Those Facebook Facepalm Moments!

How difficult is it to understand what social media is? When Yahoo chat became boring, plop came in Orkut. When Orkut became boring, plop came in Facebook. I am surprised that they are still alive. Thanks to us for making a social media platform more than what it was supposed to be! People are busy making virtual friends and businesses are busy making virtual customers. Let’s see the avatars that we have given to Facebook.

The Fortune Teller
It used to be a 5-minute affair with newspapers. People who have been reading newspapers will understand that horoscopes were just spinning of words to bring a smile on everyone’s face. Today, Anita, Sunita, Rita, Gita tell us every day about our future. We get really excited by these aunties, start following them, and share them with our friends - expecting them to share it again! How nice, our future is definitely doomed!

The Executive Secretary
We never forget dates, do we? Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and more. One notification does the trick, aha! But do we even think if people really feel special looking at zillions of birthday wishes on their page not knowing what do with them? The lamest thing that we do as a response is write a common post thanking the universe – serves them right! Apart from that FB wishes you good afternoon (when AccuWeather tells you that it’s 40 degrees outside), good morning , and takes you back to your virtual memory lane (how many times have you wondered why you wrote something so stupid 5 years back but still shared the post to get some likes?).

A Super Platform to Celebrate Those Days
Mother’s day, father’s day, brother’s day, sister’s day, and every day! How lovely is it to look at your school friend’s cousin's mother’s photo – and that mother does not even know that there is something called Facebook.  First of all celebrating these days make no sense and on top of that expressing intense emotions on FB makes it complete nonsense! Those moments when you browse through the timeline cursing why were you born to be a part of this virtual madness. BTW, should we all celebrate Bugger’s Day?

The Personality Predictor
It’s amusing to see how we are so elated to see a prediction that exactly depicts our nature! Well, end of the day all of us are intelligent, kind, gentle, smart, bold, attractive, adventurous, sexy, and more. That’s awesome. We are in a world with no negative or different traits at all! How cool is that.  And we vouch for it. How sad is that?

The Date Doctor
There are people who love surfing FB checking out profile pics. It doesn’t stop there. If by any chance the profile is accessible by public, they will leave a pick up line, or leave a message “hey sexy. Want to do fraanship?”, or leave a friend request. Maybe there are other things that they do as well. I wonder if anyone actually succeeded in whatever they were planning to do by taking these actions. What started with Facemash is ending up with brain smash now!

Virtual Ego Massager
The number of pseudo likes is directly proportional to boost in pseudo self-esteem. The number of positive comments is directly proportional to increase in popularity. Increase in the number of shares is almost close to becoming famous overnight! Wow! All of this is directly proportional to lack of commonsense. In reality commonsense is a rare trait, it’s virtually non-existent these days!

Virtual Friend to Play Games
The craze started with farming, and then Crushing Candies and has moved now to solving criminal cases. Behind the scenes are zillions of other games to entertain us. But we don’t stop there. Since commonsense is non-existent virtually, we don’t bother to block sending game requests to others. In one click hundreds of request start hitting other pals on Facebook. Yay! Now our friends can see our strawberry farm! What fun!

The Godman
“Share this message in 2 secs and see your fortune change in 2 days!” Well it does change our fortune. After 2 days we will share another post that says “You are fortunate and to be fortunate forever, share this post with 100 others.” It not only changes our fortunes but changes others’ fortunes into misfortunes. But we have to give some credit here—looks like miracles happen only on Facebook these days!

Biography, Autobiography, and History Book Open To All
We can see our friends getting into a relationship, then breaking up, then getting engaged, then getting hooked, becoming parents, their kids growing etc. Finally, the loop gets closed when their children send us a friend’s request. To top it, we have our memories made in the virtual world! How thoughtful. One person shared a 4-year-old post  (i.e. four years before his child’s birth) and got a fabulous response: “Congratulations!”. For all you know that person was planning for his next kid. It may look like things are making sense; trust me they aren’t.

Kill Bill – Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold!
It’s so impressive to have a platform to stalk, spam, and hack profiles of our enemies—most of the time, exes. A friend of mine would check her ex’s profile every day. Send threat messages to her ex and his current girlfriend. Create multiple profiles so that the person is attacked from different directions. But the actual Kiddo (read winner) here is the ex – he fucking doesn’t care!

Pseudo Life
This sums up all our madness. From frantically searching for our so-called-smartphones to checking FB in the morning, to checking FB in the loo, to sending pseudo birthday wishes, and to showering pseudo love! A life that has no human touch but has only nasty pokes. A life that has no meaning but gives a complete sense of (false) accomplishment. A life that defines solitude with 1000+ friends. A life that is actually non-existent… oh my, FB has definitely made me philosophical!

Okay. It has been a while now. Time to go online and share this blog on FB and to celebrate many more facepalm moments! On a serious note, let us step out and meet people for real. Next time you click “Going” on an event request, please GO!

Just Open the Bottle of Water and Drink!

