Social Net'weakening?

It was a few days before that google announced it s database of most searched celebs, phrases etc.., and i was watching a news item on how Katrina Kaif was the most searched celeb. Well, you many think, "what a useless stuff to do?" Everything we do in life need not have a meaning, rite? I was indulging myself in one of those futile act's, whiling away my time, when i happened to hear a sociologist talk about how orkut and facebook have penetrated in to the life of the youth.

A pang of conscience struck me and I started thinking about what has become a part of today's youth's daily vocabulary, social networking. I sometimes feel amazed at the amount of time people (me included) give to their social networking site's . It has become so much of a routine that you feel uncomfortable if you havent checked your orkut profile for 2 days. It would not be acceptable to me to restrict this piece of prose to social networking web site's. All the modern day gadgets, 3G mobile's, even TV's which people have accepted to be part of their life's should also be within the purview of this discussion. I better make it clear that we are not into a 'technology is good or bad' discussion.

The question which made me ponder was whether we were getting more and more into the virtual world of internet that the real world relation's aren't accorded with the time they ought to get.

I am one of those lucky few, staying with relatives in workplace as a bachelor and therefore, enjoying home food. But, I ve visited a few bachelor den's. And the most common scene would be something like what i shall describe below:

A house shared by 4 close friends, one guy sitting in a corner browsing orkut/facebook, another guy probably sleeping or lying under the blanket sms'ing someone, 3 rd guy watching a movie with headphones on and the last one, in another far corner preparing for an impending competitive exam, checking out university info on the net. Where is the interaction here? There is interaction in all the places, but, with people who are everywhere but right near them.

These days, everyone seems to prefer blogging their thoughts into the net to sharing it with the person sitting right next to him/her. I have been a victim of this myself at college, where SMS'ing was a rage. It was a time when people wouldn't get sleep if they dint complete the 100 sms quota of that day :) A person not roaming around sms'ing was considered an outlaw :) When walking with 2 of your friends, you walk sms'ing a 3rd friend and when he also joins you in person, talk to the three of them while sms'ing a 4th person. :) Thank god, i realised what i was doing and now i have a plan in which sms costs 1 re while call costs 50p :)

Even in home's most of the interaction is about the TV serial episode that one of them missed due to some other activity or a fight for viewing their favorite program. Hasn't our sub conscious mind adopted it as being natural? I wasn't a big fan of cutting 'cable TV' (atleast that's what they call it in my small town) when it was a fashion for parent's to do that when their child got nearer to board exams. I also couldn't help but be a vitim of that phenomenon when i was near class 10 board exams, for around 2 months. It was the time when tehelka.com sting operation was making big news. Sure, i missed all that excitement. But, i must admit, it was indeed good. We got a lot of time for each other in the family and after some time, it wasn't actually difficult.

My college life was beautiful mainly due to the hostel life and I would attribute the success of our hostel life, partly, to the lack of TV and Internet in the hostel. Had those been there, the amount of time we took to develop our bond's would have been surely eaten away by Jodi No1, crorepati, orkut and other website's I dare mention in my personal blog :)

Coming back to the scene of thought, the sociologist attributed the increased access of virtual internet world to the lack of bonding in the real world. I am not here to attest her claim, I am merely trying to correlate her views with my observations. It s good to share our thoughts on the web and reaching out to the world, but, we must also take care to see that we don't neglect our real world relations. If we realize this and take time to switch off our laptop's, TV's, Mobiles every now and then and sit and talk with those, whom we live with, don't u think the world would be a much more beautiful place?

The english word 'politics'

Lately, I have been listening to a lot of political interviews and debates and that is probably why i had to think about this word. I got so bemused at the usage of this word in the recent past that i went up to the dictionary to look at what this meant and it read thus:




Looking at this defenition, it din't appear to me, for even a sec, that it has such a negative connotation to it. After the mumbai attacks, almost all of the politician's interviewed faced a question like "Don't you think politics should be kept out of an attack like this and treat this as a national crisis?" and what appalled me was the fact that most of them responded in affirmative stating clearly, "We should not be doing politics in this hour of crisis".

