#BlueWhaleChallenge: An Unworthy Cause for Death

I have spent one goosebumpy hour online reading about the Blue Whale challenge! We are inundated with so much info on an everyday basis that it is hard to keep up. We are vaguely aware of a lot of things around us. But then it's hard to ignore when something comes closer home. Someone I know has had a death in the family in a very blue whale style though investigations are still on. But something like this set me and the spouse thinking and we really sat up to read about it. And the details are gory, depressing and scary, to say the least. Writing this post is as much a catharsis for me as it is to try and put together information about this accursed game that's driving teenagers to end their lives - for no worthy cause.

What is the Blue Whale Challenge? 

The Blue Whale Challenge - simplified here - is a 50 day challenge where the curators of the game assign one task each day - all of them self destructive in incremental degrees. The last task is to end one's life. Sick, isn't it? Now, who's the brain behind this amazing shit? Phillipp Budeikin is the mastermind behind this game who confessed in court, when arrested for the suicide of teenage girls in Russia, that he was just "cleansing society" by getting rid of "biological waste" Although there are more admins apart from him who run this game for teenagers.

It is established that the most vulnerable stick around beyond the first few tasks. And the admins use psychological manipulation to goad the players on since they know that those who continue are weak victims. One boy who was saved from ending his life described his experience. He vouches for the pressure one feels and is compelled to carry out the orders. If you look at the list of tasks - which makes me all knotted in my stomach - you'll see that the task for Day 30 to 49 is waking up at 4.30 am and watching scary videos that the curators send to the players. Day 50 is to jump to your death in the wee hours of morning. And I don't think it is hard after this onslaught of destructive material to get a sleep deprived, confused teenager to fling to his/her death!!

Why teenagers?

Well! There's been a 13 year old who was found dead and the Blue Whale screen was open on his dad's phone!! You be the judge! Psychologists vouch for the fact that this demographic is the most vulnerable.

“It has been observed that some teenagers have very low self-esteem, and rely significantly on peer approval. For them, the external environment becomes a source of inspiration, which is why they are willing to do anything to (project) a certain image,” said Sameer Malhotra, director, Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, New Delhi.

There can be more reasons like rebellion, lack of focus and interest, boredom, curiosity and teenage angst to drive them towards such games which can seem thrilling.

Why is it hard to ban it? 

Like everything else on the internet, it is hard to contain even this dangerous thing. Here are a few reasons why it is hard to ban it - ban the blue whale challenge - and also a list of the tasks involved. Be alert and the lookout for anyone who might be carrying out these to catch up with the symptoms.

Why is this so twisted? 

Let's cut the chase and come straight to what can we do? If you have kids, especially in that age group, this threat is real!! And I might sound a bit stern here and I am willing to incur parental wrath for this. Before I go on to actual steps one can take, one thing that baffles me is that no one in the family or social circle notice anything amiss with these kids. The task list is life altering even for a mature adult. I can't imagine a teen-year old person going through it and be normal. Some kids were using the parents' phones to play it. (The case of the 13 yo testifies to this) What kind of parental supervision would that be after giving kids the power of technology which can turn fatal in ignorant hands?

The first thing I'd blame is the unrestrained access to internet and gadgets that kids have today. Yes, one needs to keep up with the times. But if it is at the cost of those every kids, I think it is time to think again, reassess what we want for our kids. Teenagers are confused now more than ever. There is just too much going on and the pressure to keep up is immense. And what better than to play a game on a dare that all their friends are playing too! This can be their golden chance to prove to everyone they are worth something. Self esteem issues taken care of!

What signs to look for?

The challenge lasts long enough and has enough self destructive tasks that I don't think it can go unnoticed. Here are a few signs to watch out for:

Cuts on the body
Waking up at unearthly hours
Isolation
Being cooped up in one's room
Increasing secrecy
Silence

What can we do?

When there's chaos around the best thing to do is to simplify. And good old times where members of the family sat together for meals and caught up with each other. Internet free conversations between people who should know whats happening in each others' lives.

Find constructive, offline activities for teenagers. This is a time when they can develop precious life skills like speaking, writing, painting, photography, cooking, calligraphy - there is no dearth of hobbies one can develop interest in.

