Of Beef Curry and Hot Dosas

It's just been a few years since I passed out from school. Most of my classmates are spread around the country, some even abroad. In the age of Facebook, Whatsapp and decent ISD call rates, it's not that hard to keep in touch with those who you care about. We have a group on Facebook which died out in a few months, a group on Whatsapp which is active only in random spurts and the moments that we usually share are during someone's birthday. The only reassurance is that this is probably your story too. The story of every other batch of teenagers passing out from school expecting an American Pie like life in college (Isn't it obvious that we don't 'do' pies in India. Pun intended).

College broadens what you can do with your life, presents you with endless possibilities. And this is different for different people. Robert Frost wrote about a fork in the road; in this case imagine a junction of half a dozen roads leading in different directions. In such a journey, most of us rarely find time to look back at the people we have left behind or those who chose a different path. Friendships are forgotten, memories fade away and relations become stretched. Its natural; a modern way of life.

Whenever I am in town, I do my best to get in touch with my old school friends. We meet up somewhere in the city during those rare pockets of time when everyone is actually 'free'. A  jovial gathering where we discuss how much all of us have changed or not while at the same time remembering all the fun memories we had in school. Brilliant times all right. Under usual circumstances, I would describe this as a perfect moment of nostalgia. What could be better, I used to wonder! But walking out on the reflection of a life I once had years ago, a conversation lasting a few minutes, I felt like I took nothing back from it. Sure, it made me happy about the 'good old times' but was that it? The much glorified feeling of nostalgia was nothing but an hour's worth of recollecting good moments. A part of my soul felt let down.

Having 2 major vacations in the space of 6 months, I usually take time out to visit my old school when I am home. Since I spent 13 wonderful years in those hallowed halls, it is of no surprise that I have fond memories of my school and the times that I have spent there. During my school days, I remember my seniors would come back to school to meet their beloved teachers and doting juniors. They would spend hours chatting about their new lives with the teachers, often interrupting our classes. We used to look at them with starry eyes and wonder when we would get to do the same. Come back to school with heads held high, look at our juniors with a knowing smile and sit around till we get bored of remembering the good times.

Well, we tried living the dream. My friends and I used to go to school during our holidays and sometimes even more than once. At first, the teachers were excited in knowing which colleges we joined, the life we had there and how we had changed. After a few visits they started asking me how much free time I had during the holidays. I realized that they had moved on to the next batch of students they had to teach, motivate and guide so that those kids could stand where I was standing right now. Of course, they still loved us but it wouldn't be right to go back each time to demand their attention when we already had our share. The grounds, the buildings, everything was changing. They were being modified, rebuilt or extended. It was hard to go back and piece out our memories in locations that were seeming to be alien to us. For the first time I felt the opposite of what every kid feels during school. I felt as if I wanted to go to school when the school didn't want me to be there.

The human mind is capable of adjusting and adapting continuously. A never ending process of building an illusion of familiarity and comfort around our fragile minds. Subconsciously, we all start detaching ourselves from our school and our life of old even before we embrace our new life. And hence, in my journey of finding the blissful feeling of true nostalgia, it seemed that I had fallen short yet again. Discontent was evident.

Life moved on and during one boring vacation away from college, a few of us made spur of the moment plan to go for the first show of a Malayalam movie. It had been running in the theaters for a while and was supposed to be a really good movie (Usthad Hotel , if you are that curious). It was a rainy day and we reached the theater a few minutes before the movie and grabbed some seats. Now this theater wasn't an expensive multiplex like those that have suddenly sprouted all over the city. It was an old theater, which had cheap tickets, seats without cushion but a guaranteed crazy movie experience attached with each show that was packed with movie crazy Malayalees. The movie was a coming of age story of a young chap sprinkled with humor and life lessons.

Coming out of the theater, we crossed the road and made our way into a small roadside eatery, all the while discussing the movie with great excitement. The stall was basically a small roadside stand with a few stools and a tarpaulin sheet over our heads. There was a stove where hot dosas and porottas were being made and the side dishes were already prepared. We ordered our usually beef curry (You don't just eat from a roadside "Thattukada" without ordering beef) with hot dosas and sat down to talk. Surprisingly the conversation switched from the movie to how each of us had grown. No, there wasn't any recollection of the golden days nor was there any deep insights into our future. It was more of a knowing chuckle that we shared while we gorged down hot dosas, realizing that life has this ability to trigger moments that bring out emotions that we thought had died. We had our fill, squabbled over the money and waited for a bus to take us back home. In the cold night air, we leaned on the railing of the side walk staring at the remains of the late night traffic. A few drops of rain was splattering down, but it wasn't bothersome. I speak for my friends when I say that those moments that we spent together were more comforting and blissful than any other in recent times. The reassurance that the relations, that you thought were strained, and the moments, that you thought were long gone, can still be recreated is amazing. It might sound silly if I try explaining it, so I will leave it for you to experience.

Nostalgia is commonly defined as " a sentimental term for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations..". I disagree. Nostalgia is nothing sort of an emotion. A feeling. It can be described as the warmth in your heart when you relive the emotions and recreate the state of mind you enjoyed in the past. It is not something you can trigger by recollecting memories. It is an involuntary response to reliving those memories. You may all claim to experience nostalgia when sitting in your offices thousands of miles away from each other or when you meet up for a planned yearly get together with your school mates. To truly experience nostalgia, you have to relive those moments that you cannot recollect and feel the emotions of times you can't even remember. And then you will feel content and satisfied like I did. And since that day, I haven't felt like going back to my old school...

