It was a nocturnal-eve bash at neighbour’s house during a previous Naval posting of ours. Looked like our well-heeled host, wallowed in walloping wealth, going by the way their winsome abode was wonderfully decked up with. Things like shimmering statuettes, fetching furniture, funky mirrors, fabulous lampshades, captivating carpets, candle-stands, chandeliers, all bespoke of bountiful affluence.
Just then a gaggle of giggly women and gabbling gentlemen stepped in, to sit bang beside us. And, to gush about their latest grand acquisitions. It looked like they all had embarked on an ‘impression creating’ mission, with each one trying to outshine the other. While the first one was speaking of the spanking-new swanky flat that he had secured; the second had geared up for a grandiose description of a gorgeous-looking vehicle he had got, days ago.
Now, call it an impression-creating spiel, or image-enhancing gimmick, the third, wasn’t the one, to remain all clammed up. He began giving out a graphic account of his a great many jaunts on foreign soils. To which, the fourth began dishing out details of delectable cuisines at dozens of five-stars hotels, doggedly patronized by him!
I began wondering. Are these prattles of procuring grand mansions, glitzy vehicles, globe-gallivanting, gobbling up food in grandeur-replete hotels… are all true image-enhancers? If so then, what about one’s polished/refined behaviour and manners, with a kind/helping heart to boot? Doesn’t this incredibly enhance one’s image?
Also, one’s plaudit-worthy, lofty moral values, principles and ideologies? And, one’s humility/modesty, which exponentially aggrandizes one’s image? Not to discount, the irreprehensible honesty, sincerity/integrity in whatever one does, which can ramp up one’s image, multi-fold? Aren’t all these things the true image-enhancers?
I still remember, having beheld the bedazzling sight on the boundary wall, of our host’s building, with rows of beautifully coruscating flames of burning oil-wicks, from brass-lamps, dissipating the darkness around. If only, it could dissipate the darkness of ‘fallacy’ in people out there – the fallacy that ‘the more the materialistic possessions; the greater is its power, to enhance one’s social image’!