A Desperate Letter......

Not-so-dear social networking sites,

I am not in the brightest of my mood...or anywhere close either.

Let me start by saying that there have been times when I have loved someone. Sometimes, I have a reason to fall in love, sometimes I don’t. For you, I feel otherwise. And I have tons of reasons for my feelings. Could you wait for a minute while I arrange the reasons as per its priority? No? A minute is enough for a system overload and for your system to crash and not function? Oh ok, I will try to get it done in less than a minute.

But don’t count on me. I am not a computer. I am a human.

First off, there are just too many of you. Bigadda, Flickr, Hi5, MouthShut, MySpace, Twitter and WAYN – what are you all upto? When are you going to realise that you have hardly a thing or two different from the other? And that humans are not foolish enough to register on all the sites just because you are marketing the one unique factor that you have? Orkut, you were one of the first babies, but clearly, you are becoming old and outdated with your siblings running past you. You need to step out of the race. Facebook and Twitter are the undisputed rulers right now. We, being humans, understood that. How come, you didn’t?

Wait a minute. Humans ARE registering on all of the sites. Silly me. My apologies.

Twitter. Awesome concept of 160 characters short messages online. Whoever thought of this must be a real bored fellow. No offense, but I really do mean it. All great ideas are results of boredom. Thanks to you twitter, I now know when my ‘follower’ in Russia broke up with her boyfriend. I also know why Abhishek Bachchan had a bad day at his shoot. My neighbour just updated me that she had her bath. Oh, and now I know that my blood brother (who lives in the same house as me) had an awesome time in Goa.

One of my classmates said, on the phone, that she hadn’t started her project. 15 minutes later, when I log in to my Twitter, she announced she was half way through. Twitter, thanks for helping me catch my two-faced friends.

Facebook. What a wonder you are. I will probably not be astonished when I see a yellow crow. But you...you amaze me every single time. No, I am not kidding. I am totally hooked on to you. And I am just one among the zillion others who love you, adore you, worship you.

My mornings start with you. My nights end with you. Whenever I click photographs, I keep you in mind. After all, they need to be good enough to be uploaded on you. I sometimes even fall asleep on the keyboard. Whatever happened to boyfriend’s shoulders or mother’s lap! Well, they are passé.

I have even learnt to use my left hand for different purposes. Before you imagine, let me specify – I can write, eat, sms and flip the channels on TV with the remote control. Because my right hand is moving the mouse and typing on the keyboard na.

All ambidextrous and multi-tasking folks, let's have a round of applause to Facebook and the gang.

I have a good 500 to 800 friends on my friends list. I am this super-intelligent personality who loves reading only the top novels in the world. Also, I have great political views. I hate hypocrisy and liars. I watch the best of shows on television most of which are English (some of which I copied from my friends’ profiles). You have given me a new personality, Facebook. Thanks. For with the personality that I really have, nobody would have given me a second look.

You are also kind enough to tell the world when I am single and ready to mingle. Thanks for making me a hot number on the dating scene.

But yes, you are responsible for a few fights too.

One of my friends in the real world hasn’t added me as his friend in the virtual world. He is afraid I will see his pictures and his chats with his other friends. Another shouted at me the other day because I hadn’t commented on her status update. Mind you, we were on the phone that time. I had called her to say that I missed her as it was a week that we last spoke. Before you were born, she appreciated my calls. Now....alas : (

Another friend - he said that he was very busy with his work. When I was harmlessly surfing my account, I checked out his profile and there were pictures of him....in a disc...partying! Yet another, someone who has a soft corner for me, blasted on me because apparently I have more guy friends on my list than girl friends (dude, aren’t you happy, I am straight?!) and then there is this one, whom I have a soft corner for, chats day in and day out with all his virtual friends but doesn’t have the time to call me for a minute in the day. He says he is busy. Well, yeah! Certainly, he is!

You also bring out this weird behaviour in people. Friends, who generally never hug me or kiss me in public when we meet, send me hugs and kisses online! It is flattering, ya, but what am I supposed to do now?

I know you want to make life easy. I know your intentions are good. But for me, it’s turning complex.

I want to 'talk' to my loved ones. I want to guess whether they have a cold or no by hearing their voices. I want them to 'sing' a song for me before going to sleep when I need pampering. I want them to come to my house and give me an invitation card. I want to be a part of their lives. I want to cuddle up with a ‘real’ puppy.

I don’t want to know when they are going to pee. I don’t want them to dedicate songs to me on the World Wide Web. I don’t want them to be so busy building up a network of strangers and in the process forget friends. I don’t want to feed my virtual cow.

I am grateful to you, because now people do not drop in to my house at any random hour. They would rather say a ‘hi’ on any of your sites.

I am not technologically challenged. Nor do I have anything against you personally.

However, I want a simple, primitive life where people used to be in contact either on telephone or in person.

Help us. Don’t rule us.

Solve our problems. Don’t create new ones.

