The Stat Connection is Opinion

I have been actively blogging for just over a year now. It was in the spring of 2013 when weather-happy fingers found a topic a day to pore over and then pour out and onto my online space I call ‘Between Write and Wrong’. I was so regular with writing whatever came to mind that some months down I wonder if it’s age, stage or a combination of both that has made my posts' flow go from a broken barrage to one which is manned and optimized to about two posts a week. Be that as it may, this is my 180th post. And after writing on whatever became visible under the shining Sun, today I sit for the first time to see why the top posts on my blog are the ones which are. Should be quite telling about what readers like to read, or what I am good at.

In descending order of popularity, here they are:

1. Sounding the Red Siren Against Sexual Abuse – this post was written to add my voice to Protsahan and Unicef’s fight against sexual abuse. I had shared a personal experience of meeting a sexually abused girl in a Jhuggi Jhopri Shishu Mandir I taught in while still in college.

2. Oh Chetan Bhagat! Read what you write – A rebuttal post to Bhagat’s published opinions about women, men, work, home, cooking, marriage, children, you get the drift! Yes, I was disagreeing with him.

3. Book Review – Sita’s Curse by Sreemoyee Piu Kundu – This book review of a feminist erotica was written a few weeks back but seems to be grabbing enough eye balls to be the third most popular post. Not just sex, talk of sex sells too, it seems.

4. An Open Letter to Educated Indians – One of my favourite posts from my pen. An opinion editorial as a civil servant’s wife, talking about how the rot is not just in the bureaucratic “system” but within us as citizens seeking services too. As honest as it could get!

5. The Tamasha of Birth and Death – The most spontaneous post on my blog. Ringing true like a personal rant and talking about the circus (of rituals and superstitions, terms and conditions) Indian society surrounds birth and death with.

What is common to all these posts? Opinion. About society hiding faces of sexual abuse or about citizenry bribing the tax collector while cursing corruption at India Gate. About a book which talks of sex or a man who talks about everything cooking in his head and serving it semi-baked. Opinions, all. And they seem to be read the most on my blog. Liked or not is a different matter, but then, that is the power of any opinion – it sells, nonetheless, takers or no takers.

We all have an opinion about anything that can be opined about, which in turn means everything. And why not! Free speech, free thoughts, freedom to express and free air time are some of the molecules that complete the structure of free will. It is good to have an opinion. It means, primarily, that we can think, we can reason, we can look in all eight directions, raise the grass in pincer clasp and release it to know which direction the wind is blowing from. And then, tell the world that it is blowing from the right or blowing totally wrong. Our opinion is like our gold star on a popular pavement, not as unique as our fingerprint, but ours.  

However, is it that easy to be pregnant with exclusive opinion? To be able to turn down the volume of screaming masses around or disconnect the social headphones altogether and think on your own? In an ivory tower, or at your desk, reading-researching-recording the real stories and our thoughts removed from the voices spoon feeding our heads?  Feeding – in the name of fashion or populism, conformism or revolution, nurture or membership, rebellion or discipline? It’s not easy, perhaps almost unnatural to even expect so from our own selves. They say nothing in this world is original and also that man is a social animal and …

… and a complete animal sometimes in how he dispenses with these opinions, some formed mostly borrowed – in words or through action. Over drinks in a drawing room with body language going down the flush or discussions on Twitter with Arnab in the background and 80-120 threatening to burst open the aorta, while the art of “gathering” an opinion has been honed to perfection the artistry (also called civility) of speaking it out is fast receding into loud chaos. Almost as if we cannot let another speak, because we do not want to hear a different point of view or even our own point of view from a different mouth, for how dare he echo me! It is becoming increasingly difficult to be challenged in our thoughts, because we think "we opine, and therefore we are". That opinions make us, form our complete identity. But then, doesn't how we spread them seem important too, as does the intent behind the cussing? Such a strange thought comes to mind and says the ‘how you say it’ is the shoe and the ‘what you say’ the man standing inside it. And the whole arrangement needs to be polished. Know what I mean? 

