Reliving Childhood Memories ….. Almost

It has been roughly 25 years since I last went to the circus.

As a child I remember visiting often, and loving every minute of it, until around the time I was 13 or 14. That was when various kinds of activism eliminated all animals from the circus, and – for kids like me – took all the fun out of it. Yes, there are great circus shows worldwide without animal performers, but India of the late 1980s was not the place to find any of them. So circus watching died a natural death, and the heart pumping excitement of seeing the tents or a random poster disappeared. Soon, the tents stopped appearing and the posters were no longer put up. Nationwide, at least in the larger cities, circus troupes quietly disappeared never to be heard from again for the next quarter of a century or so.

I grew up, and the whole idea and excitement of the circus faded into the background of more grown-up pastimes. Until very recently. In the last couple of years, I have been seeing posters and billboards advertising the odd circus troupe in some remote section of the city or another. Steadily toying with the idea of going, especially now that monkey is old enough to enjoy it, I made up my mind to take her to one, one of these days, before she became addicted to technology to the exclusion of all else. And still, somehow or the other, we never quite made it. Time was never right, distances were too long, traffic too unbeatable, or the tents had packed up and left by the time I got around to it. Something always got in the way. And then, two weeks ago, one pitched its tents right here in my neighborhood!

Before a single coherent thought could form, I found myself walking back to the car clutching a handful of tickets! For the couple of weeks that it has been here, monkey has passed the grounds everyday with a sigh. She was marveled over the lights in the evening, and wondered about the big sleepy tents in the day. And every day, every single day, she has asked her father, or me, “Can we go one day?” so when I woke from my trance with enough tickets for a whole bunch of people, I knew my little one would certainly be pleased. But what I was looking forward to, more even than her excitement at knowing that we were going, was the wonder and awe I was sure to see on her face during the show – the same wonder and awe I remember feeling every time I was taken to see the circus – from as far back as roughly nine years of age (about as old as my daughter is now).

We didn’t tell her about the tickets. Being the weekend, I picked her up from her “dance” class (which is essentially an excuse for a bunch of kids to behave like total nutcases and go crazy with music) and told her we had to go somewhere. Now, strangely, my little one doesn’t like surprises, and when told something like that assumes that mommy is dragging her to some relative/friend’s home where she may or may not find company (given that most people we know are either childless or have much older kids), or to some boring grown up activity like shopping. So when the car turned into the fairgrounds, it was quite amazing to see her go from morose and protesting to lit up and bursting out of her skin in a split second.

Walking in, sitting down, I could see all the stars in her eyes that I had expected. She saw the incredible trapeze artists flying overhead with so much awe. She loved the little trained dogs, and birds (yes, SOME animals are back), she rolled around in laughter when the clowns did their thing, and shrieked with joy when the elephants worshipped an idol or played cricket. It was like being nine again for me too. The sheer vicarious pleasure of seeing all this for the first time through her eyes brought back all the memories of my own magical first time at a circus. I could feel all the awe, the surreal feeling.

And then, I looked around. I could see all the broken equipment, the dilapidated chairs, the holes in the tent and in the mats, but most of all, I could see the emptiness of the tent. For a weekend primetime show, the tent was terribly empty. Hardly 40% of the seats were taken, and we were the only people in the more pricey seats. Seemed strange at first, until I noticed the expressions on the faces of the kids that were there. Most of them, as young as my own or much older, looked bored, uninterested, and uninvolved. Many were fidgeting with their “latest” phones and tabs, and seemed hardly to be paying any attention to the action in the ring, except when they shot videos of it….presumably for facebook.

I wondered if it had always been this way and I had merely been too small or too enraptured to notice, or if things had really gotten that bad. Speaking to my father later cleared things up a lot. He was grown up and cynical enough even when he took us to the circus as children, but he does not remember it being quite so pathetic. Sure, circus has always been a little shabby around the edges, in India at least, but the abysmal situation we found on this trip is far, far worse than anything we could have even imagined. The entire enterprise seemed to be hanging on by the barest of threads, in danger of having to give up at any moment.

Somehow, we have managed to get our children to lose that sense of wonder that I remember so well. And more than that, we have managed to kill any desire to experiment, try something new, or be interested in anything outside their own narrow spheres. No wonder then that circus troupes all over the country are struggling so badly. Even under the best of circumstances, with packed shows, they are difficult and very expensive enterprises to run. All those people to feed and pay, animals to buy, feed, and take care of, equipment to acquire and maintain, lights, travel, setup, and on and on. Given that even a primetime weekend show has such dismal occupancy, one can imagine what the “not so popular” shows must be like. It is a miracle they are even making enough to continue to stay in the business at all!

It makes me sad though, the fact that my daughter, one of the few children I know who would rather play outside or go to the circus than sit in her room with her PS2, may not be able to enjoy this wonderful display of human skill for much longer. 

The TATA Circus

The emails I keep getting from Tata Teleservices Customer Care states that

“Tata Tele Corporate Services Tata Teleservices today stands certified as ISO 27001:2005 which means our services are best in class at par with international benchmarks.”

I must say I BEG to differ on the matter. Either ISO has lost all sense and credibility, or Tata is taking customers for a ride. This is my personal experience with Tata Teleservices.

I began preparations to get the Kolkata office up and running at the beginning of December 2012. As part of the process, I called up a couple of internet and WLL service providers looking for someone to get me a quick landline and data card connection for business use. I was impressed with Tata, because they got back to me instantly, after I left a query on their website. This was unprecedented and unexpected, given my experience of and impression of Kolkata work culture, and I must say I was very happy. This was the 5^th of December.

Sadly, their efficiency ended with visiting the office and collecting a purchase order. After that, it took TWENTY days to actually process the orders… for 4 Tata photons and one Walky. However, the agreements were finally signed on 20^th December after days and days of chasing and asking. And the actual instruments were delivered a couple of days later. One would think that would be the end of my troubles, but sadly it was the beginning. Activation of photons and Walky should take a couple of days at worst. In my case, one of the four photons started working the next day, but three remained obstinately unconnected, as did the Walky. After days and weeks of chasing, and a much begged engineer visit, I was told that three of the four photons were faulty, and had to be replaced.

By now it was the first week of the New Year. More chases followed, as Tata does not seem to believe in calling back and informing the client about the progress of their complaint or connections. After calling and calling and calling them the faulty photons were finally replaced. Two were immediately assigned to employees and work began (about 30 days later than it should have). in the meantime, the Walky continued to be dead to the world. My company website, which was in the process of being designed, had to be put on hold, because the contact number on it was the one assigned by Tata to my walky, and I could not go live with the site until the line was activated. After another couple of days, when I assigned the last remaining (replaced) photon to a consultant, it refused to work (AGAIN!). More chasing and cursing of Tata followed after which the photon was finally activated, about 30 days after it was first purchased.

As for the Walky, some 25 days after it was bought, and 30 to 40 telephone calls and two engineer visits later, they finally told me that it was faulty as well, and would also be replaced. However, they assured me that the number assigned to me would not change. Unable to wait any longer, because every day without a phone meant loss of business for my firm, I finally activated the website, with the number they have given me.