The times of autocratic parenting are over. Kids respond better to friends than controlling parents. Keep track of what your kids are upto. Look for the signs, just in case. Keep an eye on their online activities. If they get the validation and confidence they need from parents, they wont look for it elsewhere.

Teachers at school have an equal responsibility in guiding the young. Parents and teachers should actively read up on what affects youth so that they can help curb such things. Peer pressure begins in school and is the best place to get addressed.

The self esteem of kids needs to be collectively raised. Giving up their life for an unworthy cause is just insane. They might as well fight the enemy at the border and die a martyr. Find the right means to channel their boredom or sense of worthlessness. There are countless worthy causes one can devote time to - 50 worthwhile tasks coming up in the next post.

Cybermum, who creates awareness among parents about cyber threats to teens and suggest ways to keep them safe online, has the following tips

This should be the top item in the parental To-Do list. Educate a child before handing him/her an internet-enabled device. And monitor. https://t.co/hmSh4adGnP

— Cybermum India (@Cybermum_India) September 21, 2017

1) Practice both real & remote monitoring (parental control app)
2)No phones in bedroom
3)Digital detox hours
4)Limited internet data/timing https://t.co/T1jjsXGitK

— Cybermum India (@Cybermum_India) September 21, 2017

Every time I blame technology for why kids grow up so soon in today's times, I have parents defending the role that online access plays in making kids smarter. If you ask me, I'd prefer a dumb kid who's alive than a smart, tech savvy kid who is....

For now, my heart goes out to the parents of this teenager who died yesterday. They must have brought the little one in their arms and 17 years later carried him out on their shoulders. A burden that will never lighten - not in this life time! We live in hard times and pay dearly for it. But I am confident that this can be prevented. We all need to be aware and take steps that are in our control. Read up, spread awareness, be alert.

Have you met the intimidating species called The College Kid?

The tech generation! Photo Credit

If you look around you, you won't have to try hard to find this species. In fact, if you pay attention, you will find them everywhere. This species is typically young, usually phone in hand, staring at a screen, fingers typing furiously. And you are in for a surprise if you are fooled by their age and think you have the advantage! They are suave, self assured, well-informed, worldly wise and can toss all your life experience out of the window in no time. 

They are the cellphone generation. They are the products of their times. They are social media fanatics. They are tech geeks who can twirl technology on their finger tips and make it obey their commands. Barely out of college, they are already entrepreneurs, bloggers, volunteers at hyped events, lovers, exes and what not!  They foray into the world of grown ups with as much ease as they traverse the world of their dreams. They know what they want to be. And they also know if they don’t know what they want to be. And they are comfortable in their skin. 

While we struggle to keep the anachronistic notions of our times alive - sleep on time, finish your studies first, don’t waste money, life is hard work, success is not about money, no romance in school/college, beware of the opposite sex - they are busy rewriting rules they want to live by. They have taken huge strides towards fulfilling their dreams and college education is incidental to their plans. They have boyfriends and girlfriends at an age when we were clumsy kids barely able to manage ourselves. 

I don’t know whether it is technology or the zeitgeist of the times that has borne this brilliant generation that is well equipped to glide with the fast paced, maniac speed of the world today. Their brains work super fast. While we try to figure out the new fangled technology and pace of information online, they are completely clued in. And we just about scramble to keep pace with them. 

I surely feel intimidated by this new crop of geniuses! But no matter how dwarfed I sometimes feel by their enormous talent, it is heartening to know that the future of our country is in the hands of these wiz kids. Well equipped to stay with the times, they have just made life easier for themselves. I feel as long as they have the basic value system of respecting women and elders and being ethical in their dealings, our job is done. They are a generation exposed to the good and bad of the world. And a little hand holding is sufficient to ensure that they will change the face of the world for the better!

Technical triumphs in the blogging world!

While i was bouncing ideas in my mind about the topic of my next blog post, i thought why don’t i write about the adventure i have embarked upon on blogging itself. i have been wanting to create my online presence for quite sometime now. To be honest, it’s been exactly 6 months since i sat down chalked out how i’d like it to be. i have never promoted myself as a trainer and i thought it would be a good idea to start a dedicated blog and connect it to my social networking presence. So far so good.