And look how I opine, about opinions. I am no less. So now, laying the blame on the top 5 posts on my blog and the yarn of thoughts they spun, off I go to switch on the television and see who slapped whom, and who all are slapping each other in celebration of it. I promise to sit through it and try to chew my own cud. Sometimes, I too cannot swallow it and call it 'opinion-I-ate-it' but itch to spit it out in the form of another opinion post and a tiara we all proudly wear - called 'opinionated'!

Maybe it will make it to the top slot too, one day?

[WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - The stat connection - Go to your Stats page and check your top three-five posts. Why do you think they’ve been successful? Find the connection between them, and write about it.]  

Book Review – And We Remained by Asad Ali Junaid

What a lovely title to a book ‘And We Remained’ is. There is a sense of contented incompleteness to it, like ellipses leading to an invisible forever-after. Yet, it may signify a conclusion; a three-letter full stop with the finality that only Fate can bring with it. A finality that could be a happy one, or one coloured with nostalgia, or even pathos. I liked it, for the curiosity that it created. But the very next moment I read the sub-title ‘An absorbing story told differently …’ and a hmm escaped my lips. I wish the author, Asad Ali Junaid, had not included this phrase, that too on the cover. By being fed thus, the reviewer’s eye was instantly trained on these two aspects – story and narration, as were her heightened expectations.

‘And We Remained’ is set in Bangalore in the late 1990s, in an India seeing socio-economic changes and on the precipice of another century walking in. The book circles around five friends – Sahir, Sandeep, Gopal, Anand and David – and the women in their lives, especially Wardha. The story is told in two ways – as first person narratives by the main characters and alternatively, through email exchanges between them when they are out of their Engineering colleges and spread across India, USA and UK, working or hunting for work. And women. You will receive this book like you do the regular cup of coffee from college canteens – with love, heartbreak, prison, politics, drinking and strip clubs all in the same bean, written in a language that is simple, young, conversational, often slangy, definitely lacking lyricism but certainly not correctness. But when you read, you will also find that little something which keeps the book different from the ones published around this theme. I found two such things. 

A story ‘told differently’

I liked the narrative technique Asad attempted in his novel. Two parallels – of life in two different phases of time – run from cover to cover. The account of the engineering college days is in first person, with each main character speaking directly to us readers in alternate chapters. These narrations bring forth each character’s individual voice as well as portray the friendship that keeps them as one. While there is no heavy duty drama or deep streams of consciousness surrounding these peeps into their minds, you will find an occasional dose of philosophy – on love, women and even on Philosophy itself; a very raw and young version to my old mind, but one I could relate to from my much younger days. I liked what Sandeep says at a difficult turn in their job placement days – ‘I had come across a quote by Dr. Wayne Dyer: Your life is but a parenthesis in eternity. We felt smaller than these parenthesis then …’ 

The other parallel is of their working life’s experience, some years hence, and through a series of short mails with the date and time in place; much like quick conversations but which not just propel the story forward but also give the book an ample dose of humour through their back-slapping camaraderie. Anand is advising Sandeep on women, their favourite topic – ‘Look at your age, and your tummy too. There is a difference between making things happen and things happening on their own. You will otherwise have to start trusting your mom to initiate things…also, when nothing works, PRAY. There is immeasurable power in it. I will pray for you, and you please pray for yourself and, for a change, everybody pray for our good old Sandeep to find one for himself. After that we can pray for each other’. The humour is simple, unpretentious and sans effort.  

But the most interesting bit was how these conversations, happening from within different continents, become cross-country nuggets documenting cultures which these 20-somethings in their salad days of working have come to occupy.

In the ‘Synopsis’ of the book that the book carries, I had pencilled the portion which mentioned that their intertwined stories are told in the backdrop of ‘a fast changing society’ and a ‘nation in flux’. I wanted to see how, if at all, this is brought forth by Asad. It is, and that is the second good point about this book.