As I write this, it is the 21^st of January 2013, 47 days after first contacting them and issuing a purchase order, and 31 days after the contract was signed, and I STILL don’t have an active landline. When a client or prospective customer sees my site, letterheads, visiting cards, and calls on the number, they will get a message that “this number does not exist”. What that is likely to do to the reputation of my firm…you can very well guess. And the business I have lost over the last 31 days or continue to lose with each passing day is not likely to be compensated for by Tata. Neither is Tata likely to bring back the clients I am losing because they think my company is a fake/fraud. The amount of money I have spent over the last month and a half, calling Tata is not going to be reimbursed either. They STILL don’t call me back to tell me what is going on.

The latest info, after I applied a LOT of pressure from higher up, is that I now have to apply for a NEW number…which will probably take another 31 days… not to mention changing the site, letterheads, cards, … all added expense and hassle, and loss of business.

All I can say is TATA SUCKS.

The delicious horror of the daily crime fix

For someone who is not at all into TV, even to know what show airs on what channel, at what time, is some sort of an unheard of event. The Hindi and Bangla channels are still a completely unseen land to me, and I continue to have absolutely no clue whatsoever of the goings on, on those planets. Nor do I wish to know. However, for the past year or so, I do find myself getting the occasional “crime fix” as a dear friend puts it.

So what is this crime fix then? Well, a large number of intelligent people – especially in India – seem to have become regular viewers, even addicts, of the regular crime shows on the English language satellite channels. And, as a result, the prime time slots on most of the channels are given over to these programs. This, in turn, means that I manage to catch at least an hour of these programs – on most days.

For me, of course, it is simply a matter of convenience. Mornings are news news news till about 9 or 9.30am. 9.30 to about 11.30am is usually spent in things like household chores, work related filing, and such. 11.30 I leave to get the little one from her school, and the rest of the day is mad. Any TV that is watched between work, food, games, homework, mum and baby projects, and more, is always of the animated variety. Her day winds up by about 7.30 pm, and it is only then that any question arises of anyone else watching TV.

One could, I suppose, watch some trashy saas bahu serial during the day, with the child sitting there open jawed and absorbing all the nastiness and tear jerking, like many mothers do. But I cannot tolerate that crap, nor can I imagine exposing my child to  regular doses of such consistently unethical, nasty, backstabbing, evil behavior, not to mention the horrible gender and community stereotypes. So, cartoons it is. And there are restrictions there as well. No child of mine is ever going to sit and watch shinchan, and monkey knows that in this house, with this mum, “no” means no. many others are on the off limits list, or on the occasionally only list. I could also watch any of the violent or gory crime series or movies

So, essentially, it is after about 8 pm that the adults finally get down to any kind of TV viewing, and that’s just fine with us. Between 8 and 9 is when the joint production of dinner is usually created, and we generally pay scant attention to the idiot box, because we have the whole day to catch up on with each other. So, it is during dinner, and in that narrow time slot of 9 to 10 pm, that we get down to some semi serious television intake, and…guess what!... it coincides with a crime show! Not a “real crime reenactment” kind of bullshit, mind you, but a thriller type show with the storyline based on crime solving activities.

Come to think of it, most of the shows I have even remotely liked in the past few years have been of this type. From CSI and NCIS to Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, White Collar, etc, most of them fit into the crime thriller genre. And no, this fascination does not carry over to the really badly made, over explained, “treat the viewer as if she is an idiot” kind of Hindi series like CID. The shows I like are the English ones, and no, its not entirely because of my English type-ness. Sure I think in English and am most comfortable in English, but no one can deny that these programs are much better made than any Hindi one can ever hope to be. They are tighter, sharper, more succinct. The science is much more current, and they don’t spend minutes at a time trying to explain every single detail of it to you. They assume that you have the brains to figure a few things out without having them spelled out for you.

Although it’s not regular, or consistent, we have kind of fallen into the habit of the 9 pm crime show and begun to call it our nightly crime fix. Last week, for one reason or another, we missed quite a few of them, and I found myself feeling vaguely uncomfortable, even contemplating catching the rerun the next day. I didn’t, of course, but it made me think about what it was about the crime fix that had me craving for it. Of course there is the morbid curiosity that is such a human trait, the thing that makes people slow down and try to get a glimpse of an accident (although I cant ever imagine doing that). Then there is the delicious fear of watching a horror film in the safety of one’s home (which I, as a horror addict, am so very familiar with). But, to me at least, it seemed to be a bit more than just that.

There seems to be an element of the talisman in the whole phenomenon. Watching the worst of the worst happen to someone else, someone imaginary, seems to somehow subconsciously convince one that it cannot happen to “me”. Its like some kind of magical catharsis that not only eases and purges those feelings of horror and pathos, but also protects the watcher against the same happening to them. That’s the only way I can explain the addiction, with a healthy sprinkling of the normal human negative traits thrown in, the morbidity, the delight in gore and pain, and yes – the subconscious reveling in the triumph of good over evil (after all the bad guys are always caught) which fits nicely with the way we imagine the world is, or should be. 

Epistolary adventures

When I was about fifteen or sixteen, my man and I used to write to each other three or four times a week. Each letter was fourteen or fifteen fullscap sheets, about thirty pages. Living as we did, one in Dehradun and one in Chennai, the only means of communication really open to us was letters. Telephone calls, especially interstate, were prohibitively expensive, and mobiles in every kid’s hand was not even a remote concept. Back in those dark ages, we had not become used to the idea of personal computers, and the internet was still a US Government and NSA fiefdom. Snailmail, as we know it today, was the only way two sundered hearts could keep in touch over 2000 kilometers.

The excitement of receiving each letter is still so fresh in my mind I can virtually taste it! This was “first love!” This was my “boyfriend” writing to me! Just that would have been enough to give anyone the total thrills. Consider the age. Fifteen years old and in love for the first time, we were living so faraway from each other. Distance denied us all those little intimacies and pleasures that people in love take for granted. No little looks, no shared laughs, no “how was your day”, no handholding, no stolen kisses were possible for us. From acknowledgement of feelings to sharing our lives, letters had to perform the functions of all the senses.

I can never forget, or recapture, the wild, heart thumping, pulse beating, palm sweating suspense of seeing that letter, with that “oh so familiar” handwriting on it, on the dining table as i came home from school. Pretending to be nonchalant about it, leaving it there for just a little longer while I changed and had something to eat, so as not to seem overeager, added to the high. After what seemed like a safe amount of time (and felt like hours and hours), I would get up the courage to pick it up from the table, and escape to my room with it. Oh heaven! Oh hell! I still had to open it and actually read what D had to say!!!!

Trembling hands tore open the envelope and picked out the pages. Hmmmm… only 11? My last one was 18 pages … huh! I knew it! He loves me less than I love him! Every little thing was a matter of life and death almost. From counting the pages to weighing the words, and the tone, of every page, it was all more important than any of those paltry national security matters. The first reading went like a flash. In my eagerness to see what he writes next, I would just completely miss the line I was reading. It was like some intense, hopped up, speed reading session where nothing penetrated the consciousness.

