'Paranoimal' Activity

Two not-to-dos discovered for my blog :
1) Never start with the title
2) Don't think of apologizing for the posts which have started to have the frequency of CP in a Fin class.

Well, what is with paranoia? Why are we so scared of things unknown that we d rather not probe further but ignore them? Try calling up a number from which you got a text but dunno who it belongs to... A typical conv goes like this...

You (U) : Hello?

Other (O) : HELLOOW??? (He wasn't expecting ur call, doesn't know ur number, texted probably using number from telephone book and didn't know how to save - typically dads of people on the wrong end of youth like me)

U : (Aside) Huh.. Who is this guy? X or Y or Z's cousin's husband? From college or is he family? Now which language? Family means tamil else if friend, hindi or english.. Can shoot myself in the head rather than venture in hindi and write off my entire savings to an account in Chinchpoklee... English! Everyone knows english.. Tams know english better than tamil.
I got a msg from this number. Who is this? (forgot about the existence of the above mentioned dads who haven't stored the number)

O : HELLOOO!! YAARU???

U : (Aside) JACKPOT!!! Some bugger in the family!!
(Repeat again in tamil) I got a blah.. blah.. blah..

O : Hello? Yaaru? (Note the reduction from exclamation to a softer question)

U : (Aside) WTF!

O : (This time the spousey kicks into action.. You being a typical mba have forgotten the day ends at 10. The time is 11 pm) Cut the call! The @&$*#s have no other work... (It actually sounds worse when heard in native language. The other now panics at the spousey's words and remembering some bad b-grade hollywood movie, hangs up) keeeeeen keeeeeen keeeeeen keeeeeen keeeeeen...

U : Hello? 'Turn round and round on his head' him... (after all he is someone's dad possibly)

Now all of us have been on either ends of the above conversation. So why are we as a nation so paranoid of the people around us? My grandmom has a line for all salesmen irrespective of what they sell - "Nothing needed... Nobody's here... Everything's here" (sounds more like an invitation for robbery, doesn't it? why was she paranoid in the first place then?). We can't look at someone on the road and give them a smile lest the men think the woman who smiles is quite ready for many things or the women think the man who smiles is hitting on them. We can't even look at our professors eye to eye. Our behavior would be akin to an electron beam under the effect of a negative field. The reason is that we are paranoid that the prof would remember us when he corrects our test papers and what if he has a bad opinion of us? It is better to remain anonymous, isn't it? I can't bring myself to talk to some profs from my college, the reason being they have this tendency of bringing up certain topics which tend to wilt the skin off my back. But otherwise, some profs are real cool. Of course, then again, there are profs who are scared of certain students and become well behaved electrons. Paranoia also leads to such behavior as to pinning up your gold chain against your dress while traveling on a train (a cut chain will slip through anyway silly), locking up the door and then closing the latch which could be opened by a well educated first grade kid, slipping your footwear under another in a temple lest it gets stolen, etc. In all cases, it is true that such behavior lessens the probability of a mishap by say 0.01%, but how does it reduce your paranoia by 1oo%? It is like getting a Nobel Prize just because you said you would find something soon. (Oh wait! Didn't this happen for real?) Surprisingly, our paranoia seems to increase with the number of gods and babas and other holders of our faith. Strange but isn't that what makes humans so special?