For he NOSE not what he doth…

                      The Greek, the Aquiline, the Hawk, the Roman,  the Delicate, the Straight, the Crooked, the Pointed,  the Potato and so on goes the list of classifications arrived at, based on the various scientific studies conducted on ‘noses’ all across the globe. Nice to know...

 I have one too, which I’m yet to classify, a nose which helps me pretty much satisfactorily, olfactorily & happily breathe my way through the gaseous support systems of life. However, I often find myself shocked...petrified...mystified... discovering all sorts of un-called for noses scuba diving in & out of the soup-bowl of my life when I’m least expecting it. How disgusting can that be! Noses of all shapes and sizes jabbing, poking and prodding into all possible spaces of one's existence! Suffocating, to say the least…… 

The nose has been designed by nature for a noble purpose. Why would anyone use it as a periscope to pry on others? This nasal metaphysics as we know and experience every now and then has made a monkey of reason... The nose is never just a nose anymore. 

                    Living in an era of information explosion coupled with the increasing number of outrageous world-happenings and dramatic discoveries, the flow of information into our brains through the thousands of channels open to us is never-ending. Mass media never runs out of headlines or sensational news. The capacity of the average human mind to process all this information and then leave some more space, or rather, most of the space for collecting and processing matters which they should be least bothered about, is needless to say, astounding and mind-boggling! 

                   I've had this smart feeling of late that I had somehow managed to achieve immunity against the thirst-for-knowledge displayed by most people I usually came across. I had nearly come to think of myself as a pro in adeptly channeling any unwelcome questions down the nearest available drain, simultaneously giving looks of utter contempt in various degrees as the situation demanded. 

                   ...However this feeling in me died a miserable death last day when certain little kids in the neighbourhood, took me by surprise/shock throwing certain questions my way that sounded totally 'out-of-syllabus'... Were these kids or CIDs? Why on earth would they want to keep a tab on where I was going? Why I was going? or know Why I was carrying a file and not a bag? or, Why I was going alone and that too on an afternoon!? 

                    Until then I had no notion that such a thing as a 'nosy kid' existed. I never had any counters up my sleeve for such tiny-sized people... "Thats all top secret! Don't even ask..." was all that I could cough up as a retort before continuing on my way. For a few days I even thought that I was over-reacting, for it's natural for children to be curious. Sadly enough this has become a regular drill nowadays...and surprisingly enough they never seem to get tired of this quizzing in spite of my bland responses/sometimes even just silence. If at all they weren't carrying out some weird psychological experiment on me, they would've just been copying their elders. A mere attempt at copycaterwauling (!?)... 

Sigh...there was a zamaana when kids used to ask questions like, 'Why is the sky blue?'...& 'Why do dogs bark?'....That appears to be no longer the case.

               Why blame kids? Nobody has their nose in the right place nowadays. Be it the mighty nations of the world that occupy the centrestage, or the giant multinational business corporations that run the show from backstage! They all boast of errant noses too! Noses (read: state-of-the-art spy machinery) that are mostly used as weapons devices of mass surveillance... 

Sad to say, we live in very very nosy times...in a very very nosy dystopia. 

It's scary to think that someone out there is spying on our every move, monitoring all our actions, tracking all our interactions. There's no end to it. No one can look into their ordinary-looking webcam anymore and be sure of who is...who all are... looking back at them from behind the screen. There's someone out there reading all our e-mails. Our chats and our phone conversations too aren't just ours anymore. Privacy has become a fantasy. It's only noses and more noses everyday...everywhere...  

                   As far as I can see, the world has changed a lot from what it was in the 80s to what it is now. But the legacy of nosiness in the world, passed down from generation to generation, remains strongly unchanged... persistent… rather like the Cockroach…immune to evolution of any sorts. 

The Sisyphean quest across the neighbour's wall continues to transcend timelines. 

...Like they say... the hardest part of a business, is minding your own.

Pic Courtesy: Google Images