But as long as it had to be planned on paper, all went well. But when it came to actually doing it online through the maze of features, widgets, plug-ins on blogging websites, the mind just stopped working. While the plan was clear in my head, putting that into practice was a challenge for a non-technical person like me. So as i was procrastinating on this worthy goal, i was also looking for someone who could help me start off and tide me through difficult times when i would get stuck with technology. i got a lot of quotes ranging from 4 to 5 figures depending on whether it was an individual or a web designing company.  None seemed to understand my unique needs and had standard quotes for standard services offered. 

So, after a lo-hot of postponement and genuinely busy times, this month seemed to be the best to finally get down to it. But i still hadn’t found the right person to help with trouble shooting when I required. Twitter to the rescue again. Lots of retweets and responses later, i came across a computer engineering student interested in blogging and social networking even though the university syllabus does not cover it. 

Enthusiastic and knowledgeable, as i realized in our first meeting, he initiated me into the world of Wordpress. He set me on track and was also willing to teach me things so that i was empowered to continue blogging, add pages etc. i wanted to first migrate my current blog from Blogger to Wordpress for practice. But i wasn’t convinced with the suggestion that we copy and paste each post and comment individually on to Wordpress. So i just let that be and asked him to take me through the labyrinthine ways of wordpress on the new blog i had registered. He got me through some of the basics, there are lots of them, and asked me to do a couple of things before he could help me further. 

i did not find time to do any more research for over a week after that. i finally sat down to watch tutorials and read articles on various aspects of blogging websites and their features. As i had suspected when i got huge quotes from companies, it’s all there on the web! It’s just about people who know it well and people like me who need to spend a lot of time figuring things out on my own. And since my website or blog is going to have content that i have and I do not want someone else putting it online for me, it has to be more of me spending hours looking up things and doing them on my blog. 

The real moment of triumph came today when i looked at another Blogger blog and found that it was similar, in some ways, to what i was trying to do. So i went around the internet experimenting with Blogger first. And lo! i actually created tabs on my blog!! i know it might not seem like a great thing for seasoned pros at blogging. But for a novice like me this was no less than an achievement. i don’t understand much about widgets and plug-ins but neat tabs on top of a blog always attracted me. i secretly wished i can have that on my blog someday….and here it is! 

So here i am celebrating my little victory and hoping to be a pro on WP someday too, mastering one bit at a time. 

PS: Why is technology so complex?

Manners maketh a man!

Given the changed times today, everything about the way we function has changed. Technology rules our life and i am particularly disturbed about the way it affects children born in the last decade or so. Compared to my childhood, it has become increasingly difficult to retain the attention spans of kids, thanks to a million distractions, most of them as addictive as technological gadgets.

No, this post is not about the ill-effects of technology on the younger generation. Reams must have been written on it already. Even in the context of today’s times, i strongly feel some values/habits are the bedrock of a person’s personality and can not be compromised irrespective of what times we live in. It can be challenging, very actually, to inculcate these in kids today given their exposure to a totally different world from mine. mostly full of bad influences for those young minds. Here are the timeless values that, i feel, are important to become quality human beings:

Good Manners: Respect for elders. Obedience. And generally doing things the way they should be done. i know this sounds really last century, but my general observation is that today’s kids have a mind of their own and they just have to get their way. i am all for democracy in relationships, but there is a fine line between putting forth your thoughts and putting your foot down on your elders’ views. i know we cant get good old times back but it’s about embedding respect for others as a life long trait. This is helpful not just in personal life but also in professional life later on.

Social skills: i recently visited someone’s place for dinner. The host’s daughter, a teenager,  came in shyly, said hello and that’s it. She was all awkward after that. i think it is important that children be able to conduct themselves with confidence in social situations. So whether it is being able to handle guests when parents are absent to holding a decent conversation is a must. Even in real life, i have realized, success has more to do with how confidently we are able to connect with people and get along rather than about academic excellence.

