Ease of Disguise

You feel freer in disguise,
You do things you won’t do otherwise.
Being your self is not easy,
Fear of society always kills the real wise.

Disguise: A word we generally associate with darker side of things. Generally, linked with the act of elopement, absconding and sometimes even with diplomacy, the disguise’s positive side seems to be out of sight!
Is disguise always a tool for hiding out of guilt? Don’t our favorite actors disguise themselves into the roles we love them so much for! They masquerade for our entertainment and indeed it is called ‘Art’. The very art which is revitalizing factor in our society, even called as the mirror of the society. And the base of every artist is disguise. Some disguise in costumes and emotions while other’s use colors for the same. A painter disguises his muse in his creations enlivening with different shades of colors.
Apart from using the art of disguising for all the artistic talents, the same contributes in many other ways. Disguise can be used as a confidence building tool, a way to broaden our vision or a way to make our acts more effective. Exemplifying it is our own experience here at Infosys; everyone who has been through the training period at Mysore has experienced it in ILI sessions. Many of these sessions use role-play mechanism to deliver the importance of various soft skills in a more profound and affective manner. Participants, in this process shed all their inhibitions to stand up, speak and act. The whole activity comes through as a fun experience for them because they disguise themselves in their respective roles and come out of their shells which they wouldn’t have done if they would have been just themselves!
After all clichéd ‘Be yourself’ is a difficult maxim to follow! At the end of the day most of our acts are the influence of all the factors surrounding us. And when this is essentially the situation, disguise proves to be a good way in overcoming one’s weakness. When one has a problem of getting nervous during the exam due to the time constraints, the best solution is to give mock exams. In mock exam he/she pretends to be giving the real exam and follows the time constraint and hence tries to fight with his/her weakness.
Also camouflaged state gives us a chance to see through other’s disguise. Pretention attracts different reaction from the very same people of our surrounding. A phenomenon which gives a different perspective to understand the people around us and hence to know them better! Well to support that fact we have numerous examples of love story in motion flicks and literature where the man disguise’s into his love interest’s friend to know her(or his, whatever floats your boat) true feelings about him. Indeed, a very useful tool?
Everyone plays different roles in his/her own life, disguising from one to another. These disguise make certain acts ‘acceptable’ in one role which are not in the other. Like, a father trying to teach his young son the importance of money and how to have a budgeted approach for proper saving, might not be taken that seriously. But the same father, as a Financial Advisor in his professional life is taken far more seriously on his every single advice regarding money matters!
We all use the tool of masquerading in our day to day life. Sometimes as developers to re-ensure oneself that you love coding and debugging, at other times as a happy child over phone to your parents making them believe that you are not missing them, in all the happy routine here.
Disguising is more of a tool to common man than to any absconder. After all even ‘Blessing’ comes in ‘Disguise’!