The No Head or Tail Post

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.

NO MATTER FROM WHICHEVER ANGLE YOU TAKE, YOUR FACE WILL REMAIN THE SAME ONLY

“The way to a man’s heart may be through his stomach, but the way to a woman’s heart is through a DSLR”

-          Oscar Wilde

Studies have shown that there has been a rise in the sale of cameras since the advent of Facebook (A fact I’ve made up to add more weight to this post). A camera, that gadget which takes a picture of you while you are living the moment. It could be you sharing a laugh with your loved ones, delivering an acceptance speech, playing tonsil tennis with your girlfriend while assuring her that you are not videotaping it, or declaring war on Iraq if you were the American President. What makes some pictures more memorable is that it’s been clicked when you were not posing for it, you were IN the moment, you were in control of your emotions and of your facial muscles. NOT THE CAMERA. Over the years, I have had the ignominy of taking snaps for my friends who love posing for the camera. My pleas that them being no photogenic materials always fell on deaf ears. They just loved to pose a lot. They posed for a few photos, and they posed for some more, and then they posed for a lot more. 

And guess what….

THEY POSED THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

See how irritated you got when I repeated the same sentence? Now you know how irritated the camera becomes when you make it point and shoot at the same rehearsed scenarios.

Yes, cheeks together flashing their smile. The same clothes, the same background, with the same people. And while they are at it, they would give away instructions like they were posing for the front page of Elle.

“Hey, please take it from this angle no? Make sure my tummy is not visible.” – a line which probably every chap clicking a photo would have heard.

The wise reply would be to say “Why don’t you say that to your gym trainer? But wait, you are too busy hogging that it would be a monumental achievement for you to walk up to 
the gym let alone on the treadmill.” But you just give a wide grin and take the snap anyway.

“I think I should be facing left, and just zoom in a little to make sure my dimples are visible, but make sure that the pimples are not seen.”

I have always felt that the greatest cosmetic product that man has ever invented has to be Photoshop. Looking at the effective way with which it removes your pimples and makes you look fair, one can only ask those Ayurvedic products to go screw themselves. 

And to hell with all those Clean and Clear / Fair and Lovely tubes. Do yourself a favor, download a pirated version of Photoshop from the internet if you want to look beautiful.

“This pose is nice no? I and Meryl are gazing at each other, lost in each other’s eyes. Like a couple in love.”

One pose like that is believable that the two lovebirds are drunk on each other’s love and due credit to the photographer for spotting them in the moment. But a whole album of just the two of them looking at each other? Not one picture, not two… it’s a whole ALBUM.

Each of the above mentioned postures would have been clicked close to fifty times each, and ironically they would be posted in an album titled:

RANDOMZZZZ

Notice how RANDOM is spelt as RANDOMZZZ , did you notice the extra zzz’s they added just to let you know that it’s cool to spell it that way.

Facebook should make sure that with every account opened, one also gets a default photo album titled “Randomzzz”.

Or maybe, next time when somebody creates an album titled “RANDOMZ” a fist should burst through the monitor and knock them on their head with a dictionary and say “First learn what the word “Random” means, and then LEARN HOW TO SPELL IT!”

Picture this: There is an endless sea right in front of you, there is sand, the sun is fading away and you are surrounded by the people you love. It’s a picture perfect view seen on the back of postcards, you could chill by stretching your legs, with your toes under the sand as you watch the sun set­-that magnificent beast which looks cool even when it is dying. You are laughing to your heart’s content, playing pranks on your friends, stealing gazes from the one you secretly harbor a crush for, whispering sweet nothings in the ear of your paramour. Maybe in a perfect world that’s how people live the moment, but in this world people are busy capturing the moment. So busy we are in showing off the pictures to friends and people on Facebook whom we might never meet, that we forget to enjoy the company of our friends.

The camera might capture the people, the occasion, the expressions on your face, but the moment would just be reduced to another label to recognize the picture as, a marker to remember where and when it was taken. When was the last time you had ever flipped through old photographs, and were overwhelmed by all the nostalgia so much that it made you misty-eyed?

Do you even have the time to go through your photo albums?

So the next time if somebody asks you if they could take a snap of you and your friends, just take a couple of clicks and go back to living the moment rather than trying capture it.

Now if you would excuse me, I have to log onto Facebook and “like” a few pics I have been asked to.

The Art of Sending Friend Requests

Timing plays an essential part in our lives, be it the timing to punch the ball through the covers, or the comic timing to crack a joke to diffuse a situation, or the timing to pop up that question to the woman we love– “Will you please return the money you borrowed from me?” Timing is also a very crucial factor in sending friend requests to pretty women online­, something which I had learnt the hard way over the years. One has to build a proper rapport with a woman before clicking that “Add as friend” tab on Facebook. And by “proper rapport” I mean one has to make themselves aware of their existence to the woman they plan to add as a friend. There are the subtle ways of making your presence felt, it ranges from clearing your throat to cracking bad jokes, to cussing and swearing out loud, to burping out loud while you eat. The traditional way to get a woman’s attention would be to speak sense, but since we live in an age where movies on vampires and werewolves make women weak in the knees, I am throwing “Speaking sense” out of the window.