Foreign shores and a ‘Nation in Flux’

From the advent of emails to the crowning of Facebook, from the Twin Towers falling to the education system in India, from South India’s freestyle dance ‘dappan koothu’ to Bollywood in the UK and from an India where sex is dirty to a USA where strip clubs are just free expression, the email interactions between Sahir, Sandeep, Gopal, Anand and David chronicle and document a context not just children from the 90s but those living today would nod their heads in agreement to. 

We come to know of an India where ‘examples (for anti-ragging) were needed and we were made into examples’, falsely, and post 9/11 paranoia in the US where ‘everyone in law enforcement … had become very touchy’. We see how ‘being treated like aliens’ is as common in another country as it is in our own, and while finding friends is easy, finding work not so. While a sleeveless top on girls in their engineering college is a blue moon and mothers still keep a tab on their sons' phone calls, Sahir’s experience at “Mardi Gras” with women lifting their shirts for a bead necklace in return contrasts the societies for us, as it impresses upon these young minds how different the world outside of their own is. We see repressed an Indian psychology itching to shed the tag of virginity with none the courage to, except to discuss it over mails, and to no avail. We are told of education in different countries, with most people in India (where ‘we were “trained” and never “taught”) never understanding why Sahir is ‘studying philosophy (in the US), especially after I have finished BE in Electrical Engineering’ and with a mother who declares to the world that ‘If you are thinking of studying any further I will jump off the second floor of our house’. And then, a hint of winds of change, from Valentine’s Day to job opportunities, crossing the seven seas to enter our country which was taking baby steps out of the box. 

And amidst all this emailing over a decade, what is also chronicled is age - ‘the most telling sign of receding youth is not balding or a paunch, it is when you do not feel like laughing as much any more.’

I do remain a little disappointed …

Notice how I am yet to mention Wardha and love and love story? While ‘And We Remained’ is a story told differently, the story itself is not so ‘absorbing’. On the third page of the book we hear Sahir musing ‘Stories about love did not end like this … Or did they?’, almost asking us to keep our pens and papers ready to note down if this story ends as any different from the usual college romances. 

Like a song on repeat it runs from freshers to elections to fests to freshers to elections again. Wardha fails to attain the significance that is promised her at the end of the book, especially since the group of friends have ample other women to talk about. While the picture presented is real, the love angle of the story is damp and could have been done away with completely, especially since the ‘seriousness’ of the relationship between Wardha and Sahir does not come across successfully. If I were to talk of endearing relationship portrayals, I would say that nothing beats the camaraderie between Sahir, Sandeep, Gopal, Anand and David or the beauty of the relationship between Sahir and Sandeep. While it is true that ‘the line of trouble brewing … was common across all our hands, a part of our kismet’, pretty Wardha fails to make place in the reader’s mind. My question at the end of the story is one which David asks Sahir too – ‘Why have you given Wardha such importance in the book?’ Except, I would ask why have Wardha here at all? 

Another aspect that could have been done better is characterization. Despite unique ways of expression and language through their mails and narrations, the characters seem to merge into one another and not stand out as unique individuals beyond a point. Perhaps because the characters lack depth. (Or maybe, I was much deeper even as a college kid.) Was this done in keeping with the mood of the book, which mostly hovers around the happy-go-lucky? Also, the author’s idea of referring to so many students and teachers as ‘types’ and shoe-boxing them did not help. Yes, they are real but how would you as a creator shape them beyond typical if you yourself call them ‘types’ multiple times in the book? And that is why the aim of the story to show ‘four different points of view on something that happened in our lives’ partially failed. 

‘And We Remained’ remains a light and entertaining read ending on a sweet note and affirming the bonds of college friendship, exactly what its author intended it to be. That there was never any ambition to make it anything other than what it is is apparent. I connected with the book not because it is a masterpiece in the world of writing and Literature but only because I have been through it all when I was in college. So in that sense, it is a fun way to re-visit days of your own freshers’ party and college elections, breaking hearts and finding new ones. I do have to give it to its author for being the one-man army behind the book – writing it, designing the cover and then publishing it too. 

I wonder what he eats for breakfast! 

Title: And We Remained

Author: Asad Ali Junaid

Publisher: Asad Ali Junaid

2014

[This review was commissioned by the author. All views are my own.]