Reading: This is a very personal favourite habit where reading has taught me so much. It has helped me fill a lot of empty hours with writings that took me to vicarious romance, travel and knowledge of different worlds. For children, the advantages of reading can be endless. Apart from improving language levels, children can enjoy reading their favourite stories and build their foundation to reading more interesting books through the future years. Parents abroad make it a point to read to children before they go to sleep until kids can start reading on their own. That’s their way of inculcating love of the written word.

Hobby: Depending what the skills a person have, the children should always be encouraged to indulge in some kind of hobby in free time. i know someone who’s going to be out of college in some time and is totally lost in her free time. It’s either general browsing n the internet or just lazing around. When i suggest reading, the reaction is “Ehh! Thats boring”. The hobby could be painting, reading, music - anything that serves the dual purpose of adding to a person’s personality and positive channelizing one’s free energies.

Limited technology: Keeping in mind the times we live in, i want to add that it’s very important to limit the amount children are exposed to technology. Gadgets can be very educative if used well, but more often than not they end up being used to for addictive gaming. This is indeed a great time to show them that the pleasure of reading a real book is so much better than an ebook. This applies at least till the time children are grown up enough to use their own discretion in the use of technology.

You may or may not agree with my list. Feel free to add your own!

My Bhaaji wala in my ipad!

Who would have ever thought that onions and potatoes could be bought at the click of a mouse in the comfort of one’s home? That the ubiquitous bhaji wala and the friendly neighborhood grocery store would converge into your computer? Neatly lined stacks of products from all categories. Widest possible choice. Shopping at the convenient time of your choice. And much easier to pick up and dump in your trolley. Just click! It’s heartening to notice (which i did recently) that something as mundane as grocery shopping has gone online and so smoothly!

Even though it is a very convenient way of quickly finishing an otherwise time consuming task in a woman’s life, i have mixed feelings about online grocery shopping chains.

First the good. There are a lot of such websites to choose from. Popular ones include bigbasket.com, Nature’s Basket from Godrej and (newly discovered today) localbaniya.com. And you can find pretty much everything you would in a full fledged supermarket. Sometimes more! So rest assured that shopping online for groceries isn’t some new fangled gimmick for a privileged social strata. But very housewife-friendly activity that can get you the most mundane of articles required in your household.

Online shopping also saves the huge trouble of having to lug the monthly supplies to your car to carry them home. Or worse still, like in my case, find an auto rickshaw and put all of it into the vehicle and then carry it to my apartment up the stairs. Too much hard work, that.

Now, the bad. Despite all these good points, i still have a few pretty strong reasons why online shopping doesn’t really work for me. (In fact, i placed my very first online order only today and i am waiting to see how my experience goes when the supplies arrive tomorrow). Utility of online shopping aside, i think the very rush of adrenaline when you enter a supermarket and look around at neatly stacked brand new items on aisles is replaced by nothing. The joy of personally picking up items, turning them around in your hand and reading labels before you toss them into your basket is totally lost with online shopping.

i am still willing to forego the tactile experience of the real shopping world if it wasn’t for my next two problems. Online shopping is really useful when you have the whole month’s supplies to order. It is not at all ideal to order a few things that might be out of stock along the way. You have to step out right then to get them from your local store. And i actually prefer the local store that’ll help me fill that in-between gap to jing bang of online shopping. And the last of my problems is related to this very time frame. The time slots in which they deliver aren’t usually when i want them to the stuff i order. If i order this evening, i prefer to have my it latest by tonight. And not having to sit at home at some random time slot the next day when they are available to deliver. So, for their time slots to work for me, i need to plan in advance so that my things arrive before the existing stock is over. And I am not sure it is possible to do that all the time.

So, online grocery shopping has is definitely a revolution in a county full of conservative shoppers. Yet there can still be more to improve it and make get skeptics like me into its fold. i am not suggesting that my suggestions be put to practice. i am just saying that even though the concept is great, it still doesn’t completely work for me.

Long live Internet!




PS: Just an update, since this post couldn't go live last night - It's 11am and my eggs and bread from localbaniya.com haven't arrived yet forcing me to have last night's leftover pizza for breakfast. Well, the slot ends and 12.30, so fingers crossed!