Calming down enough to read through again, and understand this time, wasn’t easy, especially since we had a “no closed doors” rule at home. Pesky bro would choose just these moments to get on my nerves more than he did (and oh! How he did get on my nerves sometimes!), going into his “dikha na dikha na” mode. Mum or dad or both would be in and out of the room on some routine errand or another, and I would have to pretend it was just another letter from just another childhood friend….nothing special y’know. (Of course, I realize now that there was no need for all that pretence and tension. The folks knew, and had no problems with a little natural, innocent romance. But at the time it was an added thrill, I guess, to think of myself as one of those misunderstood and persecuted Hindi filmy heroines).

Once I had read the missive twice, thrice, a couple of dozen times, and practically knew every word by heart, it was time to compose a reply. Another massive undertaking. Every word had to be analysed, for tone, emotional intent, and all kinds of subtext. Then a fitting retort, response, reply had to be drafted. Always failed at this though. Being the emotional creature I was, I always got too carried away by what was happening in my life, and my own emotional responses to his words, to make too much headway in the who writes better letters game. My man tells me that was the fun part of getting my letters – knowing that there would be tear stains and angry rants, and other nonsense.

There were others I wrote to as well; pen friends in Edmonton, Canada, in Germany, and elsewhere; other childhood friends in Dehradun and Delhi; the occasional cousin; and so on. Each letter was a labour of love. A thought intensive communication that took hours, if not days, to plan and write. And I saved all the replies. They were pieces of that person, to me, little fragments of someone I loved, that I wanted to hold on to for all time.

Then, came the internet. I got my first PC in 1995, and now these machines are like an extra limb. I began to write on the desktop, finding that words flowed more easily when I saw then ALIVE in black and white, on the screen. Editing poems was easier with a backspace or delete key than with run-throughs on a page. By the time the internet, and email, became a household phenomenon in India, I was already an old hand at both. My man and I broke up, and lost touch, and all the other friends of the plume and the epistle fell by the wayside. People still in touch switched to technology, as email became part of the “cool quotient” and phone calls became simpler and cheaper.

Last week, my mother wished me to mail something for her, ‘the old fashioned way’. A huge civil war erupted, and everyone came in for a lot of flack when none of us could remember seeing a post box anywhere close by. All kinds of theories were advanced, ridiculed, and discarded, including ‘there are no post boxes now other than at post offices’. Lambasted, yelled at, and made fun of, I finally went on a post office hunt, found one in the back of beyond, and posted the damn letters! It still didn’t strike me! This morning, on my way to pick baby up from school, I finally spotted a red postbox in an alley close by (probably noticed it because of the recent hullabaloo).

It was while I was laughing at myself for having missed it before that I realised I can’t remember the last time I WROTE to someone! In fact, when I was about to mail those letters for mom, I realized I had no idea what amount of postage was necessary. Dad, on the great post box hunt with me, suggested that a rupees two stamp was probably the minimum now. Turns out, those days are long gone! The minimum postage is apparently five rupees these days! And I had no clue!

I email people, sure, all the time; I text frequently; I call often; but cannot, for the life of me, recall the last time I put pen to paper for anything, much less to communicate with someone. My work gets done on word and php, my writing on blogs and wordfiles. The only things I use paper for anymore is to make shopping lists or draw pictures for my four year old! It’s amazing what technology has done! Not entirely sure if it’s all good though. Sure it’s a lot more convenient, and definitely cheaper, at these prices. However, I have a horrible feeling that the excitement of getting letters is lost forever.

The avalanche of technology has changed the way we communicate forever, and though I love the scraps, walls, glitter, and cartoons, I miss the hand drawn caricatures my man used to draw of himself. Maybe its just nostalgia. I am, after all, hitting the age when people begin to say things like “humare zamaane mein” and “aajkal ke bacche”; when everything old seems golden and everything new seems like trash. And although I love technology, use it extensively, live it, and earn my bread from it, I can’t help but breathe that tiny little sigh of regret for those “pehele pyaar ki peheli chitthis” that I will no longer be able to hoard for posterity.

Mobile phones in India

It’s amazing how fast the phenomenon has caught on. Ten years ago, mobiles were a rarity, restricted to the very few who needed constant contact-ability, constant access to work, news, and so on. Tycoons and businessmen, fillum wallahs and bade babus, stockbrokers and paisewallahs this was the segment that needed or owned mobile phones even as recently as a decade ago.

Now? My bhajiwala has a cell phone, my bai has a cell phone, the autowallah whips out a cell phone and says “meeting me hun…karta hun phone”. Suddenly, they are everywhere, these gizmos, in every hand, stuck to every ear. Its amazing how fast and how far they have penetrated. From an item of luxury, they have become a necessity, essential to the day to day life of most people. How did this happen? What changed? What turned the “I don’t even need a landline” Indian into the “I can’t live without the latest handset” Indian? The way I see it, it was a combination of a lot of things.

Money for one. A huge change has been creeping in, almost unnoticed. Almost everyone has disposable cash these days. Even the humblest of wage earners seem to have discovered that money is for spending. Consumerism and a growing retail culture has converted India into a “buy, buy, buy” land, where the motto, even a decade or so ago was “save, save, save.” Loans are easy and aplenty, needs redefined by swanky foreign ads on TV, and availability through the roofs with every major global player fighting it out for a piece of the Indian pie.

Attitudes have changed too. Keeping up with the Jones’, a universal preoccupation, has reached obsessive and epidemic proportions now, and the world has grown smaller, making more and more varied kinds of Jones’ available to compete with. It’s a boon for all kinds of manufacturers, from clothes to “modular” kitchens, from “tish” furniture to consumer durables. The more people compete, the more they update, which means more sales of progressively higher segment goods. And the same applies to mobile handsets.

Me? I own the cheapest most basic handset. And no, money is not the only consideration in this. First and foremost, the Jones’ leave me cold. I never could se the logic in “keeping up”. I buy what I need, what I can use. And I use basic call and sms functions on a mobile…as do most people. So, to me, it makes no sense to buy one of the top end handsets with a thousand “features” that I don’t need and will never use. Add to that the fact that I have a child at home, whose favourite pastime is chucking mommie’s things about, and the lower end and hardier the handset is, the better it is for me.

As it is, how many people really use all the features on their swank phones on a regular basis? I haven’t seen anyone do it consistently. Sure they take a lot of pictures with their camera phones, shoot a lot of video, and send MMS messages, but that lasts for a few days, weeks at most. After that? Back to the basics…making and receiving calls, sending and receiving messages. So, essentially, the only reason most people (barring a very few I know) buy a 25 thousand rupee handset, is to show they can. It’s another way of saying “look how much money I have, to throw away”.

