It has been three months since I had last posted a blog, I
could apologize for going AWOL from my blog to my readers, but hey…… “Readers”? Who am I kidding?
It has been a long time since I framed a coherent sentence
in a word processor, it feels like getting back to the gym after a long break.
You don’t hit the treadmill running right away, you just pace yourself slowly.
This post shall be like that too, pacing myself, word by word.
I feel like I am back in the nineties since I had
deactivated my Facebook account.
Yes, you read it right, I deactivated my Facebook account.
“Why?” people asked with concern, like they ask a couple who
just broke up.
“It didn’t work out” I reply with a straight face.
Actually, I was just tired of yearning for people’s opinion
to know that I am funny. I used to check Facebook every fifteen minutes after
posting a photo or status update for “likes”, the absence of which would make me
feel less validated.
I was cut off from the internet junta, and it feels kind of
okay. One has to be shrouded with an element of mystery about themselves, something
that Facebook takes away. You are there for others to see. The food you eat,
the communities you like, the people you hang out with, the places you go to.
It’s your own virtual avatar that leaves nothing to other people’s imagination
about yourself.
You seem to know a fair deal about that guy you see in the
elevator every day just by browsing his Facebook page.
I am writing this post not because I want to, but because I
want to know that I can. There won’t be many people reading it, but I am not
complaining.
People often ask me why I never go out much, hang out with
friends much over the weekends. I have a small television room, comfy, well
equipped with a good sound system, and a TV that reads videos of all formats,
the one that it doesn’t read is read by the media player that is plugged to it.
I have a hard disk filled with television shows and movies. I
get to see lots of stories, absorb lots of content, and get to see various
actors emote as they get into the skin of the character. From serial killers,
to mob bosses, to zombies to cops and robbers–the idiot box opens a whole new
world with diverse characters to me. And
as I sit on the bed watching all that is happening on TV lifeless, I could feel
my whole world shutting down on me.
They ask me “What do you want to do with your life?” it’s a question
that leaves me fumbling for answers. What am I doing with my life, I wonder. I think
of it when I am traveling to work, or watching repeats of old sitcoms, I feel the
laugh track actually suits my current predicament. I have cousins settled abroad, earning lots of
money. I have friends around me in India doing the nine-to-five regular jobs
earning lots of money. Is that what life is reduced to? Earn lots of money,
save for the future, get married, have kids, raise them while worrying for their
future.
Sometimes friends tell me to get a girlfriend, socialize. Maybe
I shouldn’t have scoffed at Chetan Bhagat who had famously said that young
India’s problems are “naukri aur chokri”.
But after looking at the Delhi rape incident, I sometimes
wonder whether we men even deserve a woman. What kind of a monster does that? I
can’t imagine what the girl must have gone through, reading the report leaves
me angry, depressed, helpless, and choked up. Even checking out a girl now
makes me feel that I am violating her someway. Fuck.
We are regressing as a society, and as a nation. What good
could bringing a child to this shitty world do? To make him/her go through an overcrowded,
polluted, materialistic, one dimensional system?
I don’t believe in making New Year resolutions, but the
Delhi incident has only opened my eyes. When next time when a lady friend of
mine is hooted at, or has lewd remarks thrown at her, probably the least I could
do would be to make a scene with the violators. Point a finger at him and bring
it to the crowd’s attention that there is sicko lurking amidst us.
What do I want to do with my life?
Maybe I will start with being a better man.