Back to books

i have always loved reading. i might sound crazy but the world of books fascinates me so much that its my secret wish to be able to read up all the books in the world! The excitement of looking forward to reading a book is unparalleled. i have read quite a few classics as a major in literature. But even after college, i always find reading soothing. It cuts me out from the real world and takes me into the world of the book and its characters, albeit make believe. It doesn’t matter whether the genre is fact or fiction, as long as it is interesting.

But as real life got busier, there has been less and less time to read. But i never forget to notice if i am not able to spare time for reading. i was thrilled when my husband introduced me to an ipad and had reading applications uploaded on it. Now i could read books on the move - even if i didn’t own an actual copy which would occupy space in my overcrowded apartment! It was a bonus that i could read before i went to sleep - my favourite time to read - with the lights off since an ipad is backlit. (i hate to have to get up and switch off the light just as i am blissfully dozing off reading!) i finished reading books i had from the Harry Potter series for the umpteenth time just to enjoy having something to read. In fact, it felt like such an ultimate thing in reading technology that i even learnt to download a software that could convert ant format of books to ipad format (epub). i felt like being a pro to be able to actually download software!!

Getting my own Kindle reader this year was another high point furthering the goal of reading regularly. Light, small, handy and less straining on the eyes since the screen is not backlit but has a matte finish to duplicate the experience of reading a book. i once again went berserk converting books to .mobi format to do justice to Kindle’s capabilities of holding about 5000 books in its tiny self. i have more books uploaded on it than have the time to read.

Somewhere between the ipad and Kindle phases, i discovered a library in the neighbourhood (it’s been there all these years, only i found it recently!) Bingo! All those books neatly lined had me salivating to devour all of them one by one! i found and finished the whole of Shopaholic series (and Sophie Kinsella books replaced J K Rowling books as comfort reading). i got to read books by Kareena’s dietician and her fitness expert (sharing some of the secrets behind her hot-bod) and the latest book by Malcolm Gladwell. i try to pick up a mix of fact and mindless fiction depending on what I feel like reading.

But somehow after the initial euphoria of owning devices that made reading easy and on the go, i seem to keep going back to real books of the library. Even when i am traveling, i no longer look forward to reading on Kindle. i’d rather take my library book along.

What happened there?

Well, i have realised that technology, however convenient it makes reading, can never replace the experiential kick of having a real book. The actual act of touching and holding the book, turning its pages softly, saving it from any scratches and creases- especially if it’s bought spending money- during the reading process, the pleasure of hitting the i-finished-half mark and turning pages to check how many more pages to go are incomparable and no reading device in the world can ever offer that. In fact, the lure of a book shelf in a store and the fragrance of brand new books is second to none. (i am not kidding! The next time you are at a book store, open a book at random and sniff deeply to take in the best perfume in the world!)

i don’t know if this feeling has anything to do with the fact that i spent the first 20 yrs of my life in the previous century and grew up in the pen and paper era. Being gadget-friendly is only an acquired behaviour.  On the contrary, teenagers of this century seem to be absolutely at home with their smart phones and reading/gaming devices.

Reading is a habit that was always encouraged when we were kids. It is one of the virtues that would help us in the future and books are a constant companion, we were told. There’s no harm in using technology to access knowledge. But i think losing an era where one could savour reading real books saddens me. i remember when British Council Library in Mumbai went online and shut its physical locations, one of my friends lamented that our kids might never know the joys of going through piles of books in a library to select a book. True, i am sure my kids, used to having Google throw up links to the exact book that they want in just miliseconds, will pull a long face at the tediousness of having to go through racks and racks of books in a library to find what one wants to read. But you know what, kids, that is the real deal!!

Quick trip down the memory lane....

When was the last time you looked up for a word meaning in the dictionary? You can take a minute to recall. Honestly, i don’t remember my last time!

i just finished reading a fantastic book on the craft of writing by William Zinsser. One of the important things, William says, a writer should do is to frequently dip into a thesaurus to find the exact word for a given context. i brought out my thesaurus to look up a word. And this is where my musing over the charm of the old world began. It was truly nostalgic to turn pages of a huge volume of Roget’s thesaurus and chant alphabets in my mind while looking up a word!

