providing an opportunity to have a hearty laugh on myself. I mean it.