It’s permeated every section of society, every stratum of class. And, to this “show-off” mentality has been added the illusion of grandeur that a mobile phone gives us. Everyone likes feeling important, needed, sought after. A mobile phone gives us the illusion that we are all of those things. After all, it is the most important, most needed people who have to be in contact with the world all the time. It is the indispensable people who cannot be unreachable for even one minute, lest something should go horribly wrong in their absence. Look around you, and you will see that everyone with a mobile phone today is as important as the national security advisor to the president of the US.

Every free second, snatched in between whatever it is one does all day, is devoted to this new fetish. Crossing the street or grabbing a cuppa, walking or chilling, on a date or hanging with friends, the mobile is never far from the ear or the fingertips. Do we really need such all-encompassing connectivity? Do I really need sales messages and credit card companies calling me in the middle of a hot date? Do I need a customer satisfaction survey in the middle of my siesta? Do I absolutely need “Bollywood gossip” updates when I am at a movie theatre?

And what about the increasing number of parents who are giving mobile phones to their kids, “to keep tabs on them”? now that’s the most spurious piece of nonsense logic I have ever heard. Keep tabs? How? The kid could be sitting in a pub guzzling alcohol, phone rings, all he/she has to do is say “haan ma, I am at the temple”. There is no way of knowing. If they don’t want to be disturbed, they can just switch the damn thing off, and say “network nahi pakad raha tha”. All a mobile really does is to give the parents a false sense of security, which probably does more harm than good.

And kids with mobiles, or stupid grown ups with mobiles for that matter, are a danger to themselves in more ways than one. Not only do they run up exorbitant bills, they can put themselves in direct danger too. its amazing how easily kids, and a number of adults, give their numbers to total strangers, on the net for example. What they don’t realize is that it is highly dangerous to do this, and against all the common sense measures for internet safety! Anyone who knows your phone number can cause inconvenience in a number of ways.

For one thing, they could call you at all hours of day and night, or SMS, which can be merely irritating (in the case of normal calls) to downright disgusting (in the case of obscene or vulgar calls and messages). But that’s only a minor issue. After all most service providers provide call barring services and you can delete messages without opening them. The real problem, that most people don’t realize, is that if someone has your mobile number, and knows where to look, they can find out where you live.

This may not seem like such a big deal on the surface. But imagine this – this is a person you don’t know at all. All you know, or think you know, about them, is from their own words. How do you know that this person is not some kind of a criminal, a stalker, or worse? Your mental, emotional, physical and financial safety could be in very real danger!! What’s the bottom line then? Are mobiles good or bad? Useful or dangerous? Like all technology, the answer would lie in how we use it. Amazing connectivity and any time availability can be a great boon, in emergencies (see Mobile phones – miracle or curse?), and for people who need blow by blow accounts of their work etc. using it wisely, in a balanced way, with conscious thought and prudence, and these wonders of technology are quite amazing (if one could only get rid of the pesky telemarketers)!

Mobile phones – miracle or curse?

When cell phones were still a new concept in India, many people debated whether cell phones, or mobile phones as they are known here, were really as useful and essential as they were being made out to be. A decade or so down the line, one can clearly say that whatever the outcome of the debate, the public has decided unanimously in favor of mobile phones.

However, since the popular thing is not always or necessarily the best thing, it doesn’t hurt to think things over and decide for oneself if mobile phones are a miracle or a curse. What does a mobile phone mean in your life, both in terms of convenience and inconvenience? Is it all good? All fabulous? Or are there any downsides? It’s not a cut-and-dried, black-and-white issue, most things aren’t. Where they have a number of advantages, they have or cause many negatives as well.

It is an amazing example of technology to be able to call anyone anytime from almost anywhere. And yes, there is a huge difference made in day to day life, all because of these little gadgets. They are useful almost anytime, great in an emergency, and convenient to carry around. There are any numbers of examples I can give of how useful these little gizmos are. There was that time. For example, when we were driving to Mumbai on a hot summer’s night, just after the first toll booth on the expressway, and miles and miles from anywhere, we had car trouble. What kind? Well, we didn’t know. The damn thing just shut down!!! And refused to start again!!

Anyone who has been on that expressway knows how serious such a situation can be. First of all, the road is deserted and literally in the middle of nowhere. There are regular police patrols now, but at that time there weren’t that many, and there were a spate of hold-ups and robberies happening frequently on the entire stretch. So, what was one to do? Well, simple really, whip out the mobile phone and call the highway assistance number. Instant action resulted. In five minutes flat there was a police car at our location, and a tow truck pulled up within twenty minutes.

We got towed to the nearest petrol pump/gas station, where we found everything other than a mechanic. Out came the mobile again, and a mechanic arrived in another ten minutes! In a total of about two short hours we were all set to rights and on our way! Before the age of mobiles, we could very well have been robbed and murdered in that time, at worst, or have had to spend the night among the mosquitoes, at best.

Another time, Mumbai to Pune, we had a sort of run in with a car at Chembur. They cut across, we honked, they got mad at the honking and tried to make trouble … the usual. We dove away, refusing to get drawn into an ugly scene. By the time we got on to the expressway, the car, a quails with about six guys in it, had been consistently following us, overtaking, braking hard, and then speeding away, slowing, following, crossing, braking, speeding and so on. Apprehension wasn’t long in arriving, especially when we realized that the guys were drinking, and there was only me and my man in our car. Out came the ever present cell phone. One call, and the Qualis with the six guys was stopped at the Kalamboli toll booth, and we drove off with a big sigh of relief!

However, it is not all rosy and hunky dory. I hate the constant reach-ability for example. Although I do turn the phone off at night, it’s a little iffy, as I don’t have a landline and may not be contactable in an emergency. But leaving it on all night, or at certain other times doesn’t work too well either, because Indians have no cell phone etiquette. Not only do we not have a clue about things like “timing”, we think nothing of calling up anyone at anytime, without any thought to their convenience.

Any idiot would know that 3.30 or 4 pm on a Sunday afternoon, for example, is “rest time” for most. Yet, every single Sunday, people will call, between 2 and 4 pm. Why? Because they don’t think, they are not taught (traditionally) to consider other people at all. It’s a “racial” thing. Our society does not place any emphasis on etiquette and basic manners. And so, just because I am awake at some ungodly hour, I don’t pause to consider whether calling someone now may be a problem, or an irritant, for them.

Another example of the total absence of manners is the phenomenon of the cell phone in the movie. Every time you go to see a movie in a theatre, there are bound to be some half a dozen cretins who will disturb your viewing pleasure with loud-ringing cell phones and louder and inane conversations. That’s one of the most irritating things on the PLANET!!! When you are in a theatre, “TURN THE GODDAMN PHONE OFF!!” After all, Barack Obama is not going to call you in the three hours that the movie will last (an hour and a half in the case of English ones). And if you are so bloody important that you cannot be incommunicado for even that much time, DON’T GO TO A MOVIE!!!! Rent at home or something, or give up films altogether. What you cannot do is ruin my enjoyment.