Yours,
Starved for human contact

The Story of a Poem

The first few lines came out easily on paper
"The teardrop on my lashes still remains
As memories invade my mind again
I remember the lonely night of July when the rains blessed the city
When you and I came close under the blue umbrella
When you put your hand on my left shoulder
I fell warm and shivered in wonder; you thought I was catching a fever
I was for sure! The fever of love"

What would follow next, thought Anuradha. As she thought, she could hear her two mini tarzans rumbling down the stairs. Yes, it was time for school. She slid the paper behind the cooker and packed their tiffin boxes, stuffed them into their school bags, kissed them on the cheeks and waved them goodbye. She had to do a million other chores still. She had to put the clothes for washing, the new maid would be coming, she had to play host to her new neighbours who had moved in last week and put the messy house back into order. And she had to do all of it by the time her husband and children would be back.

The poem could wait.
~~~
Samarth waited at the bus stand as he wiped the sweat off his forehead. Global warming was indeed a reality; he shook his head in disappointment. He didn’t want to wait, firstly because he wasn’t used to travelling in public transportation and secondly because he had no idea of the frequency of the bus. Usually, he would have taken the kids to school on his bike but that morning, the bike refused to budge. He dropped the kids in an auto-rickshaw and here he was, waiting at the bus stand.

Two women, on the uglier side of beauty, were busy in their conversation. Samarth had no job in the world as he waited for the bus, so he didn’t mind letting their talks fall on his ears.
Woman 1: What’s that book you are reading? Oh, its The Burning Desire?! That author is so very repetitive.
Woman 2: I couldn’t agree more. But I know for a fact that what people go through in their lives reflects in their writing. This author is definitely very unhappy with her own husband and hence, is involved in an extra-marital affair.
Woman 1: (giggling) Bang on Suman! You just robbed my thoughts! The other day, I told my husband the same. Poor woman, don’t know whether to sympa...

As they continued analysing the story behind the text, Samarth smiled to himself feeling relieved that his wife was not a writer. Or else, the readers’ curiosity would have chased them into the bedroom as well. Amidst the smile, what was also visible was pride. He was proud of himself for having opted for an unambitious, simple, fairly educated, obedient and unemployed girl for marriage. He loved his better-half. She was all that he had ever asked for in a wife.
He thanked the stars for saving him from being the husband of a writer.

The bus finally arrived. It was time to do some work now.
~~~
Anuradha settled down in her favourite chair. The chair had some magic, it helped her clear her mind and think better. Now that she was done with her work, she thought hard for the rest of her poem. I am suffering from the writer’s block, she chuckled. She liked referring to herself as a writer.

She reached for the telephone and with trembling hands, dialled a familiar number. The phone rang on the other end. Suddenly, it stopped ringing. A male’s voice distinctly resounded, “Hello?” Anuradha’s face shrank as if her heart was just about to break. The voice sounded irritated, “Who is this? Why do you call up so often and not speak? How will I know who you are unless you spe..”, Anuradha sat trembling in her chair. Before he could complete the sentence, she had replaced the receiver.

Her pulse rates settled down after a while, her face regained its normal colour, she picked up the paper again, held her pen and added a few more lines to her incomplete thoughts.
"The rains still bring back those times spent with you
The blue umbrella is not to be seen but the blues still remain
Though I am no longer a part of your landscape
You still are a teardrop in my lashes"
~~~
The auto-rickshaw halted with a screeching noise. Samarth and the children had arrived. Anuradha jumped from her chair, folded the paper and neatly put it along with her other written pieces under the yellow dupatta in her drawer. On locking the drawer and hooking the keys in the folds of her sari, she rushed to open the door before the doorbell rang. After all, she was the ideal wife and mother...
~~~

Heaven on Earth

Who said love happens once in a lifetime? Love happens almost everyday with almost every other person. What I feel for my mother is love. What I feel for my closest friend is love. What one feels for her puppy is love.

When you don’t feel that you are compromising for the other person, it is love. When the other person is irritating yet it doesn’t bother you, it is love. When you don’t think it is a big deal to go out of the way to help the other one out of difficulty, it is love. When the other person wakes you up at 4 in the night to vent out her frustration and you do not have the heart to shout at her, it is love. When you come back home after a long and tiring day and want to see that one single person at the door, it is love.

It is not difficult to recognise love amidst the numerous emotions that attack us through the day. No winds will blow, no flowers will spring, no colourful bubbles will float around you (if they do, you are sitting in a theatre). None of these things will happen. You just need to make a good connection with your heart. That little thing beating within you will tell you whether or not it is love. It says nothing but the truth.

Love will overpower all other emotions. All other moods.

Don’t speak of love or yearn for it if you aren’t willing to give your all for it. True love is the highest blessing any person can have from the heavens. It is all you need to make your time here on earth, heaven.

True love is one of those rare phenomena. As rare as a blue sun or maybe winter in Mumbai. When you have that someone who loves you beyond life itself, you can go through all that life has lined up for you. And life usually has a lot lined up!

In a world where people snatch, steal, sleep with other people’s love; in the corporate world where anything goes and everybody has a go at it; where sex has ravaged love; in this sticky and dirty and awful set-up, true love is something to honour and cherish.

If one is looking for true love, one first has to get the mediocre loves out of his system.

Don’t put a question mark where life has put a full stop.