Readers Write In #814: I reference, therefore, I am

By Sai Prasath

Nobody is born with a unique voice.

We all start out as collectors. We absorb words, mannerisms and jokes from parents, family, friends, cartoons, movies & songs. A unique voice isn’t god-given, it’s actually more like a password you generate by picking your favorite characters and references, rearranged just enough that it feels like your own.

I get that this is a thought that is scary to some people. You may have worried at some point that your personality is just a mish-mash of everything that you have ever consumed. That your sense of humor is just a remix of Chandler’s sarcasm, Vadivelu’s timing and that one cousin who said something so funny one time that you remember your entire family laughing at their joke. You live in that small fear that one day someone is going to call you out on this. I swear, I have felt that way.

But over the years, I have started to feel differently about this.

I wrote something almost 7 years back for a page called Humans of MICA, that short piece made me realize that I’m a sum of everything I’ve ever consumed and connected with. Some of those parts stuck around longer than others. Some were just phases, like when I went around saying “cool cool cool cool cool” during my Brooklyn Nine-Nine phase or when I had jumped inside the stairwell of my building from the third floor to the second floor, in a rotary manner, imagining myself to be Shaktimaan. Only to be saved by some wires in between and hanging upside down like Spiderman instead. Laughs apart, some other connections went way deeper, like the hum of A R Rahman in his angelic voice in the middle of Sandakozhi (Kabhi Neem Neem) from Aayitha Ezhuthu (Yuva), which I find therapeutic.

My first memory of quoting movies was standing in front of a group of amused relatives, delivering “Naa oru dhadava sonna, nooru dhadava sonna maari” with the conviction of a six-year-old who thought he was Rajinikanth. At that age, every kid was a performer. Some of us repeated an entire joke of Goundamani-Senthil whereas some of us did Shah Rukh’s hair flip or danced to Chayya Chayya, all for an applause.

In school, I was that kid who could recite an entire Vadivelu joke, line to line. I could hum Dil Se Re long before I could even understand what the song was about. This was pre-smartphone & 5G internet in India. An India that didn’t have Spotify and YouTube a tap away. So, if you could recreate a scene or sing a song with the right lyrics, you were somebody.

I remember how getting that rare Pikachu Pokemon tazoo or being able to recreate a paper-mache art learnt from a MAD episode on Pogo could impress people around me. Now that I am sitting here trying to make sense of it, I realise that these weren’t just hobbies, they were conversation starters. They helped me forge friendships later in life, faster than anything else ever could. These were lived experiences shared by people who grew up in different corners of this country, even world, at times.

As we grow older, we stop dancing and spouting dialogues for uncles and aunties. Our references become subtler. So, when I met someone who also liked listening to “Kahin Toh..Hogi Voh” on earphones at 1 AM in the night with a chilly breeze around, I knew we were on the same wavelength. It wasn’t about taste, It was about instant recognition that we had seen the world through the same lens at some point in time. And life is but a happy coincidence, that someone is my wife now!

That became my filter for finding friends instantly, eventually. If someone had rewatched Lage Raho Munnabhai an absurd 50+ times like me or knew why Kapoor & Sons was a perfect movie, I would feel seen.

But it wasn’t about staying in the comfort zone. College opened up the world. I heard jazz for the first time. My roommate introduced me to Tool & Opeth. I learnt what a bassline is and to appreciate one when I listen to songs now. I realised that you could love Panchathanthiram and also cry at Hachiko. That you don’t have to choose one over the other. You just had to stay open.

And I did.

Today, it’s memes. I love how a meme, born in a very specific corner of the internet, can become an inside joke between three people in a group chat thousands of miles away. It’s absurd and wonderful.

My wife and I now play this game where I would say a random dialogue from some movie we’ve seen together and she has to guess where it’s from. It’s not about getting it right, but the shared act of remembering. If I say “Juice”, in a certain tone and manner, she would instantly pick it up and say “Aavesham”. The smile or laugh we share after that is everything. Sometimes, it doesn’t even have to be us saying the lines, we pick up a reference from someone else having a conversation and we could just look at each other, asking without words, “Did you get that”, and a simple nod would suffice. It makes the heart happier. What can be more beautiful than a connection forged in shared memories like that.

The beauty of all this isn’t just nostalgia. What I mean to say is that we are not original artists, maybe we are just DJs with really good taste. We are just Tanishk Bagchis remixing the best artists we have grown up watching, including our parents and friends. We just sit back and watch our brains conjure new combinations on the fly. That’s what makes us as humans unpredictable, we don’t know what line said by someone can trigger what joke in our head or reference we are going to make. And no ChatGPT can ever take that away from us.

And I think this is true for everyone. Why else does a line like “Always” from a British author living a thousand miles away, leave an indelible mark on a young kid in India and bring a tear to their eyes? Why does a scene in a Malayalam movie with no subtitles still manage to wreck you?

Because we all carry pieces of each other.

All of this had me thinking about — community.

We build relationships through shared memories. Like the opening track of “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” or the theme music of Sun TV. They’re like seashells washing ashore on a beach. When someone picks one up you like and smiles, you feel less alone.

I find this absolutely fascinating about people that we just go on consuming things that shape us and reshape us constantly. We go around navigating life, attracting people who get hooked on to different pieces of us, which in turn we have picked from others. It only makes me believe even more strongly in the sense of community and that we are all supposed to live in close proximity and interact with each other far more often.

And yes, I get it that we are all worried about where we are headed. We talk about screen time like it’s a disease, about how we’re more online than ever, how we should all be touching grass and chasing sunsets. And I agree that there’s beauty in disconnection too. But maybe, just maybe, a meme sent on WhatsApp is also a form of care. Maybe an Instagram reel that your friend sends you is their way of saying I am thinking about you, even when they’re hundreds of miles away.

I have had days where my day was made by a friend sending me a track on Spotify that becomes my new ringtone immediately, or sharing a Blend with someone that introduces me to a song I love but never would have found myself.

We are still building a community, only that now it is across feeds, DMs and blends.

And maybe that’s enough for now.