Facebook and I

I have time and again contemplated deleting my Facebook account. There are some very compelling reasons for me to do so. In these times, when time has become a precious commodity, what with 10-12 hour workdays, managing the house, working on the weekends (sometimes) and making enough time to remain connected to the few people that I am fond of. I have started questioning the value that I get for the time that I spend checking out my social media accounts. Sure, I get to know stuff like -

Category A (25% of updates)

a.    Friend A got married

b.    Friend B had a baby

c.    Friend C is moving to another country

     Category B (65% of updates)

a.    Friend D did dandiya with the women in her building

b.    Friend E ate spaghetti for dinner

c.    Friend F vacationed in Switzerland (funnily I saw less of Switzerland and more of his face in the pictures)

d.    Friend G attended a wedding

e.    Friend H’s one year old finally said ‘da da’ and so on…

     Category C (5% of the updates)

a.    Videos on innovative uses of coca cola (cleaning taps)

b.    Funny dog/ panda/ cat videos

c.    How to make candles out of candles and so on…

     Category D (5% of updates)

a.    Quizzes that will tell me which FRIEND’s character I am most like

b.    Suggested friends

c.    Some ridiculous memes/ posters which tell me things like ‘happiness is eating cookies’ ( I don’t even like cookies) and so on…

Of these, if I get to know of the category A events through Facebook, then, obviously the said friends are not very close ones. As for the events in the remaining categories, I don’t see much use in getting to know about them (unless, perhaps, I can see some more of the picturesque mountains in the Swiss pictures. And coca cola is useless in cleaning taps!).

Security of personal data is, of course, another major motivation to delete my Facebook account. Then there is this tendency of ‘dumb’ AI and ML systems to keep pushing content similar to any one link you may have clicked on once, thus making you a leaning-towards-a-side parallelogram rather than a well-rounded, balanced circle. The nasty, hate-mongering and the spreading of fake news that even a lot of my ‘educated’ friends engage in doesn’t help the cause of social media either.

But, yet I hesitate and keep delaying pushing the button. It’s just that I have accumulated a few hundred ‘friends’ over so many years that the thought of finding another way to connect with these friends or keeping updated with their lives seems daunting. Even though, I have probably just spoken to once or have been on a head nodding relationship with a majority of these ‘friend’. Perhaps I, too, need a ‘social media strategy’.

“How will I ever get connected to these guys, if I need to in the future?” I think. After all, we are in an age where networking is the key to many doors, and opening doors, it seems, is the destiny of the human race.

So, as a compromise, I have started whittling down my friend list based on the answers to questions such as: Have I ever spoken to this person? Have I spoken to this person in the last one year? Do I clearly remember if this person was in my grad class or post graduation? And who the hell is this guy? This seems to me an uneasy equilibrium that is working for me for now.

I am aware that there are some people who were great friends at one time, but we have lost touch over the years. There is a very good friend with whom I had lost touch after I moved back to India for higher studies and with whom I reconnected after many years through Facebook. So, though I am not in touch with her on a daily basis like before, I do know that she has two lovely children and is a pro at baking. And there are friends who were nowhere in the scene two years back, but now I hang out at least once a month with them. My didi once mentioned, that as ones priorities change, circumstances and geographies change and new life events happen, so will the set of people one is in touch with at the moment change. But that does not mean that we value those people any less. I will probably come around to connecting with them again once I am done with whatever takes up most of my day these days. And, it is then that social media will help me probably.

So perhaps, I will keep my account after all. Meanwhile, if you suddenly find out that I am not on your friend list one day, know that you have become a causality of the spring-cleaning exercise that I have embarked upon. Don’t worry, I am sure that I was as irrelevant to you as you were to me, it’s just that I decided to pull the plug!

And do tell me if you find a better way of finding a balanced social media strategy!

If only you walk long enough.....

The auto I tried hailing this morning, unsuccessfully of course, was going to Andheri. The neighbours are going to Thailand this summer. The guy in the cubicle next to me is going to get a promotion next year. And I am definitely going to the end of the world in 2015. Maybe you will too one day. In a nutshell, all of us are going somewhere or the other-in space or in time.
Why? Why do we bother to move at all?
As a friend of mine put it, what is the purpose of it all?
Not wanting to appear blank I quickly replied, ‘Because of the need to see tomorrow.’
Not letting it go, my friend persevered, ‘Where is the need?’
The need arises from the knowledge or the hope that there will be a tomorrow. If I knew I had one month to live, I’ll call in dead (my office), sign up for the space program going to Mars, get Robert Downey Jr. to take me out (or at least try to) and of course take out a large loan and buy an island. But because I know that I am going to see tomorrow I refrain from all this and instead I prepare. I prepare because I want to have some control over my future. I want to know where I will be tomorrow, next month, next year. I forget that control is what I don’t have and never had.
We, the world, the whole universe are like that ball in the bowling alley that someone has set in motion and is now rolling towards the pins. Only I don’t know what those pins are that we are hurtling towards. Maybe death is not the end. Maybe it is true that the soul lives on even when the body dies and continues on its journey in through different bodies towards that grand finale. People get tired and want out so they strive for ‘moksh’ or ‘nirvana’.
Why they want ‘out’ I am not sure. Maybe I’ll muse on that next time!
As Lewis Carroll put it
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”

Close your eyes for a moment..

She had come to see the flamingos. A cap protecting her eyes from the sun, a back pack slung across her shoulders –just like any other teenager who has just finished school. Only she had a Rs 25K camera in her hands and she was not accompanied by friends as is usual for girls of her age.
We got talking. I asked her what she wants to do now that her school was finished. “I want to be a photographer”, she replied,” but my parents are not happy with that, so I will do a course in computer hardware and keep photography as my side hobby. Everybody advises that.”
The innocence and naiveté in her reply has struck a chord with me. I haven’t stopped thinking about the power of dreams; especially dreams of a mind that is not yet shackled by the chains of practicality. A mind of that can dream doesn’t think of a degree in engineering-slash-medicine-management as the only gateway to a successful career (if at all it considers a career necessary). It doesn’t necessarily think of a fair-beautiful- educated- yet homely doll or a highly well qualified -working in an MNC with a fat salary package-pompous ass as a successful match (read catch). Come to it, it does not think that success is defined by being able to boast of how important you are to the organization; how much your work is appreciated; how successful and handsome/beautiful your spouse is or how your kids top in their classes. It doesn’t even think that success is important at all!!
A mind that can dream dreams of finding happiness instead of success; and of fulfilment instead of status. All of us have dreamt at some point in our lives. Yet, somewhere we lose our capacities to dream like a child who has no expectations to live up to.
It’s a part of growing up, I suppose. :-)

If art was in the cracks of a wall..

I am art.
I am a living being, I breathe, I smile, I strive, I tire and yet I hope. I am the ultimate creation because I am alive and I can feel it.
The swirls and loops in a piece of polished wood is art, the way light gets refracted by a diamond is art, the leaves on the tree outside my window are pieces of art, waves crashing on the golden sands are instances of art. Art is everywhere around me.

Art cannot be confined within a wooden frame and painted on a piece of paper with a few colours. Art cannot be bound in a volume printed as a string of words in black ink. Art cannot be imprisoned in a plaster of paris creation.
It is up to me what I choose to see as art. And I refuse to let art be confined, be a prisoner of ‘definitions’. Art is the abstract, the unfathomable, the familiar unknown something that everyone knows and understands in some form even though he doesn't realise it. Open your eyes to the world, to art!