Networking... Social networking

There were days when ‘orkut’ was the new buzzword. Suddenly people started asking whether i was in orkut or not. When i said i was not, they would make it a point to convince me that i am missing something important in life. After hearing this time and again i gave in to the temptation of finding out what this word had for me (initially i felt it was taken from mandarin). Although i was bogged down till then by the countless arguments of elders that internet is a haven of ‘dirt’.

When i made my account on orkut, i was under the able guidance of one of my happy go lucky friend, prabuddh , who scared the wits out of me when, in order to screw me, he added one of the girls from my coaching class as ‘friend’ in my account. I was really worried about the prospective consequences of declaring a girl(whom i never talked to) as a friend on web.
Then there was a phase of juvenile enthusiasm, of making a community, meant just for me and my friends. It was the birth of the bad boyz (hail all you Bad Boys!!!!).We, monkeys... running in a rat race... really got overboard with our community... and most of our recess discussions in school were dedicated to this... the teenage blood was at work and the innocence and fun that i derived from such trivial things really makes me miss my teenage.

I remember when one of my ‘interactions’ ( :P) with a junior, i figured out that people can have ‘networking’ as their hobby(initially i was impressed, thinking he was talking about computer networking, to be dawned about my ignorance of the usage of a term). It really amazed me how a thing so unproductive can feature in that list.
I agree that it is really a nice medium of keeping in touch with people and i myself have benefitted a lot by finding long lost friends on net. The thing is, these sites are social networking sites and not keep-in-touch sites. And so these come with value added services which can keep you occupied for hours together, only for you to find yourself growing grey and dumb.

A very significant important social/cultural shift that has happened lately, is that people are given an option of living two lives at the same time. One in which they are what they are and they cant change how people look at them. Then there is this virtual world, where one can manipulate their own image. Where everybody becomes the cool dude they always wanted to become. Those cool funky names that people keep on orkut.... or sudden escalation of interest in photography specially in the art of self portrait... or people using the ‘about me’ column to write in length about how complicated a creature they all are and use that space to display their command over English language . Hypocrisy has mutated from the time of jews to social networking sites.

And well i am no exception to this hypocrisy and myself have gone through all that i have criticised. But at times my conscience does prick me. Living virtual can never bring a real peace. It has now become a necessary evil. But then i guess i have bigger evils to deal with and this doesn’t need my efforts :P.

Bleeding Nephrons

Living in this college and having a decent standard of living created a bubble around me. A bubble of complacency which got a pinch in the winter vacations of December 2007.

                After surviving the gruelling round of my first set of comprees, with the hope of taking a break, i boarded the bus to my home. Little did i know that the pre planned visit to a hospital could shake me up.

                My mom was suffering from a stone in her kidney and a surgery for the removal of the same was scheduled in last week of December. It was to take place in Muljhibhai Patel Urological Hospital in Nadiad,Gujrat(considered one of the good ones for kidneys).

                Since  i am a fraud mallu( if you are encountering this term for the first time, it refers to all those people who have their native place in Kerala but are settled elsewhere) all my relatives are spread across the country and so it was gonna be my dad me and devaraj bhaiya( very good friend of ours) who were gonna take care of my mom( my granny was supposed to join later). It was on the Christmas morning (25^th dec) that we left for Nadiad . I was extremely relieved to find that the hospital was really clean. But that was just a consolation to much more that was to come later.

                The next day i got a feel of the magnitude of thing that we were gonna face as a family and it made me shiver. My mom was gonna be on the surgery table, and then my head flashed all the surgeries that i had seen on television ( by then i hadn’t seen house md). One day before the surgery we were asked to arrange for blood as a ‘precautionary’ measure. I was getting more and more and scared. My mom is O- but gladly we were able to arrange the blood from the red cross blood bank( devaraj bhaiya gave his blood as replacement).

                The surgery took place the next day. By God’s grace it all went well. I was relieved. But then came the challenging part. It was very very sad to see mummy in the post operative ward. She looked so sick and weak. That was really scary. My dad was the only person allowed in. And then i had to replace him there for some time so that he could take a bit of sleep. It was somewhere around 4 in the morning i guess. I sat next to her the rest of the night. Had never experienced anything like this before. Then I went to the railway station to receive my grandma. Finally we( me and dad) felt relieved.

                The day after that, everything was alright. My mom got her consciousness back. The surgery was without any complications and she was recovering properly.

                But the whole ordeal didn’t end here. After my mom was out of any kind of danger, i started observing my surroundings and found that the place was full of sick people.

                I was shocked to see the various kinds of diseases that people suffered with. There were young people with fatal conditions... old people with endless complicacies... it was a mayhem of kidney disorders.

                There was this one person whose one kidney was not working and the other kidney was shrinking. There were rooms full of people getting dialysis(blood clean up in normal language) done and delaying the final verdict of death. Wards full of patients waiting for their names to slide up on the kidney transplant list.  There were many more people i saw. I don’t remember what they were suffering from. But there was one case which i cant forget. It was a lady who was terminally sick. But she didn’t have enough money to continue with the treatment. And the hospital authorities asked her to leave the hospital and enrolled her name for aids given by NGOs.... there were lot of other patients.... and each and every one depicting misery in different forms and shapes.