We encounter different characters, at times the same person with different personalities, at work and life. Just when you think life is not rocket science, we are proven wrong by different people in different ways. A funny take on this – what happens when you ask people to open a bottle of water and drink?

 

 

What? Bottle of Water? Oh Crap!
These are the ones who hate change. Anything new puts them in a state of paranoia. Whether it’s a sudden switch from eating a veg sandwich to a cheese one, or from working on data analysis to a profit and loss analysis. While many around will be thinking, “it’s just a bottle filled with water” they will think: “Come on, it’s a BOTTLE! And it has water in it…and I HAVE TO DRINK IT! I am going to faint!”

What? Bottle of WATER? I Need Scotch!
Who likes what’s offered? They definitely don’t. These are the ones who can never accept things as they are. Does that come from a sense of pride or a sense of achievement? Something we will never figure out. While many around will still be thinking, “it’s just a bottle of water” they will think: “Come on! I need more, give me something better!”

YES! Bottle of WATER. Time to Prove That I’m a Genius!
These ones are amazing. Everything revolves around overdoing things. Chaddi utarana ho to bhi ek dam style se – but who is looking? This definitely comes from the herd mentality where people feel that a lot of noise is going to fetch them rewards. Sadly, it does! “I will first clean the bottle, take 4 photos, take a selfie while I am drinking the water. I am so proud of myself!”

Meh..Isn’t the Genius Free?
Well, they get bored. Anything lame puts them off. They don’t care about the rewards or awards or failure or success – they look for things that are exciting. What they think is: “I will drink water when I am thirsty. Please pass the buck to someone else…” Given a chance they will not bother to get out of bed. People call it laziness but they call it Meh!

Bottle! I Opened and Poured It on My Head. What’s Wrong?
No instruction is a simple one. It takes years of practice and diligence to get every instruction wrong – no matter how simple they are. Some overdo and some overthink, these ones are a deadly combination of both. The cherry on top is that they think they are right. “Well, I drank water while it was trickling down from my head!”

Bottle! Bottle! Come, Come, Come.. We Are a Team!
How do you complicate a simple task that one person can do into a task that will drain everyone around you and change the entire scope of work? So, they call a “jhund”, hold the bottle together, crush it, hold the lid tight and twist in a different way, break the bottle, waste the water and finally they see that the entire “jhund” is sweating!

Okay
They believe in following simple instructions. They just open the bottle of water and drink it. The main agenda in their lives is to move on. Been there done that, what next? Their only problem is they observe the people above them and get depressed as they don’t understand them.

I am sure there are many other characters that we encounter on a daily basis. Pause a moment and I am sure you can add more to this list! The best part is – you are in for a hearty laugh regardless of how each character might have ruined your day! 
  

For All Those Mind Numbing Questions, I Have Just One Counter Question

People love asking questions. Well, we grew up asking questions. If one has to learn you definitely have to ask questions. Just as our entire education system is flawed with meaningless exams, most of our questions are also meaningless. I have been asked irrelevant, indecent, stupid and irritating questions as long as I can remember. Let’s have some fun with those questions that made me question my own sensibility and sensitivity.

In School: How come you are dark? Your parents are not all that dark, no?

Mind voice: Dark? Oh no, I am bright. My parents are bright too.
People are very worried about complexion. Protecting our skin is something that I can understand; no one wants burnt skin and the associated pain. What I can’t understand is how complexion can play any role in any fair or unfair tasks that we do? BTW, I am dark (though society would insist that I use the word “wheatish”) and I don’t know why. Didn’t bother to understand the biology behind it!

After School: So, Engineering or Medicine?

Mind voice: Arts, no wait…maybe Bartending
In the era when taking care of pandas is a paid profession why are we hassled with this question? Also, the assumptions – oh didn’t you score well, shall I fund you, are you lazy… There is something called passion and everyone has the right to explore and do something they love doing. At least we won’t get thrown out during a recession!

In College: So, how many boyfriends have you had?

Mind voice: Literally, many! Do I get a medal?
I can understand if people say that they think about sex all the time. What I can’t understand is how wanting to know “personal shit” about other people gives any kind of pleasure! And trust me, no one believes it if you say you had and have no boyfriend(s). Societal norms will stop you from having an affair and hypocrites will want you to have more than one.

At Work: Looks like marriage is around the corner..wink..wink?

Mind voice: No, I have to walk 10,000 km to go and take a right to be left alone
Why is getting married a mandatory norm? Just when you start feeling happy about standing on your own feet, they make you feel like a loner because you are single! Marriage is like jumping into a well, a few do it with eyes open and a few with eyes closed. A few smart ones find different swimming pools and keep swimming.

In The Well: Any good news?

Mind voice: YES! YES! I am going on a date with my husband
Everyone knows what “Good News” means. Just because a person is married, it doesn’t mean that they have to reproduce. At times even your best friend will start worrying. Not having a kid is associated with many things – depression, aggression, family problems, health problems, mental problems and more. But the truth is, not having a kid is a CHOICE. Just as people choose to fall into the well, they decide not to have a baby. I vividly remember an acquaintance asking me this question: “Why get married if you don’t want kids?” Such a profound question that I have started losing faith in humanity!