The levels of this kind of rudeness was brought forcibly home to me at a recent theatre festival. Even more than films, cell phones are an irritant in a play. Not only do they disturb the audience, they interfere with the actors on stage, making them lose their concentration, and create a lot of havoc with the sound system and so on. If you can’t turn of your cell phone, you should not go to a play at all. At a theatre festival I was at recently, the audience was reminded, again and again, to turn off their cell phones before the play began. In the first place, such a warning should not have been necessary at all. Any halfway decent person with a modicum of common sense should automatically realize these things.

But apparently that’s not the case. Not only do people have to be told, and reminded, again and again, some idiots STILL don’t get it!!! Throughout the festival (eight days), every single play had some a***ole or the other, often more than one, loudly informing a seemingly deaf caller “I am in a play, cant talk now, call later”, or better still, actually conducting a conversation!!!

Even if you are insensitive and rude enough to leave your phone on, you could at least put the ringer on silent, if you cant be bothered to do that, at least have the phone somewhere u can reach immediately, not in some inside pocket where it rings 20 times before you pick it up, if you cant be bothered even to do that, at least take the conversation outside!!! Nope….too much to expect from an Indian…one play actually had to be stopped, and the actors walked off the stage, for this unbelievably uncultured behaviour by the audience.

We don’t know how to talk softly either, volume controls are absent. If one has to have a mobile phone permanently stuck to ones ear, (and Bluetooth technology has made that description literal), one can, at least, cultivate the habit of speaking in an undertone. But no, ambient noise, often faulty technology, and native Indian brashness combine to fill the air with overloud conversations you DO NOT WANT TO HEAR, but have no choice but to listen in on. From inane to ugly, nasty to stupid, I suddenly become privy to everyones secrets, like it or not!

Needless to say, to me, these little gizmos are often more trouble than they are worth! There’s a lot more I want to say about the whole “mobile” movement, but that will have to wait until another day.

Working from home – what’s that?

Most Indians are a lot more comfortable with the traditional NAUKRI – the “go” to work, 9 to something, office centric, JOB. And most people cannot even grasp what it is that I do. Even highly educated, “I think I am well informed” people I know are mystified when I say I am a freelance writer, editor, translator, and trainer. The concept of FREELANCE and EDITOR is restricted, in most peoples’ minds. Freelance and writer together automatically means either journalist or novelist. And EDITOR automatically means in-house editor of a magazine or a newspaper… or at best of films.

I get people on chat asking me “guide me how I can freelance” (shudder shudder!). As if freelance is a stream, a job that I can take CVs for. I can’t seem to explain to them that you can freelance in any field…. And since you know your field, and its demands, way better than I do, you are best qualified to decide if, and how, you can freelance. And most people can, today. The advent of outsourcing, innovations in communication technology that are now available to all of us, and the increasingly efficient, if not totally dependable, infrastructure in India have combined with changing attitudes, making it a lot more feasible to work from home, be self employed, and freelance, as a profession.

The question most people ask is “how does it work?” They know that working means going to the office, being employed by a company and working under a boss. So how do you take the office, boss and company out of the equation? And what’s the need? What’s the point of working for yourself rather than for someone else? There are obvious advantages to working at an office. You get to meet people everyday, you work in a much more regimented atmosphere, and you toil away under the direct supervision of the Boss Man.

This works rather well for most people especially if they are the kind who are disorganized, and tend to let things slide unless someone keeps after them with a whip all the time. It is so much easier, after all, to meet deadlines when someone is sitting on your head applying all manners of direct pressure. Being at the office seems to sharpen most people’s focus to the job at hand. They prefer to work without so many distractions and they know that people will think twice about disturbing them with trivialities because they are “at the office” during working hours.

Working from home, as freelancers like me realize, can be the diametric opposite. Whether you work from home for a company, or are a consultant or freelancers, you are your own boss, at least for the time being. This not only means that direct pressure is absent, it allows you to work in home clothes, without the commute, and often, the whole thing can become too casual. As I am unfortunately well aware, work hours almost never stay fixed, and it seems impossible to ignore household chores, the kid, the cooking, the bai, the paperwallah, or the postman, and to stick to schedules.

What this means, in real terms, is that you need much more self discipline, and the occasional all-nighter, to finish the allotted work in the allotted time, and meet deadlines. What complicates matters further is the complete and utter lack of understanding (of what it is you do, and that it is a “proper job”) among your friends and social circle, and you have buddies and “family” dropping in for a bit of a chat at any hour of the day because they know that you are always “at home only”. As you might guess, this isn’t exactly conducive to the best efficiency in work.

There are other downsides too. There are many times when one gets a project that is larger than one can handle alone, or has the chance of landing a huge deal. And when that happens, I desperately look around for someone to share the load with. Sounds easy enough doesn’t it? But I have found….to my extreme disgust and disappointment, that it is anything but. First hurdle of course is to find someone who not only knows enough English but can also write idiomatically in both UK and US English. Really, really rare, as I found to my chagrin! Even if, surprise, surprise you do manage to find someone like that, 9 times out of ten they have a seriously underdeveloped sense of responsibility!

They seem all fired up and wildly interested to begin with. All of them are raring to go and willing and able to do all the work in exactly the allotted time. Well “good, great!” I think, before I delegate a large chunk of work to them. And what happens? Every single time, without exception, they have let me down. Either they didn’t even GET what the work was about, sending me complete trash as a result which I had to redo on my own time (meaning extra work for me at no extra pay). Or, and this is probably worse, they did an exemplary job o the writing, but showed a complete lack of any sense of responsibility.

The last one I tried for example promised to have the work done by a certain date. A week later, not only did I not have the completed work, I had not heard a peep from him to explain or to tell me the current status!!! With the client breathing down my neck, in imminent danger of losing not just this but all future ork from this particular client (who just happened to be an old, valued client, and a very good paymaster), I sent SMS on SMS, email upon email, all without any reply. Phone? Constantly either “switched off” or “not replying”. Neither did he let me know of any problems, in good enough time for me to do the work myself or arrange for an alternate writer, nor did he give me a leg to stand on when I spoke to the client. “When’s it going to get done? What’s the status? Has any of it been completed?” I just didn’t know!!! Such unprofessional behavior from most people is why freelancers still have a bad rep, and why people like me hesitate to bid for larger projects.

However, as someone who does not function at all well in regimentation, under “traditional and strict” orders, or with a “boss”, working from home and as a freelancer is the only viable option. This is also true because I am not “ambitious” in the sense that most people use the word. I do not want to be a small wheel or cog in a giant corporation for the rest of my life, forever climbing one more rung in the ever continuing run for “better” positions and packages. For me then, the more than ample money I make, doing something I love doing, and on my own terms with regard to working hours and total workload, works perfectly!

Orthodox attitudes in India add to the incentive to freelance, for me at least. The total lack of creative processes can be appalling, even in new age companies! Content Writers, in an elearning firm I once worked for, for example, were “expected” to sit at a computer terminal all day! To go to the loo, or for a quick smoke, or even to accept a phone call, we had to mark official breaks. Too many breaks a day meant an average work day of below 8 hours, over a month, and would result in a deduction from our pay!!!! And all this, in order to produce the required five 500-word articles a day! Needless to say, it DIDN’T work, at all. Everyone grumbled, morale was abysmal, the writers were bored, and as a result, both creativity and productivity suffered! Most writers would submit as little as two articles a day, as did I.

