Tuesday, November 25, 2008

You are a terrorist if you have a beard












  1. But you always had a beard. Whats so newly ugly about that?

  2. [sarcasm]Thanks for the complement[/sarcasm]. There is nothing newly ugly about the beard but then I did not have the beard until I started my experiment to test my hypothesis about looks. I had however been trimming it until the walk after which I had stopped doing that.

  3. More than the beard sported by you, it must be the situation in the state and country, and unexpected materialization of a bunch of unknown youngsters at a certain place. So, these factors, along with your beard... Particularly yours... Seeing your profile pic, the beard gives a mullah touch to you :)

    And you know that you look bit different than rest of the mallus ;)

  4. But you know what is more funny, it is what people who know me remark when they see me with my new look. It goes normally like this, "What is this Anoop, You look like a terrorist". Gives me the right opening to talk about my protest but such statements validates my protest.
    Yeah, I know I look different even with out the beard :-)

  5. sice when did u grow a beard?! I never knew. U look better without it....

  6. @adi - I have been growing a beard full swing since the freedom walk campaign. Before that I have been growing a trimmed version since the last February as part of the "it does not matter how you look" experiment.

  7. Minking Than,
    It obviously DOES matter how you look! You wouldnt be dedicating a self-experiment to the cause if it did not :-). Maybe sub-consiously you are trying to ascertain how much it matters to you, or how much your look matters to others who know you ... Either way, any knowledge is exciting and the journey to there is even more .. Enjoy!!!

  8. @Ensnared. I know that it does matter how I look from the perspective of the observers. The point I was trying to make that in absolute sense - i.e. without the observer - it does not matter at all. i.e. it does not affect my efficiency, my output, my personality, my attitude, my ethics. It does not really change anything other than from the perspective of the observer. I must however remind that, for people who express some correlation between their looks and their 'self' it does matter in the absolute sense and that society is playing it safe by deducing the characteristics of the 'self' from the looks. But this deduction only feeds the correlation to strengthen it and my protest was against this strengthening. The way out was to relax on such primitive safety nets evolved in the society and ultimately weaken such irrational correlations.

  9. I have seen people gave me dirty and nasty looks upon my full beard I just ignored and wondered at its strong hatred from within themselves toward the beard, all types during my daily walk at the park. Will I be attacked and become a victim of harshly stereotypeization?