Wait a minute. The word politics is not such a derogatory one after all. The interviewer tells him that this is a national crisis and aren't politician's supposed to act in such a situation? If politics is to be kept out of a national crisis situation then when is the time for politics to function?

In India, we have become so used to seeing a lot of politician's being under a cloud that an earnest politician is looked upon as a 8th wonder, all right. So, I dint mind when they say "Arasiyal pannadha.." in Tamil. But, English, In spite of being such a widely spoken language and in spite of being the language of developed countries like the UK and the US, has attributed such a negative connotation to that word.

So, does that imply politicians all over the world have become so defiled that all the languages have adapted themselves?

Is it the same case with other languages such as german, french etc.., too? If that is the case, how is it that the people who govern us, proudly call themselves politicians? Shouldn't they be trying to change the negative connotation that the word has gained? Or, if it is too difficult to change, look at coining a new term for themselves, like say, 'regulatitian', 'governatitian' etc.., If you feel my choices are bad, feel free to coin your own terms :)

On a more serious note, where are we heading? If all of us have accepted and have resigned to the fact that politics is such a derogatory term that we alter the language to reflect the situation, there is indeed a serious problem ahead. After all, democracy is the only sensible choice we have!!

Just a thought to ponder upon :)

Follow your heart

Hello folks. Here I come to join the bandwagon. Blogging has become a rage and I realize I am one of the very late entrants. Well, enough of boring clichéd introductory statements :)

Now, what do I write? I should do justice to the title ‘vox populi’ I have chosen, rite? The past few months have been dramatic, or should I say traumatic? There is a depression looming large, terrorist threat larger and our politicians’ ineptness largest. Sure as hell, I d like to write about all of these, but, I thought why I can’t start with something more pleasant in this hour of global crisis.

I chose “follow your heart”. Now I hear some voices of dissent :) No, I am not
going to preach what many more prominent and illustrious people have already told over and over again. I am now entering into another type of cliché. What do most first time bloggers write? Yes, there you go, you got it right? How they decided to join the bandwagon?

Before deciding to start off with a blog, I had an animated conversation between my mind and my heart as to why I should do this. I distance myself from my own mind and heart and here’s the outcome:

Heart:
Hey dude, I think it s long overdue I also started a blog, what say?

Mind:
You too Brutus!! Now, tell me why do you want to do that? Just because everyone else seems to be blogging?

Heart:
Hey, come on. Don’t you know me? I love to write..

Mind:
So, how does that matter? Don’t you know there are more people writing blogs than reading?

Heart:
Yup!! :) As a matter of fact, I do. Still, I want to write. You see, I can do all the stuff most people do, put a link it in status message, add to orkut profile and in worst case forward mails to friends asking them to read :)

Mind:
You shameless!! Ok, what are you gonna write about? Do you know at least that?

Heart:
No :)

Mind:
Again, you shameless!!

Heart:
Well, I am heart. I am always honest :) I don’t have the luxury of lying!!

Mind:
Oh my god, you don’t know what all to write, yet you wanna blog?

Heart:
Yes dude. I can write things as and when they pop up, can't i?

Mind:
I strongly advise you against doing this. Someone is going to kick you someday or the other for writing something controversial :)

Heart:
Well, that s a possibility!! But, see I no longer have the patience to hold my views :) I keep writing pages on orkut threads, as opposed to blogs!!

Mind:
Whatever, if we can’t reach a conclusion, why wont we let Srikkant watching this decide?

Heart:
Sure, Why not?

And thus the conversation ended. Wow!! That was a good exercise. All these years, I have wondered why they had a section called “dialogue writing” in English papers’:) Now, it s use has come to the fore!!

Time for the final verdict to be given, and guess what, I followed my heart :)Here I am writing my blog and reaching out to millions across the planet!! Not quite the ‘follow your heart’ blog u thought it would be?

Lots of people have asked us to follow our hearts and I still see many people failing to realize it s significance. There is no way one can be happy, doing things one does not like, day in and day out, no matter how much he/she earns. That s probably why I opted out of the idea of doing MS. Oh, At last I realize that I have gotten serious. See ya guys soon with my next post :)