The surprising thing, of course, was that the company was founded by 4 “with it” engineers, who were well known for their out of the box thinking. The problem of course was the intermediary, the section chief who looked after the writing department. What the ex-corporate, “sarkari” mentality BOSS of the section completely and absolutely failed to realize, being the uncreative clod of dough that he was, is that u cannot get more creativity by forcing writers to spend more “terminal time”! If that worked, the agonizing writers block faced by most of the greatest writers on the planet at some point in their lives would have been solved by chaining themselves to their desks!!!!!

When I worked out a deal to work from home instead, not only did the quality of my work improve, I was sending in six or seven articles a day! Obviously then, in certain non-traditional, new age job profiles at least, working from home works quite well. But what seems beyond comprehension is that it can be extended to the more traditional professions as well, and just as easily. Look around you and, chances are, you will find many such examples. In my own immediate circle, there are engineers who are freelancing as consultants and tech writers on a project wise basis, making as much as they would in a proper JOB. Others continue on the payroll of their company, tele commuting, or working from home performing just as well, if not better. One “madman” I know quit a high profile, highly lucrative sales management job in a huge MNC, to teach MBA, as a freelance visiting faculty. And it works!! In a few months he is back to making as much as he was before, minus the stress, hypertension, and stress induced diabetes!

Additionally, there are larger benefits to society as a whole! This kind of “out of the box” work ethic is better for pockets all round. Everyone benefits, individual, company, nation, and world! For professionals like me, there are any numbers of advantages. Provided I can be disciplined and organized, working from home means comfort, freedom, and a huge amount of savings in terms of time, energy and money which would have been spent on commute. It means the elimination of stressors like bosses and marked breaks, of irritants like pesky and nonsensical rules and regulations, and no-brainer PROCESSES. It also gives me the time, energy and the opportunity to get more done at home and on the personal front, indulging in other pursuits.

For the company, there is a saving in travel allowances, savings on overheads as they no longer need to maintain huge offices at prohibitive costs, not to mention the advantages to be gained from happier, more efficient employees. On a national and global scale, of course it has manifold impact. Lower fuel consumption, lower traffic congestion, lower road rage, and a forced improvement of infrastructure caused by a higher demand for better connectivity.

So is the freelance or work from home model ideal? Is it the only way to work? Maybe not. Working from home takes a lot out of a person, and sometimes it is nice to be able to leave the office at the office. However, there are distinct possibilities to this mode of working, especially for people who need to do more …

Harvesting rainwater may solve some of India’s water problems

Water is going to be the next world crisis. Long before the world runs out of food, or fuel, human beings will run out of clean usable water. With growing consumption, due to increasing penetration and population, the day when the world’s sweet water runs out is fast approaching.

In fact, most experts agree that water is a zero sum game. If you run out, you can only do one of a few things about it. You can reduce your consumption, which is impossible; you can increase your supply, which isn’t realistic either; you can steal some; or you can find new sources. In fact, the third option here is the one most countries are likely to take. As a result, the third world war, if it ever happens, is probably going to be over water.

You can already see that happening on a small scale with water disputes between nations, as well as between states within India. It doesn’t take too much of a leap in imagination to see how this can escalate into a global issue. And with the way people waste water, and the way industries and cities are polluting water sources, rivers, lakes, groundwater, the crisis is closer than you may think.

Makes you wonder why more people, and governments, don’t think about option four, finding new sources. Agreed that it is not as simple as it sounds, it isn’t impossible either. Consider the option of harvesting rainwater. In a tropical country like India, where you have as much as three months of monsoons every year, with amazingly heavy rains during the season, this could be a viable alternative source for water. Even in countries further north, which receive less rains but a lot more snow, catching and storing the snow may be a possible way of augmenting fresh water supplies.

Recently some noises are being made, in the circles where decisions are made, about making it mandatory for a building to have rainwater harvesting facilities before allotting permissions and licenses for new construction. However, no such rules are in place as of now, and every year hundreds of millions of gallons of water are being wasted as runoff. If even a fraction of this water could be caught, filtered and stored, it could make a huge difference. After all, even if you didn’t want to drink the harvested water, it could be used for other needs, in the bathrooms, for washing up, gardening, and so on.

It’s actually surprising that more people don’t harvest. It doesn’t really cost all that much, especially if incorporated at the construction stage. In al older building or house, it might cost a little more to set up the funnel, strainer, tank equipment, but it makes sense in the long run, especially if you consider the water shortages most Indian cities face almost every summer. So, why this resistance to change? Think about the idea, for your own convenience, if not as responsible citizens. It works, it doesn’t cost very much, and it is greatly useful in the long run!

Why not think of alternate power solutions?

The world is teetering on the verge of a massive power and fuel crisis. Fossil fuels are running out faster and faster, as the world gets more and more cars dependent on them. A massive percentage of power production is thermal, and also dependent on fossil fuels like natural gas and other petroleum products. Put all that together, and consider the number of barrels of oil being pumped out of the earth, and its easy to see that the world is soon going to run out of fossil fuels.

Then what happens? Will the world be forced to do without heat, power, transport? Do we go back to fireplaces (if there is any wood left to burn by then), horse drawn carriages and candles? It’s a distinct possibility that we will. And the day is not too far off either. Everyone is talking about it; scientists have been warning people about it for decades; environmentalists are up in arms; and nothing is changing. One of the biggest downsides of fossil fuels, apart from the fact of their limited supply, is the amount of pollution caused by their use. With the planet already groaning under the weight of the effluents put into the earth, air and water by humans everyday, the last thing the human race needs is more pollution.

The world over, and definitely in India, there is precious little attempt being made to find or create alternative sources of energy. Some countries have tried their hand at harnessing renewable sources of energy, like solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal power, but most have been very backward in this regard. In India, the few attempts at moving away from river valley projects and thermal power stations have been towards nuclear power. None of it has been even close to adequate.

Vast tracts of the country are not even on the grid, while the areas which are, are grossly undersupplied. And things look all set to get much worse this summer. There just isn’t enough power to go around. Cities are getting bigger, but supply isn’t. Once power rich states like Maharashtra look forward to 4 hour power cuts a day in urban, and up to 12 hours a day in upcountry areas. And the situation can only get worse unless massive changes are incorporated. And nuclear power does not look like the answer. It’s expensive, dangerous to produce, and creates a lot of pollution, and it hardly ever works as it should!

Why, one wonders, doesn’t a country like India seriously consider alternate sources of power? Tropical country, with endless summers, enormous coastline, bays, constant winds, and huge amounts of sunlight, it’s obvious that India is the perfect candidate for extensive solar, wind and tidal power harnessing projects. There are large tracts of open but infertile ground where nothing grows, and there are deserts, both perfect locations for large solar power harnessing projects. More than half the year is summer, and temperatures often go as high as 45 degrees Celsius, with no end of clear skies and sunny days. In short, this is the ideal land for large scale experimentation with solar power.

