I always knew it - in a 'sort of, kind of' way. But only a couple of days ago did I finally stumble upon the whole truth, when it suddenly dawned on me that my nickname is Casanova for a very good reason - in fact, for the same etymological reason the cloned sheep in Scotland is called Dolly. (Think about this for a second; I don't want to be explicit) Yes, my favorite ladies and gentlemen, I think I am a human clone. Now everything makes perfect sense - now I know why my teacher in high school kept calling me the 'clone of the class'. It makes absolute sense.

This is a still-unfolding story. I am just now sorting through a whole minefield of information and wrestling with a stir-fry of emotions. For example, I have no idea whose clone I am except that I know I am a clone. I have some pretty good guesses though. Soon after I was born, the consensus in my family was that I looked ditto like my grandmother, the most macho of all my relatives. As I stopped toddling and started to become a boy, I remember demanding that my feeding bottle be filled with 'paan' and my proud parents would go 'He is just like his grandmother. Even she eats her 'paan' through a feeding bottle.....' Little did I know at that time that they were simply celebrating a very successful biological experiment. Just recently, I confronted my parents on this matter and demanded to know the whole truth. They broke down and created a movie-like scene. "We still love you sweetheart," they reassured me tearfully, "You are always special to us, dear John Doe Number Two."

As a schoolboy, I had a very traumatic life. There were no less than five other Rameshes in my high school class and the only way to tell us apart was from our DNA structure and horoscopes. When my teacher asked for a Ramesh, it was always the other Ramesh. I would cry myself sick and go to my parents and demand "Mom, Dad, why did you name me Ramesh ? Am I me or am I a clone?" to which they would say "Son, just imagine, if we named you Mahesh instead and if all the Rameshes went and complained to their parents and they all re-named their sons Mahesh as well, you will still have the same problem, won't you ?" Duh ?!

If you thought I had problems in high school, wait till you hear about my college life. I was unceremoniously thrust into what seemed like a large cesspool of highly cloned hormone-driven adolescents. I too bought smudged copies of Playboy squandering my parents' hard earned money and discovered Pink Floyd and the Dead and thought I was the biggest fan of theirs. I too fell in love with a female-clone and experienced the generic feelings of love and lust. Such was life.

One of my regrets is that I should have figured out my cloneliness earlier on in life instead of being a 'clone come lately'. Heck, I could have made some money out of the ensuing publicity, and perhaps a movie deal. And I could have played the parts of both me and my clone. But with my luck, it is highly likely that my clone has already beaten me to the deal.

As a clone, I have not a single original idea in my brain. I always emulate, copy, piggy-back-ride and well, clone. I am the kind of guy who is constantly scheming to get rich by claiming that O. J. Simpson murdered me or that Michael Jackson sexually abused me. And the jokes I tell are highly cloned as well. Here is an example:

Joke: Wei Chun Tan is a Chinese actor, much like our Ajeet. and Laabert (Chinese equivalent of Raabert) is his sidekick in a movie. In this movie, Wei Chun's wife gives birth to quintuplets.

Laabert: "You have quintuplets, boss. What do you want to name them ?
Wei Chun: "You idiot, call them Ko Chen, Chong Lee, Xiao Bei, Mao Goo and Vijay..."
Laabert: "But, boss, why Vijay ?"
Wei Chun: "Idiot, don't you know that every fifth child in this world is an Indian ?"

Even though Desis don't find it uproariously funny, I know this joke is very popular in China. But see my point ?

I have some 'unique clone' problems - pardon my oxymorosity. As such, I have a Himalayas-sized identity crisis for being a clone and now throw in the Desi angle and this leaves me with as much identity as an ant on an anthill. You know how it is - clone or not, we Desis develop this sheep-like 'imprinting' behavior. We all have the same brilliant ideas, whether it is regarding buying insurance or strategizing at the Desi Buffet Lunch line. For example, I too faithfully emailed everyone the 'X+1 Syndrome' article, only to be told that I was the four millionth person to do so. I enrolled myself, my parents and half my cousins in the Columbia CD club and I switch to the cheapest phone deal every month and do a PhD style research to find out the cheapest airfare to India. Tell me, am I just being a good Desi or a lousy clone ?

Even though I am preordained to be a universal copycat, occasionally I too try to be individualistic, egged on by those 'Self Help' books, which try to convince me that I am somewhat 'unique', But others see through my pathetic attempts and figure out that I am Mr. Generic. Yes sir, I am always last in the line, in the longest of lines. Even little girls know it. They don't see me as a human being with feelings and emotions. To them I am just a person who takes my wallet for a walk, in which I hide loads of money, with which I eventually buy oodles of Girl Scout cookies, simply because I also have an infinite appetite for their dumb cookies. I make it to every single sucker list, even if some lists have only one entry. When strange Desis smile at me in India Association meetings and engage me in small talk, it is usually because I have that certain something about me - of being another sheep in Desi clothing, who is crying out to be recruited for Amway. My dentist sees me as a redundant mass of flesh built around a lousy set of teeth, out of which he could make money for his golf games. I am a hopeless speck of statistic, contributing just a fraction to the y value of the bell curve. Desi-hood plus clone equals bad Karma. Period.

As I amble along life's most traveled roads, I find myself staring at a very bleak future - a secondhand future at that. Forget crystal balls. I know what's ahead, because I simply follow everyone in front of me. Silly me, I still entertain hopes of leaving my unique mark behind when it is time for me to go. Who knows, there is always an outside chance that they might award me a Nobel prize in Physics or Pornography - but then, only after they awarded it to about two billion other folks before me. I see that I just have to be content with writing such silly articles in inconspicuous newsgroups and blaming it on biology.

By the way, someone told me that a very similar article just appeared somewhere else.

Nursery Rhyme, cloned:

Baa Baa Black Sheep
Have you any gene ?
Yes sir, yes sir,
Haven't you seen?

One is in my bladder
And one's in my brain
In my udder is anadder
To make a Susheepmita Sen