Wow! This is how i’ve looked up words all my life. i didn’t even realise when this wonderful habit of school days was replaced by online dictionary and thesaurus. It’s so convenient to google a word and look at the limited meanings a website chooses to throw up. For me, it’s simply ‘right click’ and ‘look up word in dictionary’ from the set of options that show up on my Mac. It suffices for the current need and i move on with my writing. The transition from holding words in my hands to mechanically hacking away at the keyboard, just because it is quick, seems to be so seamless.

i guess it’s the same with reading. We have become prolific online readers. Carrying a book is passé. Welcome wi-fi-enabled cellphones, ipods and other devices equipped to let you read any topic under the sun on the world wide web. The latest - Online Library - will ensure that the next generation gets to see libraries only in museums! Thankfully, online reading isn’t very appealing to me. i can’t spend hours online wading through the tangle of links. i still miss my books and go back to them often. In fact, feel guilty that i don’t read regularly enough.

i don’t think i need to even invoke personal touch of the snail mail lest i get carried away too far and you guys decide to bypass my memory lane. Though it does seem incredible now to think of having written reams to my best friend in college days. Hah! Just pick up the phone today and talk to her wherever she is! Simple! From entertainment to academics to business, technology has pervaded all!

Technology is great but are we losing the fun and innocence of the old world? Is it so difficult to occasionally tune the radio to our favourite channel? (I don’t mean the FM in your mobile phone, silly!) Or just log out of the websites, switch off your laptop and go talk to your neighbour. At least find out who lives next door. Pullout snake and ladder and roll the dice.

Or just look up the dictionary!

Men Vs Women

WOMEN SHOP: i just loooove going around the mall because it's so nice to look around. i don't intend to buy anything. Wow! That blue scarf looks so nice, let me check out more of those.

30 minutes later - none of these scarves are worth buying, i think i'll buy that green shirt. Bhaiya, can i see more colours in this pattern? Show me that red one and the blue one also. Does that jacket go with this?

20 minutes later - How much for this peach one, bhaiya? 200 rupees?? That's very costly. i won't give that much. i'll give only 100 rupees. No? ok forget it! i don't think i like any of them. Will try some other shop.

Passing through a purse shop - i really don't need a purse but there's no harm going and looking at the stuff.

40 min later - i can't believe i got such a good deal on this purse. Wait till i show this to Sheela and make her jealous. i think i should try and look at some junk jewellery now. Since i have come all the way i might try somethings out.

MEN SHOP - Walk into the shop. Head to the desired section. Pick up the desired colour. Try. Buy.

WOMEN TALK: You won't believe i went out shopping yesterday and there were these lovely shirts and i couldn't decide which one to buy at all and this shop keeper showed me so many colours but i wasnt sure so i went and bought a lovely purse instead. In between, i actually wanted to buy one of them but that bhaiya said such a high price that i said forget it. You know i tried this new face wash and it really makes my face look so soft and nice, i'll show you when you come to my house. i have so much work to do at home and just not enough time. What did you make for lunch today? i just made $@%^& because it was so boring to cook today. i am planning to order food from outside for night. A new restaurant has come up in our area, have heard that it is good. You know kids are so happy to eat outside food now-a-days. So i don't mind ordering food because kids means so much of more work that i dont get free time at all to chit chat with anyone, not even with my husband. Today i thought i'll clean my room because its been so long sincei did it that i can't find my things anywhere. Oh btw, did you watch the latest episode of &#(*^ what a big twist in the story! i feel so sorry for urvila, i don't know how she's gong to manage now....

MEN TALK - So how was office today? i am fine. Working towards meeting my targets this year. The markets are so slow. Let's catch up for a drink someday after work.Whatsay?