I had gotten into an awkward situation while I was on one of my routines of browsing through profiles of random women online (which apparently is termed as online stalking) while speaking over the phone. As I was surfing I came across the profile of a girl who shared a few mutual friends with me at work. I was in one of those zoned out states where neither was I aware of the prolonged conversation going on the other end, nor of the buttons I had been clicking on the website while browsing. Straying between the virtual and the present, I clicked the “Add as friend” tab absent mindedly.

There were no confirmation messages like ”Would you really like to add this person as a friend?” 

Or “Are you really really sure that you want to add her as your friend?”

Or “She is way too hot for you, think again, she might not accept it!”

There were no messages or warnings that would have broken me from my stupor. The next few minutes were spent contemplating whether the request should be revoked or not.

It’s just a friend request, why think too much over it? Getting my request rejected is not the end of the world ….

amiright?

 

AmIRight? 

AM I RIGHT?

AM I RIGHT!?!? 

WRONG!

Have you ever sent a friend request to a person you thought you knew, only to realize that they had rejected it because they do not consider catching you ogling at them as “Knowing”? Getting your Friend Request turned down is the virtual equivalent of a slap on the face, and the worst part is that you cannot slap them back. They finally have the last laugh by turning you down, and you go to bed wondering why they did it.

“The server must have been down when she clicked accept, and it must have gotten so slow that "accept" would have changed to "reject""

“She must have clicked ‘reject’ by mistake”

“May be it was her father browsing her account and he found me to be a threat since I am such a potential boyfriend material for her daughter because of my handsome looks.”

Your pride is wounded and you wouldn’t even know why. If you were a man with some self respect, you  wouldn’t go to them and say with a sheepish grin “Hey, I sent you a friend request which I think you rejected by mistake. I will send you one later, just accept it ok?”

After pondering over the scenario for a good fifteen minutes, whilst responding to the conversation happening on the phone with “Hmmm… uh huh.. ok… wow”  (in no particular order) I had decided to withdraw the friend request, thus nipping in the bud any potential chance for any of those awkward moments that may occur when I bump into her in the office. But later it dawned on me that what if she could have accepted it? 

What if she is not fussy like the other women there who accept you as their friend only after they are fully sure that you speak to them without looking at their chest?

What if she was like that punch line which every girl tells her boyfriend when he tries to make a move on her? 

“I am not like other girls.”

What if she was not like other girls?

Or what if she was online and had been wondering whether to add me?

What if the Universe had given me a sign and I had just shown it a middlefinger ?

Had I acted in haste by taking back the friend request?

Should I send the request back again?

Does this post make any more sense?

Do you even care anymore?

Are you still reading this post?

Maybe I should stop.

No Space in Heaven

It was a clear blue sky when the first one hit the ground with a thud, and then there was another.

Thud!

As the seconds passed the tick of the clock was punctuated with many more thuds, which were getting heavier by the minute. 

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

The bright skies were engulfed with dark raging clouds that were spitting thunder and spewing lightning, signaling that the deluge had begun.

Soon the streets were filled with what was falling from the sky, they were falling on the roof, on vehicles, it even fell on people walking down the street. It was not a heavy torrential rain, nor was it a hailstorm, it was not Mother Nature wreaking havoc, it was a more powerful force that was unleashing the terror. When it fell in front of Shankar, the local security guard of Jubilee Atrium who was ducking for cover, hardly could he believe his eyes. There lay in front of him the heavyset frame of Murthy, the recently deceased local MLA–a brute of a man who was notorious for conducting shady businesses that ranged from abduction to prostitution to smuggling, a man who ruled the town by instilling fear amongst its denizens through his henchmen.

Shankar looked around to see bodies falling from the sky, “Had a plane crashed in midair?” he wondered. It was like a hundred thousand people had decided to jump to their death at the same time from the stratosphere. A synchronized mass suicide. Shankar and the others were initially struck with curiosity as the cataclysm unfolded, and now as minutes passed they looked with their mouths agape and eyes wide open with fear at the horror that was playing in front of their eyes. Mothers covered the eyes of their young ones shielding them from the ghastly sight.

The thuds slowly stopped,  Shankar looked up to the sky to see the downpour had ceased, the Sun had emerged from the clouds burning bright at its full glory. He looked around to see the streets that wore the look of the aftermath of a genocide. Bodies were lying all around him, corpses that had plummeted from the sky lay motionless in open gutter, cramming the sidewalks like garbage.

“That was the last of them, Sire” said the Gatekeeper dusting his hands off the vermin he had disposed.

“Good” said the Man in White stroking his beard. “Now it feels like Heaven doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does my Lord.” the Gatekeeper replied.

“I wonder what these people down there think? That they could kill, rape, and loot from their people and get away with it at the end of the day by saying a prayer to me? That they could convert, exploit, and pillage places in the name of religion after which I will reward them with a place in heaven? That they could lie, cheat and steal the whole year to get what they want, after which they could fast for one month and visit my shrine, and that would absolve them of their sins?” the Man in White thundered.

“Humans they call themselves, my Lord” the Gatekeeper said in mock irony.

“I sometimes wonder if they are my creation, or I theirs?” the Man in White said whimsically. “Close the gates, we allow no more souls in here!”

The Gatekeeper obeyed his Master’s orders as he locked the gates, walked back to his post with a tune on his lips and slipped into his reverie.