Hit me baby one more time!

The Gods must be crazy, and the goblins running the rumour mill crazier. For the latest on the grape vine, which hangs heavy with sour bunches, is that if you are good looking by some standard you get more readers on your blog. That it is not about writing any more, like it was once (for after all, Shakespeare did manage plenty of hits). That it is all about features which match the ideal assets the fantasies in your reader-head enjoy. Insulting, sad and unbelievable, all at the same time. But who is surprised?

Picture this. 

A stranger who considered himself a brilliant-but-wronged writer asked me to write a post for him and him for me. An experiment that would involve us to publish each other’s works in our own names and exchange the hits number at the end of the day. He wanted to prove that content is not king, but pretty faces are queens, and that under my hat his ink will find kisses while mine will fade in comparison. I politely refused, finding the totally resistible offer slightly offensive for implying my writing unworthy of sustaining a readership and also realizing soon enough that some heads which hate to take no for an answer even fail to spot nonsense planted in their own. His parting words threw ‘you vane woman’ at me. But before I could tell him to make that ‘vain’, he had vanished into thin air. Probably hiding in another’s inbox which acted abettor in his research crime to make me publish, in my name, something written by a dude whose commas and punctuation were like drunk ants doing striptease atop an express train. With full stops flying everywhere, off course, of course! 

To think that someone's else's balderdash flowing from upturned toilet bins can make you think … 

Reminded me of a man asking his wife to pick a gynaecologist who was the least good looking of the lot, for that meant she spent more time studying medicine properly rather than in front of a mirror. Hence, a better doctor! So strange that his wife would believe him; all ten manicured nails and highlighted hair of hers included, to pop her kid out! So strange again that we have reached Mars but our minds sit cosy inside a caveman’s animal skin toga, quivering with inferiority or envy on spotting in others physical features matching brain quotient in their sharpness.
   

And you don’t even need to be blonde any more to take the sh** cake! I talk of only one segment, where Blogging meets Bollywood and apparently proves that if you have the right face you need have nothing more, for then a good number of readers and publishers will follow as night follows day. And good writing, well, who needs that anyway.  Isn’t the dude who sent me the message for a life-changing research sitting without a woman’s bullet lodged in his chest?  

First things first; thank you for the compliment. It is super to know one belongs to a good looking genepool. For such fortunate planetary disposition I thank God first, then my parents, Galileo, some of my favourite teachers, Mendel, my dog Timmy, Darwin and the latest ladybug stuffed toy we got and named Gaston (after Gaston in Ben and Holly, that is).

And now for some serious talk. 

Pray, what is wrong with making oneself look good? Of showing aligned teeth in profile pictures or legs-above-the-knee in party ones? Of knowing the waist-to-shoulder proportion is perfect or that the face turned leftish looks best? Does colour on my lips make me any more fake than the free-flowing compliment on yours? That kohl in my eyes is as much a part of my outdoors as is my phone, and it is me who decides if the blush is pink or not there at all. About berries, I love to eat them and wear them too, sun shine or star light I decide. Only me!

Such misplaced are the times that a pretty picture in ‘About me’ on your site can make not just men but women too to attribute to you feats the very devil on your shoulders would shudder to perform. Of course, the devil may make you pout those lips, all the way from your timelines to theirs. But then you wonder, why bother, why kiss and make up with a dinosaur or use terms like sexist or feminist for brains which think no bigger than a pea.  

And more importantly, how, just how does a blogger's face conforming to conventional ideas of beauty make a reader spend 2 minutes and 30 seconds (average, Alexa says) reading a post about a book review or a short story, leaving behind feedback which proves they were paying attention and not fantasizing sipping coffee with her mascaraed eyes? It is not as if I'm picking my peasant skirt just over my knee to hitch a ride. Even if I were, why did you stop the car? If you expected to see me in my Sunday best lingerie in a post about exactly that, then, delusional reader, it tells everything about you and zilch about me, apart from saying nothing about the others who enjoy reading me. And who, gasp and fume and beat your chest as you may, keep those ‘hits’ coming in! Quite steadily!

