This particular unique zit has a mind of its own. It will probably come on its own accord and rather stubbornly overshadow my presence. It will be the first thing people will rest their eyes on but of course, civility prevents them from pointing it out. [break]
However, there are those who are equally stubborn (like my zit) and will bluntly point at the monster and exclaim “You have a zit on your face!” Somehow for them, I live in a world without mirrors.
The zesty zit, it does not matter how much I try to ornate it with adjectives, it will still remain a zit, has me preoccupied the whole week.
Every time I come across a mirror, I involuntarily glance at it, pry it with my nails (which, by the way, you should probably avoid doing) and try to trace the exact point of time when its existence came into being.
The Zit, and here I come to my central argument, is a bureaucracy. Not even “like a bureaucracy” (as in a simile) but “a bureaucracy” (as in a metaphor). Today I will try to achieve this feat and explain to you why the Zit is a bureaucracy.
The Zit, which so beautifully rests on your chin, or nose, or forehead, is a slight discomfort in the beginning. It will remind you that it will remain there for an uncomfortable duration until everyone you encounter, from public vehicles to private classes, will have a say at the brave exhibition.
The ‘slight discomfort’ however grows like a cancer, gradual and malignant. Paradoxically, this cancer, you adjust with. You let it breathe the same air you breathe, you let it feed onto the same nourishments you devour and you let it have its say. You do not intervene.
Bureaucracy is everything that I mentioned in the previous passage. It is indeed a slight discomfort; there are queues that you will have to stand on, there are forms that you will have to fill, there are signatures that you will have to get done (or forge), there are names that you will have to get right, there are boxes that you cannot leave blank, and there are room numbers that you have to frequent in random orders.
I say these are slight discomforts because surely it cannot be compared to the extreme environments of drought, starvation, conflict, and death!
There are people dying of diarrhea, and imagine you complaining about a one-hour wait in a line to get your passport in front of the family of the deceased! Further, imagine the horror of complaining about a zit in front of a cancer patient (ever wondered at how limited our vocabulary of diseases is?).
So with this slight discomfort, there grows out an adaptation to it. Like the Zit will place itself comfortably on your facescape as you go on with your life. And because it is ‘slight,’ nothing revolutionary will happen to disrupt its existence.
If the Zit were to erupt like a volcano (I know, I know, you probably are thinking about the pus right now and even if you were not before, now you are!), someone would do something about it.
Someone would try to clean up the act. But because bureaucracy has a pace of its own – like a lazy, sunny afternoon of leisure – you really do not want to revolt against it.
Bureaucracy will make sure that you get your birth registered, your education validated, your marriage (or your divorce) attested and your death accounted for. No one in their right mind would want to challenge this system: this perfect system of accounting for lives!!
The Zit is the bureaucracy because it will not kill you but mime you into a form of servitude to the Zit – the Bureaucracy.
(Sarcasm well-intended.)
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