I was shocked. It was the first time that i had ventured out of my ‘bubble’. Out, to a living nightmare of people. Where hopes were run by strands of irrationalism because rationality was cruel. In the midst of all these bleeding nephrons i suddenly felt small. Suddenly me, my problems, my aspiration and my circumstances looked microscopic when scaled up in front of these traumatised folks.

                Whenever i remember those days, it gives me jitters every single time. I will treasure this experience forever.

19

Although in relative terms, 19 is not a big figure but in absolute sense it is surely a big time. And this is the end of my final teen year. But somewhere i am still that teen. The rebellious in me is still a spark away from explosion. And suddenly this realisation of my expected maturity makes me feel a bit robbed.

                When i sit and write down this, my past flashes back. My home, my school,  my old friends... everything... it just makes me realise that i had no less than an awesome 19 years of my life till now. And the dullness of sorrows and pains are so miniscule on the colourful piece of my history, that i really wanna thank God for this favour.

                Even though my soul cries in rebellion to the reality that it is time for me to “grow up”, i have no option but to grow up. I have realised now that even my smallest action is so consequential in my life and in the life of others unlike how it was when i was younger.

                In the midst of all this economic jeopardy, my future, for the first time, looks like a struggle. But i love uncertainties. Its a nice getaway from boredom. And i think its the remnant teen in me which makes me enjoy my own plight.

                With totally uncertain days ahead, life looks challenging. But i know there is one person up there who would be looking down and smiling at me., like the way i would have smiled at a small kid struggling with his shoe lace and finding it the biggest problem of his life. This one reason forces me not to be worried about anything. And it reminds me of the first Bible verse which i learnt:

Psalm 23:1

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”

Genetically "Informalz "

Genetically "Informalz "

A ray of light, screeched through the pipe

And woke me up to a nightmare nigh

My alarm failed, i woke up late

My job interview 5 minutes ahead

 

Chewed a gum, toothbrush was luxury

Combed my hair in pain and fury

Suit and tie would have taken long

Was comfortable in my tshirt and shorts

 

Rushed and hurried to reach that room

Saw nervous creatures, as if down with flu

The last call for my name screamed out

Expected a storm in this drought

 

The grey heads gaped in shock

‘twas too much for that flock

They stretched out their hand to check their pulse

Coz they found me in INFORMALZ!!!

Who am i part II

This is one question which has grappled scholars, philosophers, vetti (velle) people over the years. This really shows the importance of this question. What is more amazing is to know that we still don’t know definitely about our own self. If the question was biological, i think we have the answer to this question. But call it curiosity or anything else; we still wanna know more about our origin. Obviously scientists have got leads in some directions. But we still don’t wanna get convinced by the answer. Its not the mathematics of big bang which can satisfy the emotional question of who we are (there is a clear mismatch). I don’t know what others think... and am myself not so equipped to answer such questions. But i have my own theory (if u can call it that :P). The things that i see happening around me yells at me to believe that the presence of a supernatural is inevitable. I really love the lyrics of a very cute song :

 

Every tiny star

That twinkles in the night sky

Every drop of morning dew.               

Every spark of fire

Blazing in the furnace

Every captivating view

Every rainbow in the sky,         

Every pretty butter-fly

Tells the fascinating news to

Those who dare to hope   

And the message is

God still loves the world

 

 

Although this song doesn’t have anything in it to prove the existence of God but still, for me, the very simplicity and something else in it makes me feel that this world without God will be dry and hollow and impossible.

In this fight of theism versus atheism, it always so happens that we tend to defend one over the other by using better superlatives and it turns out to be a fight between adjectives, adverbs and illustrations.

There is no answer to this question which might satisfy different kinds of people all alike. There is another thought which comes to my mind often. Why is it necessary that we should be able to understand everything? May be our brains are not capable enough to answer all questions that come to us. You can’t make a monkey understand cosmic science... then why cant this same thing apply to us.

I know this post sounds very confusing. But frankly speaking, i find this question very simple. I guess  because i have stopped at an explanation to this, and i am so much awed by it, that i don’t feel like losing my peace that i have by living in that explanation. Sounds irrational, but i prefer peace.  

Who am i part I

Even after the superiority of the human race over all other living beings, it is still perplexed by one question time and again. “who am i"?
There are some reasons why you might troubled by such questions:

1. short term amnesia: ya ya this idea is a bit filmy but it explains the given condition especially in case of people like deva :P. the condition is very easy  to understand. In this the victim suddenly forgets everything and then ends up asking this question to himself- " mai kaun hu ?" :P. for people having this trouble, the best treatment is that they should carry their ID card or drivers license with them, and as soon as they get troubled by this question, they should take a big paper and their ID card and should start writing their own name as an imposition, till the body starts cursing the brain for popping up this question. And of course i ruled out tattooing as an option already.

2. Nothing else to ask oneself: For some reasons we often pop up questions which hav inconclusive answers for the sake of it coz, well, they can keep u engaged for a longer time and their answers actually don’t affect ur life at all. Hey such people actually don’t need an answer. Having an answer will only spoil a medium to run out of boredom.


3. People who found an answer: these are the people who found the answer some way or the other but are uncomfortable with too much of knowledge and so they keep popping these questions.

4. People who really need to know who they are: I really sympathise with u people :P. My next post... just for u.