I don’t hang around your breed to know enough about it, but I can still advise. How about you experiment on your own the next time around, without trying to rope in a pretty face allegedly unfairly enjoying it all or posting anonymous comments on Blogger Confession pages with the courage of a rat in the deep end of a pool? You don’t even need to doll yourself up. Just make sure the grammar is in place, creativity bribed in and something, anything, unique enough about it to make your readers want to ‘hit’ you again. You need the support of imagination and language, not a wonder bra for sustained readership. You see, you need to turn that gaze in the right direction to get inspired, and that direction is not another’s body. In the mean time, don’t forget to remain polite and pleasant. Sweetness is fashionably under rated, and last I checked it helps you look good too!

PS – You saw the picture on the top, didn't you? How silly and stupid I looked. But you still read me to the end? Hm! That would be another 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Thank you for ‘hitting’ me, baby, one more time! 

[WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Opposite Day - If you normally write non-fiction, post a photo. If you normally post images, write fiction. If you normally write fiction, write a poem. If you normally write poetry, draw a picture - As you can see, I did post a picture, but then I had to write too. I just had to!]

Book Review – Vicky Goes Veg by Vicky Ratnani

'Chaat, to lick, so you know what I mean. Crunchy, healthy and sexy. This is how I look at and interpret today’s eating habits and trends,' says Vicky Ratnani.

Now, I am the kind who calls buttering my bread cooking. My gas cylinder lasts me months, and when my oven is switched on it is to warm food which was cooked to celebrate something special the previous day – say, Messi’s goal, 100,000 hits on the blog, and so on. For all other times, I work up … a meal, somehow! May sound a tad hyperbolic in keeping with my Punjabi roots, but really, this is as close as it gets to my culinary truth. And so, I had to laugh out loud when I was asked to review none other than Vicky’s latest book. I agreed to, but with a rider attached - that I will not furnish my own versions/recipes of any of this Master Chef’s dishes. Because, dear reader, I simply cannot.

About the Book

‘Vicky Goes Veg’ is vegetarianism made mouth-watering and fun. The dishes hail from all over the world but come with an Indian twist. So you will find Braised Plantain with Thai spices sharing green space with Hing-roasted Pumpkin, Vegetable Shepherd’s Pie, and so on. A lovely mix of countries and ingredients, with pinches of Vicky’s special masala combinations. From salads and soups and party starters, to one-pot meals and sweeties, the book leaves no course unturned. My favourite ones from the collection were - Minted Chickpeas and Crispy Orka, Roasted Red Pepper Soup, Stromboli, Green Chilli and Raw Mango Risotto and Lemon and Basil Panna Cotta.

At your coffee table, you will sit turning the pages and savouring the recipes way beyond the last drop in your mug is consumed, not just because the dishes are interesting for someone who likes cooking vegetarian food but also because the book presents them as nothing less than gorgeous. This is not pocket sized cook book with procedures in black and white. ‘Vicky Goes Veg’ carries some wonderful photographs – be they of Vicky’s well-known-on-TV expressions or of food and ingredients. Each page is designed to delight. What caught my eye the most were pictures 'from the old world subzi mandis to the new vegetable bazaars' and of the 'people behind it'. Vicky believed in turning the limelight on the grass roots even as he cooked roots and grasses in his well-known kitchen. I found this personal touch endearing and one which added character to this compilation.

Apart from the presentation and graphics, the content of the book – the methodology of cooking each dish - is put in a simple, step-by-step manner. The language is more conversational than scientific and dotted with Vicky’s ready wit and homely analogies. The dishes, even to my green eyes, seemed earthy, fuss free and easy to make, enough to give a home-cook-sans-caliber like me confidence to try them. What added to the experience of learning were tiny coloured boxes floating on each page – carrying anything from tips and tricks to trivia from across the world. Even suggestions like 'pass this recipe on to the bhutta wallah – he’ll simply love you for it!' for BBQ Corn with Chilli and Lime Butter. 