Similarly, the long, almost endless coastline is perfect for both wind and tidal power harnessing! The mountain ranges, the ghats, run parallel to the eastern and western coasts, offering innumerable high sites ideal for windmill projects. These alternative sources are cheaper than the traditional sources in the long term, it is possible to produce them on a large scale, they are clean, and endless! A certain amount of initial investment, no larger than that for nuclear power stations, and you have renewable, green and efficient sources of power. Makes sense for a power starved nation I think. Why on earth doesn’t anyone take a serious look at this?

Chat Masala 2009

I am a chatter. It’s true!! On any given day, while I work, the one place I am also likely to be found, is in that wonderful, ephemeral thing called cyberspace; in one of those hundreds of wonderfully imaginary spaces better known as chat rooms. And, what’s more…….. I actually enjoy it! ( there goes my membership of the AANTEL club) 

 After years of intensive chatting, I have found a few common traits in the average Indian chatter that I find incomprehensible, and sometimes, downright weird. Here’s a list... First of all, what’s with the English? We, as a nation, have been learning English for… what? … 160 years? Today’s urban Indian watches English movies, goes to English medium schools and sits glued to English channels on TV. So how come most of us are still saying things like “will you do/make friendship with me?” and “I am proposing you for friendship”? Why, when I say my work is writing, do I get “means?” Not “what kind of writing”, mind you, not, “beg your pardon”, nor “what do you mean writing?”… Just “means?” or, even better “mean…” why do we still ask “what do your age?” or “what is yours good name?” is there something in our nature that makes us resistant to picking up correct grammar? Or is it just the system? None of these people are either uneducated, or from vernacular institutions. I am talking about engineers, MBAs and doctors who have done these courses after spending a good part of their life in English medium schools!!!!!! Even if terrible English is not nearly the worst thing I keep running into on chat, it does leave a really bad taste in my mouth. I enjoy language; love the nuances, the delicacies, and the intricacies of new tongues. And frankly it jars to see the state of English in modern, urban, educated, 21st century India. 

 And then, of course, we have the major opener “caste?” Now, as I have discovered, this can mean one of two things. They are either trying to find out your mother tongue, or your actual caste (God! The English!) Both of which, in my view, are unimportant even for one-on-one real-time-space acquaintance, let alone a casual chat on the net. What does it matter to some nameless, faceless entity on the net whether I am a Maharashtrian or a Gujarati or a Bangali? Even if it seems nice to know, from the point of view of say… finding a fellow Bengali on the net and speaking Bangla to them, should this be one of the first few questions to be asked? Why this intense need to label, mark and cubbyhole people? I have found, in my interpersonal relationships, that I may not even be aware of a person’s last name as much as 6 or 8 months into a friendship or acquaintance; let alone caste, or community. Not a problem, as far as I can see. In fact I think it helps me see the person better as an individual rather than a Marwari or Tamilian or something, which would, at some level, bring in all the stereotypes about that community that I may have received from media, movies, and common lore. 

 Also, why “religion?” This again is something that I would prefer not to interfere with my perception of someone. Or someone’s of me. And… what is worse… when I say I am an agnostic, or an atheist (I tend to say both coz I haven’t really made up my own mind yet) I get either another “means?” Or, even worse, “but what is your religion?” this latter flabbergasted me for quite sometime before I realised that the concept of personal belief is either non-existent or unimportant in this context. What I am being asked is what religious community I was born into. This too puts my hackles up. Again, being seen as belonging to a community, regardless of whether I believe myself a part of it, has too many stereotypes and received ideas associated with it that I would rather avoid. Most of us today, in my opinion at least, are not very religious anyway. Lack of time, lack of inclination or lack of faith… call it what you will. So, for someone who is a self avowed atheist/agnostic to be badgered about what religion they, or barring that - their parents, belong to, seems a bit excessive. Should this really be such an important factor in either life or chat? 

 Oh! And lets not forget that wonderfully subtle (not!) way of trying to find out the above things if a straight answer is not forthcoming. NAME! Yep. Big deal. I may say “Mickey mouse” three or four times in answer to successive, obsessive questions about name, and I still get “tell me your name” at which point I proceed to put the person on ignore and wonder if they are really so dumb as to not understand that I do not want to tell them my name. Another category of chatter will seem to take my non-disclosure stance in stride only to come up with “any problem?” This group seems unable to comprehend that one may wish to remain anonymous simply because… If you do not tell them a name (any name will do, coz a made up one is just as good in the e-world) they behave as if you have insulted them horribly and start to say really stupid things like “you don’t trust me?” (Duh… I don’t know you from Adam, why the hell should I trust you? Not that that is an issue here) or “I am so bad that you can’t tell me your name also?” (Two things buddy; where the hell did that come from and where the hell did you learn your English?) If, surprise surprise, I do tell them that my name is Jia, we have an immediate “surname?” (Of course this question may come as any one of the following -- sirname, sarname, title etc) Another major problem for my fellow chatter arises when I say that Jia is my full name, that I do not use a last name. At this point we have a repeat performance of the religion thing with either incomprehension, or insistence. It is not only incomprehensible, but seemingly impossible, in the Indian chatters mind that one may choose to give up one’s last name (coz how can anyone not have a last name!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). They insist on knowing what one’s parents’ last name is, again in an attempt presumably to categorize one into religious, caste, and language/community cubbyholes. Or better still, they start to sympathise. With what? With the massive family tragedy that has driven such a rift between me and my father. WHATTTTT?? WHAT bloody rift? What tragedy? Well, since I have dropped “my father’s surname” I must have either been disowned by them or disowned them myself…obviously! Of course why my DAD has to be identified only by his surname I have no idea…he is DEBASIS as far as I am concerned. The surname he still carries is just a tag that tells people his language, religion, community and caste. I don’t believe in tags…its as simple as that. 

 Well. Identity out of the way, what do we talk about? Hobbies of course! So, what are my hobbies…. Lets see now, writing, I suppose, although that’s more like a calling than a hobby…. And, I suppose, books, music, movies, people, art, cooking, photography, etc, etc, etc. “people?” comes the question immediately. “Means?” If I was to be my own bitchy self I would say that PEOPLE means, persons in general; men, women, and children; human individuals collectively. A usual word for a group of human beings, considered collectively and without differentiation (according to the Reader’s Digest Universal Dictionary). However, at this point I am already despairing of this person’s grasp of the English language and do not wish to burden their puny minds. Conversation can now be brought to an end, as it would take too much time, money and effort to explain to them how “people” can be a hobby. So shall we talk about books? “Do you read?” I ask. Hoping against hope to hear a yes. BANG! I am hit by “I have finished my college” … hold on a minute. Back up the cart a little bit. What do you mean you have finished college? Do you mean to say that the only reading you ever did was curricular books? No! That’s not what they mean! They have just shown more evidence of that wonderful English that I was talking about, and equated my “do you read?” with “are you a student?” If you are lucky enough to find someone who actually understands the question, as well as gives a positive answer, you send up a prayer of thanks and ask “what do you read?” pat comes the answer, “newspapers and magazines” or, if you are really, really lucky “comics” or “Hadley chase”(spelt any which way except the correct one). To try and explain that that is not exactly what you consider a reading habit-- is, of course, a complete waste of time and energy. Camus, Kafka and Sartre? Greek and Latin. Even Patricia Cornwell and Arthur Hailey are usually unheard of; let alone Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. Move on my friend. 