The list will go on. I am sure all of us have been a part of such a mind numbing exercise at least once. Earlier I would respond sharing my views – but it was almost always futile. No longer. Now, every time I am attacked with a dumb numb question, I ask “And you are not dead yet?” When I hear the response, “What kind of question is this”, I smile broadly and say, “Exactly!”

If Men Are Bastards Then Women Are Bitches

Since my teenage I have seen friends come to me with one common problem – relationship issues. Both men and women somehow have the knack of finding different types of problems – some of them may baffle you – when it comes to relationships. As a responsible friend I would listen to them. After listening to them I would start talking and how many times have I heard these statements – “You are not in love, you won’t understand”, “You don’t have a history, you won’t understand”, and “You are not married, you won’t understand”. Now that I have a history, I am in love and happily married, they would say “You don’t have a kid, you won’t understand”.  I am not going to have a baby but I am going to talk about the general scenarios where women go wrong.

 

We need space, including theirs

This lady friend of mine was furious and said, “I just asked him if the new dress that I bought looks nice and he frowned. You know why? Because he was watching his stupid TV series!”. Ahem, aren’t we being a bit selfish and a lot ridiculous? Just like how we don’t like being disturbed while reading a book, watching an all-time fav movie, dressing up for that ladies night etc. men don’t like getting disturbed when they are enjoying their time – that time can even be in the loo while they are fidgeting with their phones (no pun intended). We will get attention, but not all the time!

We don’t talk, we scream

Couples will have arguments. End of the day we are human beings and every human being will have their own opinions. The minute we know we are losing the argument we start screaming. Slowly the screaming turns into tears and we make men look like the bad-est ass in this galaxy. It’s okay to lose an argument. We can’t win all the time and we can’t be right all the time!

We don’t like giving answer, but love questioning

This one is classic. So many times I have heard this statement blow up hundreds of cylinders in a relationship “How dare he asks me why I was late, I asked him why was he late last Friday and he doesn’t answer. Instead says the answer is same as what he gave on the Friday before that!”. Relationships can survive only on trust. Even in the strongest and closest of relationships there are things a person would not want to share with a partner. Not because they are cheating just because it’s not really important. If you are not ready to give answers, stop asking them questions!

We do all the work, don’t we?

He doesn’t cook, he doesn’t clean, he doesn’t care! We don’t clean the car, we don’t fix our gadgets, we don’t step out in hot sun, we don’t put up with our mood swings! Responsibilities must be balanced. I am not saying all relationships are perfect but many fail because we give too much importance to just ourselves. We are so busy doing our work that we stop noticing what our partner does for us.

How can he not be thinking anything?

Trust me, men are blessed when it comes to this. They can just go blank and stay in that zombie state for a very long time. Just that most of the times we disturb them. “What are you thinking honey?”, “How can you not be thinking about anything?”, “Is something bothering you?”, “Are you HIDING something from me?”, “WHATVER, if you don’t want to share let it be”, “Please let me na?”. A humble request, please give men a break – PLEASE!

We are independent but they must be available at our beck and call

We whine about losing our freedom. We suffocate because he wants to be around all the time. At the same time, you would get upset when he is late to pick you up – nope, he didn’t volunteer, we called him. Unknowingly we become needy more than we want to be free. Men do not understand signals and “subtle hints”. If they see that we need them they will tune their brains to be around us to help us out. If we want to be free we have to show that we are independent. Let’s stop messing with their brains.

Finally, they have friends too!

We love hanging out with our friends and drag our partners without even checking if they want to be a part of it. Men have friends too but many a times don’t like hanging out with them with their partners around. It’s simple, being in relationship doesn’t mean that we do EVERYTHING together. They love talking shit with their friends and prefer keeping us away from shit. Be happy about it!

There are creepy men. There are creepy women too. I still believe that the world is primarily filled with good people and all that we need is more of love to survive peacefully. Love is beautiful. Set each other free. Soon we will experience that moment - two different minds and souls working together so well, living together so well, and making the journey of life so bloody meaningful. Let’s not mix up feminism and selfishness. Equality is important and when equality is attained respect just falls in place.

And yeah, men will turn into bastards in between! Next topic will revolve around that ;-)

Stare

The darkness stared at him

To find the light

He stared at the darkness 

To find himself!

- Words of Venus|Image by Venus

Black

So dark, so evil

Stay away, you devil

So stark, so real

With head held high, he lived! 

- Words of Venus, Image - Words of Venus

Soul

Watching the chaos at peace,

Listening to Noises in silence...

I sat beneath my soul,

Witnessing life from yonder!

Chaos killed my reality,

Noises deafened my voice...

Life died but soul prevailed,

I witnessed dream from yonder!