Who Do You Think You Are

Emmanuel Upputuru

Description

An investigation into the truth of the identity of man that comes up with a question, “if your ID is not your identity, then who are you?”
At the age of 33, Emmanuel Upputuru, India’s hottest creative person,* finds himself frustrated by physical injuries that have begun to cage his body. He embarks on a journey of self-discovery that unveils a shocking truth about his very existence: his identity was stolen from him before he ever set foot on this earth. The probe leads him to a scene of robbery and murder in a garden and to a place of skull in Jerusalem, where a war was waged on his behalf by a lamb with a mission to restore his original identity.
But what was Emmanuel’s original identity? Are we just our bodies? How do we cope with physical pain? What are the three core fears of mankind? How can we be born again? These are some of the questions Emmanuel seeks to answer in his book, ‘Who Do You Think You Are’. Written over a period of eighteen years, using anecdotes from the advertising and cricket world, Emmanuel offers a radical take on the complex subject of Man’s Identity.
‘Who Do You Think You Are’ is an urgent book for a broken world. It can help us discover our true identity. Armed with this identity we can respond to conflicts better and conquer ourselves even as the world around us continues to trigger, troll, fight, divorce and threaten to nuke itself.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Inspirational
• Philosophie et théologie
• Jesús de Nazaret
• Identity crisis
• Jesus
• Identity politics
• Humility
• Born Again
• Pride
• Conflict
• Jésus-Christ
• Death
• Image

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 10 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664293328
• Langue: English

Extrait

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE
EMMANUEL UPPUTURU
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2023 Emmanuel Upputuru.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations marked are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version. (Public Domain)
 
Scripture quotations marked ASV are taken from the American Standard Version Bible. (Public Domain)
 
Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
 
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9331-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9332-8 (e)
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 07/03/2023
Contents
PREFACE
Part One
9/11 HIJACKS 9/8
IDENTITY CRISIS
THE OTHER PART
MURDER IN THE GARDEN
Part Two
FIR
THE INVESTIGATION
THE LIAR
THE IDEA OF DISOBEDIENCE
PRIDE
COVERING SHAME
FIG LEAVES
CONTENTION
DEATH
Part Three
THE SILENT SPECTATOR
POTTER’S HOUSE
GOD HAS AN IDEA
JESUS CHRIST!
NAKED TRUTH
CLOTHED WITH HUMILITY
ANOTHER GARDEN
PLAN EXECUTED
THE THIRD ACT
Part Four
A PORTRAIT BY GOOGLE
THE CONNECTION
MY TESTIMONY
DEVIL ROARS
TRIGGERED
GLORY! GLORY!
THE ART OF MEDITATION
NOTHING
SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To
Everyone that has breath
PREFACE
XXXX XXXX XXXX - is not just another number I have encrypted here. It is the number the government of my country knows me by. The number is linked to my basic demographic and biometric information like my passport size photograph, my ten fingerprints and scans of my two irises. These are stored in a centralized database. This 12-digit unique identification number can reveal to “concerned” authorities everything they may want to know about me. It can, for example, tell the banks if they can trust me with a loan or not. Thanks to this number the authorities know, or at least believe and sincerely hope, that there is no one else like me on this planet. I am unique.
While it is flattering to know that I have a unique identity, now proven by a unique number, a question threatens to ruin that knowledge: is my identity really unique? Don’t I share so many other identities? Am I not just like so many other individuals on so many counts? On the basis of my nationality I am one of the 1.4 billion people on this sub-continent called India. On the basis of my place of birth and my mother tongue, even though I am guilty of not being proficient in it, I am one of the 84 million Telugu-speaking people from Andhra Pradesh. On the basis of my current habitation, I am one of the 1.2 million residents of Gurgaon. On the basis of my gender, I am one of the 3.6 billion dudes on the planet. On the basis of my food choices I am like 90% of the world population that eats non-vegetarian food on this earth. On the basis of the way I earn that food, I am one of the half-a-million copywriters registered on LinkedIn. On the basis of my designation, I am one of the 20 odd Chief Creative Officers in the country. On the basis of the sports I follow I am one of the billion cricket fans globally. Even though I feel more in tune with the 440 million strong cohort of millennials, my children kid with me that I belong to the tribe of boomers. The truth is in the middle – I belong to 28% of the Indian population called Gen X.
I can create new categories that can give me interesting, unique in-one-way-or-the-other identities. Like for example, I am the only bald CCO operating out of Gurgaon at the moment. Or for that matter I am probably the only South-Indian-Christian-creative-person-in-the-country-with-two-moles-on-the-face. I am one of the few who have won Cannes Lions without a drop of alcohol in my system. But I would be naïve to suggest that I take any of these identities seriously. Who do you think I am?
Ultimately the government, family, friends and followers create an image called Emmanuel Upputuru in their own heads based on the data available to them. Each one a slightly different one from the other.
But what is my true identity? I see myself playing out different identities at different settings in society. I am a father, a son, a husband, a brother, a citizen, an employee, a neighbour, a sports fan, a cricket fan, a test cricket fan – all at the same time.
Every once in a while, on the world’s stage, you see newer identities making an apperance, like South Sudan for example. It became the world’s youngest nation on July 9, 2011.
On one hand you have organisations which try to protect niche identities – like that of the Taushiro speaking community of one last person left named Amadeo Garcia in Peru. On the other hand, India’s largest community is made to feel threatened that their idea of India is getting hijacked by a minority community today.
Governments pretend to protect the image of certain identities. It’s called vote bank politics. During elections each political party makes promises to certain communities to protect their interests.
Identity has always been an important factor in the history of mankind. What are wars after all, if not different identities at each other’s throats? Today the identity of man is broken into more and more fragments, smaller, tinier with sharp edges that hurt when they rub shoulders with each other.
These days you can’t post anything on social media without offending anyone. Everyone has become very sensitive. Sometimes the platform even warns you: “This contains sensitive content. It may offend you.” It could be a casual post about the food you have eaten. Or a mother feeding her baby in public. Anyone can get offended. Anything can offend. It could be sports, education, jobs or an advertisement trying to sell jewellery or furniture. People threaten to unfriend those who disagree with them. I have decided to not follow that practice. I want to see how divergent people’s points of view can be from mine, even if it makes me cringe. I want to see where they are coming from.
On social media, you are very quickly stereotyped and trolled. “You eat paneer ” suddenly becomes those who eat paneer are of a certain type. If you like ghazals from your neighbouring nation, you are judged that you are anti-national and sentenced to leave your country and go settle there.
Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Sir Terence David John Pratchett, discovered who is always to blame in the fantasy world: “It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them who do the bad things.”
Things are not very different in the real world.
Whenever a bomb explodes in some part of the earth or someone’s head gets separated from his body in another, the first thing everyone looks for is the names of the perpetrators of such deeds. These days invariably the names of the perpetrators are from a certain community. And we know how the script plays out from that moment of identification, don’t we? People from that particular community are targeted everywhere in the world by certain sections of the victims’ community – even when the people from the targeted community are against the actions of the suspected perpetrator. Such constant targeting, purely because they share a common identity, can create a newfound sense of belonging, loyalty and passion for their own community. They suddenly realise that they need to protect their own from them.
In 1984 my father took me to the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium in Delhi for the Asian games. We watched athletics. I don’t remember any Indian doing well that day. Around afternoon a cheer started gathering momentum and increased in volume. We found out, a Chinese athlete was about to beat a world record in high jump. So suddenly we were not just Indians, but Asians cheering for our Asian athlete about to win on our behalf. The same feeling we know very well whenever the Indian cricket team plays.