A Diorama of Social Networking

Looking back, I keep wondering why it took me 6 months to actually start writing this blog entry after my last one in December. The usual excuses pop into my mind but the blatant truth is that I have been plain lazy to incorporate writing into my string of daily activities. Or it could be the fact that it usually takes a long train journey of introspection and reflecting on my thoughts to convince myself to put finger-on-keyboard (Read as "pen-to-paper").  My recent procrastinating nature (Ok, maybe not so recent) encouraged me to conduct a post mortem of how I actually spend my free time and I was shocked to find the amount of time I actually spend on social networking sites. And since I realized this, I am starting to connect everything around me to social networking and its after effects. It's a plague I tell you!!

We have all read countless articles on how technology have corrupted the youth, making them stare at their laptops or handheld screens for hours and in effect corrupting their childhood and all that. So I won't get into all that. The picture I would like to paint is to portray how social networking is ruling our minds these days and everyone, including me, is or have been a part of this picture some time or the other.

Gone are the times when people used Facebook to simply connect with people and maintain existing relationships alone. It has become much more than that. I realised this when my 11 year old cousin sent me friend request (What did I do when  I was 11 I wonder?). Facebook has now become your identity. What was intended as a window for people to share more about their life has now become life itself for many people. In short, Facebook is an ongoing, never ending popularity contest. And each and every one of us is participating as well as judging each other. I grin every time somebody asks me to like their profile picture. In such cases I remember an initiative where you could donate 1 rupee for a charity while booking movie tickets online. The "like" button transforms in my mind into the photo of a poor, attention seeking child holding out a carton for "likes", with a hyperlink saying "donate a like". And like a good Samaritan, I oblige.

What happened to the times when renowned personalities judged competitions? Nowadays the winner is the one who gets more number of likes on Facebook. The organizers must live in this Utopian society where they perceive that the contestants will put up their work for display, like in an art gallery, and the public will just stroll by appreciating every ones work and "liking" the ones which they feel should win. What really happens is a well planned campaign that involves the contestants calling on every single relative, friend and acquaintance since kindergarten and practically guilt tripping them to "like" their work on Facebook. Did I mention you have no option to even review the work of other contestants? I must have forgotten that when I add a friend on Facebook I agreed to the terms that I would chose to "like" all of their work, i.e. swear my unconditional allegiance to them till my dying breath.

Amidst all this, there is a huge group of people who have benefited from Facebook personally. Like those who realized that their true skill lie behind the lens of an expensive camera. Hey, I am not complaining. We all know how important it is to have that one friend who owns DSLR in every group of friends (I am talking new display pictures. Every. Week). Last time I went to a cultural fest, I saw a booth were photographers were offering to click potential display pictures against a nice back drop for a reasonable price. 15 rupees for a DP. They are, no doubt, inspired by Joker from Dark Knight as he famously says, "If you are good at something, never do it for free". Throw them a tip and they would probably Google for an awe-inspiring quote or wise saying to add as the tag line for the picture. We see them all around Facebook every day, but it's all so common now, we just scroll-on.

 I recently heard an anchor for some event use the word "troll" as a verb for something that happened on stage. It is a funny how a collection of cartoon like 'memes' govern how we react to situations on a daily basis. I myself have often used now common phrases like "bitch please" and "you don't say" to express myself, leaving 'normal people', like my mother for instance, completely clueless and sometimes offended. This is when I realized that most of us "browse through Facebook like we keep checking our fridge even when we are not hungry" (Read this line, ironically, on a "troll page"). Not only that, we pounce on any opportunity to pull our friends down, embarrass them with something downright silly and cruelly "troll" them. Apologies for sounding like them 'Grammar Nazis' but as a true Harry Potter fan, I keep imagining a huge ogre like monster beating the crap of a guy when I hear someone has been "trolled".

In times where new social networking sites keep popping up on a weekly basis, it must be quite hard to keep track of what to do and what not to do on each of them. I admit, when I was initially not on Twitter, I had no idea what a hash tag did. After repeatedly observing people using these hash tags on Facebook, I believed that the hash sign with a message written next to it was a way of explaining what you wrote. I assumed its literal meaning to be 'with reference to' and I still use it at times when one my posts are hard to understand or an internal joke or something. After a while, when I joined twitter I realized it has a function built into the Twitter platform. Strangely though, loads of people still mark their 15 word long posts, on Facebook mind you, with half a dozen hash tags ranging from "cute" to "funny". Makes me feel like studio audiences who sit in for the shot of TV shows who are forced to laugh (Or in this case, feel something) whenever someone holds up a sign saying "Laughter".

In similar fashion, the idea for making an anonymous setup where people could post their spiced up confessions for the world to see was probably the biggest development on Facebook in recent times. It was surprising to note how the promise of anonymity empowers the common man. A mask, like Batman says, makes all the difference. (Hey, it worked for Fernando Torres) After a while, when the posts started making people wonder how uninteresting their lives are or when the pages become a huge bitching fest, the fad slowly died down. Those that didn't, were shut down by universities.

 Our lives have been sown together with social networking. Every generation had something to be known by, something crazy to call their own. From lava lamps and bell bottoms, we have come a long way. And like everything in the past, social networking will die a slow death when something new, better and more interesting comes by (Remember Orkut anyone?). Till then, we will continue to like, re-tweet and '+1' our time away.

Some of you are probably wondering whether to stop social networking under the influence this article has had on you (Yeah, fat chance). If you are, then brilliant. I am glad that I could inspire such a thought. But I am sure as you think it over, you would  be chatting with an old friend on Facebook or following a celebrity on twitter. Meanwhile, I will be in the process of sharing this article with my friends on Facebook as well. I remember the iconic song 'Hotel California' by Eagles which ended with the lines, "..You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave...". Never leave indeed!

(This article is a reflection of my wayward perspectives and is not intended to hurt anybody's sentiments. The article is to be read in the tone of, "WHAT has this world come to?!".)