About Vicky

If you watch his cookery show on television, you will in part know already what Vicky Ratnani stands for. I find him fun, endearing, casual yet meticulous, super talented and making you believe exactly that about yourself too. In tees and jeans he’ll use hands more than ladles and make you feel at home with his comfortable style of cooking. And, as luck would have it and culinary Gods willed it, I found someone who knew him in person to tell us more about Vicky Ratnani. 

Ramanjeet Singh is a chef at his family's Green Hotel and Restaurant, in Pathankot. Some questions that I mailed him to cash in on this coincidence got the following replies:

Q: How do you know Vicky Ratnani?

I have been a great admirer of Vicky for the last many years and never missed a TV show of his in my life. I met him for the first time through social networking. Gradually, over shared interests and professions, we became good friends. I consider him my professional idol and am glad to have him around as a friend and a guide. 

Q: What sets him apart as a celebrity chef?

Vicky is first a chef and then a celebrity. He loves his job more than the flood lights of fame on him. He is humble beyond measure and it amazes me. It is this that gets reflected in every dish that he creates. They are honest, practical and of course, delicious. 

Q: Do you make Vicky’s signature dishes in your restaurant?

Many. I serve many of Vicky’s creations regularly to serve my customers. Some of the popular ones are Cafe O’ Latte, Chicken Escallops, Sloppy Joe and Mango Pepper Cheese Cake. The last dish is my all-time favourite from his kitchen; that is, till now. He is constantly inventing and I am sure I will have a new favourite soon. 

Q: A secret about Vicky?

He is crazy about Mughlai food. And yes home-made pickles too. That's the way to Vicky's heart!

‘Vicky Goes Veg’ is one of the better cookbooks on my shelf. For all the reasons mentioned above and also because it's creator won me over with this - 'Don’t watch the calories when you eat. Trust me, these sinful calories are completely worth it. Enjoy your life!'

Now that fits my bill just right!

Title: Vicky Goes Veg
Author: Vicky Ratnani
Publisher: Collins
2013

[Tying this up with WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Earworm - Write whatever you normally write about, and weave in a book quote, film quote, or song lyric that’s been sticking with you this week.]

Orkut and my wedding anniversary

I received a goodbye mail from Orkut yesterday, the first social networking site I had bungee jumped into sans any strings attached to my teenage feet. Having failed to keep itself as popular as other sites, Orkut was shutting shop and with a letter titled ‘Farewell to Orkut’ I was being invited to collect half my virtual lifetime’s worth of archives to store in a Zip folder and preserve, perhaps, for a day when it will seem antiquated enough to be material for personal museums. Or maybe, because some of us have memories all hues attached to our presences, our identities and our relationships on that site, and which deserved space in our present and our future too. 

I do. And to be honest, Orkut’s retirement has saddened me.

Not that I have been there in the past few years. I live on Facebook, where most of us do now. So, much like an infidel, I too have found greener, more fun pastures to work and network through; enough to gradually forget passwords once created by a much younger mind and beyond the memory of this older one. But you know how, so often, certain objects no longer as significant as they were in our past lives get pushed back into drawers only to be found on a spring-cleaning day, or when a serendipitous reminder of it from unseen hands drops into our letter box? That is what happened yesterday, for that farewell Orkut letter in my inbox came like a steam engine roaring me awake to stories I had become too busy to even think back about. 

Of how my friends removed all Capricorn cobwebs from my old-fashioned mind and conspired to open my Orkut account for me. I needed to be where it’s at, according to them. Over guffaws and word-play a password was decided which I noted down, oh fear of forgetting and stupidity combined, on the front page of a diary – like a label we fix on a child’s almanac in bold red. Thankfully, a kid brother is called exactly that for a reason, and my giggly girly life and times on Orkut continued without prying eyes, till the password acquired maturity of thought, and my practices on the site grew away from child-like curiosity to a carefully contained way of expression becoming of a 20-something. Thankfully, by then I had met enough new people to call friends, joined the requisite communities of schools and colleges and bribed enough with cuppas to write glorifying testimonials for me. Thankfully!  