 Music? Everyone listens to music right? Yep they do. “What kind?” comes the question. “Everything,” I say “except boy-bands and bubblegum pop.” Instead of starting a discussion about what I do like at this point, 90% will just ask, “why do you hate boy-bands?” and some actually say “They are sooo good. You should love them. Such lovely songs!” I didn’t ask you to hate them did I? So why are you trying to foist your love of them on me? I happen to have a different set of expectations from my artistes and my music. That’s all. And anyway, I have never been very fond of gender-identity-crisised young men singing soppy songs in irritating falsettos. Songs, moreover, which sound pretty much the same across albums as well as bands, and worse, are mostly covers of older much loved numbers by better artistes. Songs that do not speak to me of anything else that is important, except love, love, and love-- ad nauseum. More to life than just love, I have always thought. And that brings us to another cracker. The third question, usually (after “how are you” and “ASL please”) is “any boyfriend/are you married?” now I completely fail to see how this has any bearing on chat, unless you are in the room only to search for a suitable mate or a quick anonymous lay. Yet, they seem obsessed with marital or romantic status. Refusal to comment just isn’t enough. It is seen as a result of you being single which in turn is seen as a result of someone having given you a hard time and having made you go through bad experience. I love men. My closest, most valued friends, my dad, and my wonderful bro are all men. I’ve always gotten along well with them and always had good memories of my relationships. This however may not be something that I want to share with a complete stranger, about 45 seconds into a chat. On the other hand I do not enjoy the automatic assumption that if I do not bare my innermost soul, it means that I am a bitter, betrayed, cast-off spinster. I wish someone would please explain to me why this question is so important. 

 And then, there’s “do u have pic?” or in worse cases “do u have cam?” Try as you might, you cannot explain to them that you have neither and don’t want them either. “How can this be?” they wonder, “How can anyone come to chat without a pic or cam?” no is not a good enough answer. Then they want u to see their cams or pics. If u say you r not interested they take umbrage. It is useless to try to explain that you actually like the anonymity of chat. That looks are completely immaterial as you are not there to look for a groom, only to find another human being with half a brain that you can talk to. That all you are there for is a conversation. Maybe a little mental stimulation if you are lucky. “Stimulation? Ok good. What is your figure/vital statistics?” whoa! Hold on there! Where did that come from? Then, one realises that to these twerps, stimulation and titillation are synonymous. The idea of non-sexual stimulation is non-existent. Hence, at this point, it is wise to use the ignore function (thank god for small mercies!) again unless you want this to disintegrate into what is called “hot-chat” which is what they all seem to be after anyway. And if it is not hot chat then it is “can we meet?” Now, the thing is…… I’ve only known this person for something like 10 min (if that). How the hell am I supposed to decide if I want to meet them? Based on what? They could be a serial killer or a mass murderer for all I know! If you say you are undecided, a repeat of the whole emotional “am I such a bad person/ don’t u trust me” rigmarole recurs. And, this is a new trend, seems like at least 80% of the people in any chat room these days is looking for “sex chat/ hotchat/ roleplay/ cyber”. Wonder what THAT says about the Indian “culture” that our netas make so much noise about. Repressed, sex starved, and taboo ridden as we are, it is hardly surprising that the anonymity of a chat room brings all the perverts crawling out of the woodwork. I have taken to replying to a “hi ASL pls” with a “clean chat only pls”. This usually makes the more “sorted out” sort of hot chatters leave immediately, thank god for small mercies! However there are the persistent pervs…who will spend a lot of time trying to convince you to engage in sex chat. And being a mother and a “non virgin” automatically makes you an automatic target for daft dialogues like “since you are not a virgin why cant we engage in adult chat?” what’s the state of my hymen got to do with chat anyway? Sex is a communication of love between me and my man and I see no need to either discuss the details of my sex life with a complete stranger, nor to pretend to have sex with one! 

Why, after all this, do I bother to continue chatting, one may ask? Simple. For every 30 twerps I meet, and ignore, I end up running into one person who has half a brain and maybe some taste and (miracle of miracles) decent or good English. And of 30 of these, one or two may even challenge or interest me. Not bad for a basic destressing activity that I engage in while I work!

Why do people blog?

Blogs are huge these days, and not just in India. It’s actually a rarity today to find a person, who is net savvy, regularly online, well versed with the information superhighway, but does not blog. The question is what s the charm? Why this huge epidemic of blogging?

What is a blog anyway? Well, the word itself is a shortening of “web log”. This is a concept kind of like the personal blog, or the journal, a diary of sorts that one keeps to record their most intimate secrets and their deepest darkest thoughts. Of course, that just begs the question of why anyone would want to publish their deepest darkest thoughts and secrets on the World Wide Web for all to see. After all, the very basic principle of the personal journal or diary is that it is …Personal.

That’s the reason why diaries come with locks, and journals are hidden, even written in code sometimes! What you cannot share with anyone else, but don’t want to keep bottled up inside, is what goes into the log. This is the mundane, the horrific, the nightmarish, the blah, realties of your day to day life. From the head cold you had last week, to the major tragedy you are dealing with, your personal diary is where you store things that are either too boring or too horrible to pour into anyone else’s ears.

So what has changed with the advent of the internet? What makes anyone think that the world is interested in how many times a day they sneeze, or how much of what they ate today? And what on earth would make you put your deepest secrets, darkest desires, and worst tragedies, “out there” for anyone and everyone to see? There seem to be two distinct sides to the whole thing. First of all, there’s the basic human impulse that looks for validation. Everyone likes to think that the most mundane, uninteresting, boring details of their life are as interesting, gripping, and fascinating to others as a John Grisham novel.

So you write blogs about every teensie weensie little thing, and the miracle of the internet is such that there are actually people out there who will read it! And when these readers, who probably also blog about the boring details of Their lives, leave comments on your blog, it doesn’t only massage your ego and make you feel interesting, but also set up a kind of “mutual admiration society” of bloggers, which perpetuates the whole cycle, making everyone feel good in the process.

The other impulse is the impulse to unburden. Telling someone you know about something horrible isn’t always easy. That’s why counselors and shrinks were invented, because it’s easier to talk to a stranger about some things. If what you need to talk about is horrible, traumatic, or personal enough, even a shrink or a counselor might be too much. After all, you have to face them, see them, look at them before, while or after you talk. And that’s where the internet Really scores. After all, everyone is just a name…or a nick. Total anonymity. You nevr have to reveal who you are or know who your readers are, to unburden. You get the full benefit of the catharsis of telling someone, without any of the associated “knowing and facing” issues. That’s probably why blogs are so popular with so many millions of people worldwide!