WOMEN GET TOGETHER: What a lovely saree you are wearing Mrs. Garely! i bought mine from this store in the downtown that has only imported stock. My husband says no local shocal stuff for us. He is going abroad tomorrow and get me imported perfumes from there. Tomorrow i am going to my aunt's house, arre the one who lives in T nagar because she is celebrating her 60th birthday. Oh you should see her the way she dresses up. She just doesn't want to accept that she has grown old. She spends so much on her clothes and make-up i wonder from where she gets all the money. She has so many servants and my bai here does such sloppy work. i told her that if she doesn't work properly i'll kick her out and get someone else in her place. So many girls are available now-a-days. Is that real diamond, Mrs. Dido? oh Solitaire! i like diamonds only from Amsterdam, real diamonds you know. My boss is such a B**** .....

MEN GET TOGETHER - Wonder where our country is heading to with the kind of politicians we have! We have no action plan to fight the recession. Our travel budget has been slashed by half. We can see any hope only if $#@%^ party comes to power. We need young people like Obama to come to power. Btw, i read about this really advanced version of a radio today. It can not just play your ipod and FM channels but also has a remote you can operate it with.

WOMEN UPSET: i just don't have enough clothes to carry for the picnic next week. i also need to buy a matching nail paint with my new dress. $#@$% has such a lovely pair of boots and it suits her also with her slender figure she looks like a chick and all the men must be drooling looking at her. Oh God! i got a fresh pimple last night and i have no clue what to do tomorrow for the get together of our colony society. It should not be too much of a problem because there are going to be only lots of aunties with flabby waists and i can show off my new dress and take their attention off my face and the damn pimple. i also have to go the parlour tomorrow for my facial appointment and waxing i already look like a chimpanzee with hair all over me....

MEN UPSET - i missed the match on TV. 

Back with a Bangg!!

Deep into the bottomless pit. Without any source of light. No window to the outside world. Waiting for someone to find me and get me out of there. Futile attempts at scratching the dark walls around in an effort to free myself of the nightmare but all in vain. Mouth wide open trying to snatch as much air as I could but for vague reasons air dint seem to reach the depths. Just going round and round within the confines of mournful existence. Living in the reality of hopelessness...

And then my saviour with a click of a switch restored glowing brilliance of light into my life. i could see light and connect with the world around. Oxygen rushed into my lungs giving me a new lease of life. i was suddenly unfettered and free to do what i chose to. And....and....then i realised my life had no meaning without my internet connection!!!!

My computer seemed only a box fit enough to watch movies and that’s it.... It had life but had lost it’s soul... i could put it on and but had nothing to do with it. The modem decided to act up just when my knight in shining armour (read my husband - in absolutely mundane terms) was away. i couldn’t check mails, log onto Facebook or write my blog!! It was like i could think of all important things to do online just then! And a nut that i am wen it comes technology, i made umpteenth hopeless and fruitless visits around the cables to figure out the wires that to me seems to send out internet signals by magic. But all i could find were plugs for the printer-cum-fax machine, modem, wireless port, telephone adaptor, table lamp, radio....phew and a couple of other things maybe. And wires emanating from all those sources of modern conveniences all over the place! And how would poor me figure out what the hell was wrong.

While i was ‘down under’ trying to set things right and undo the tragedy that had befallen me, my knight told me to simply switch the modem off and then on!!!! And lo! the internet buzzed into life! Gawd! Technology has strange ways of behaving. i can say that. And the astonishing grip that internet has on us is truly unbelievable. Moreso for me who’s become the owner of a laptop only a year ago and spent the better part of my life without computers and 24 hour internet access was a far away cry. As children, internet and computers were relegated only to the dominions of books and scientists. i was so excited when my sister decided to buy a computer in the late 90's. Reason - multimedia kit that she bought with it so i could watch movies and listen to music on it!!!! i got to use computers everyday only when i started working. And i wasn't really excited at the idea of being with them.

But today, the endless dalliance with my laptop takes up chunk of my day....and why me! It’s that way with most of us. How many hours in a day do we spend dawdling away reading stuff that others have written, scrapping friends on Orkut and Facebook, checking emails, forwarding emails, chatting with friends etc etc. Doesn’t matter whether we are lounging on our couch or in the middle of travel - technology has ensured that we have access to the cyberspace wherever we are!!!

Most of what we do online might not be educational or informational but we have to be online and stay connected! It just helps feeling so much better. And I know losing that connection even for a while can feel like losing a close bosom friend!!!! Hail Internet!!!