Because somewhere around that time, I met my husband. On Orkut.

A crazy coincidence of a common friend spotting me in our hometown later he sent me a ‘scrap’, one which he refuses to acknowledge even today, putting on me the ‘blame’ for having sent a friend request too, which actually, he did. I swear! But we were in each other’s lists now. All else (and everyone else too, much to their chagrin) lay forgotten as my Orkut time flowed like a river towards him, and him alone. We made up for all the kind of talk we never did when we continued prudes in school together, stealing glances but mostly squabbling over assemblies and toilet duties. Over messages and comments, we discovered each other, and how we had grown away from what we were. Some Suns later phone numbers were exchanged, and a quickly planned cup of coffee too. After four cups of which, during which time we kept falling a little more in love, we got married. So clichéd, but true!

Of course, the wedding ceremony was not on Orkut. Which reminds me, we turn seven in a few days. And the timing of bye-bye Orkut knocking on our marriage anniversary date brought back memories tinted pink, and also, a lump in my throat. So strange, but true! 

There is more brouhaha about social networking sites than genuine ha-ha on them now. Established researches as well as those born out of a day’s mood advice, almost implore us to not be tempted to remain online too long, cut ten hours to five, five to two, or leave, deactivate and never come back to live a longer, wrinkle-free life. Schoolmarms are defining ‘optimum’ usage, mothers of under-age users ‘the right behavior’. And I agree, for there can exist a dark underbelly to updates shared and relationships forged, or forced, in spaces like FB. And it gets tiring. Exhausting, to keep the hellos up and smiles aglow. And hurtful to learn that what seemed real was just fluff for another. For if forged and forced begin with an ‘f’, so does faked. After more than a decade of enjoying my virtual networks, how unfortunate that days preceding this post shows me how true this is. 

And then I wonder to myself how is it that I continue so happily socially networking, never annoyed with another’s over-doses or wary about my own? Meeting people, making friends, tooting my horn and tom-toming like an over-immune-to-censure cheer girl too? Is it because I believe good things become better and dreadful things less dreary when shared? Yes. Or does FB take away the lonely from alone days and thus gives me company? That too, yes! But most of all, as I sit and seek answers to inexplicable behavior patterns in my virtual life which never reared their heads in the days of Orkut, I wonder. 

I wonder if we other our evils as we blame a website like FB for ruining relationships, and not ourselves for never having genuinely meant to forge them. I wonder if nonchalance and intolerance towards another on www is a photocopy of our attitudes outside of it. I wonder too if the excuse of ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ through four albums of a friend's holiday pictures online was relevant in days before the internet when people lived not just like next door neighbours but as family too, crossing over rooftops to borrow dry red chillis or cups of sugar. And I wonder if we want to walk an extra mile to keep, to preserve bonds which do for sure get formed, or lose them all to what fashion asks, lobbies demand, or the queen of a club commands!

Gone are the days of gay abandon and fuss-free minds that Orkut stood for, for me. Of interest in interesting people, or boring boredom itself away. Of a virtual avatar whose behavior no one measured in a petri-dish. Of finding strangers who became permanent friends and translating a foe into a husband. Perhaps, once upon a time we bothered to make amends. To make peace. Talk, hammer, order, order, objection sustained or over-ruled, but sorted! Whereas today, we simply press ‘delete’. And right after that, sign a declaration proclaiming the 101 ways in which FB could be your death.

Just wondering. Anyway.

I remember I dilly-dallied with his proposal seven years back, when Orkut was alive and kicking and not waving goodbye. All ifs and buts that could be born were given birth to, and voiced. My greatest fear remained that our relationship would change with time. And instead of saying ‘Oh! It won’t. Please don’t worry!’ he had said ‘I assure you it would. It would change to exactly what we want it to become!’

He was right. 

I will miss Orkut. Perhaps, this wedding anniversary I will get that O-shaped cake to cut which our friends almost got for us then. For now, time to download a truck-load of the best online memories to pickle and preserve, for even they are changing shades as time goes by. 

Imagine what magic the aroma will create when my son opens the lid, someday!