THIRTY FOUR

Turning 34 tomorrow, the year that’s by gone by, which is my transition from 33 to 34 has been an extraordinary year in my life in so many ways both personally and professionally. Although I am ridiculously lazy, I am happy with what I have been able to do and experience in the last one year, there is always a scope for more. 

Was discussing with my friend Mohit last month that now we are touching mid 30’s, the kids who are passing class XII now were not even in Kindergarten when we passed out of class XII in 1998, Gosh we are pretty old, when we were in college we thought blokes at 34 are very old, may be I am, but I dont feel old enough unless I count the years, When I do count all the beautiful years I have lived I realize I wont trade my age for anything else in this galaxy, my years of struggle at work, bunking school and college, my numerous travels, my escapades with my friends, being pathetic in studies, loss of my dad, my marriage, everything happened at time it was destined to and fortunately I was able to mostly able to enjoy most of it.I am blessed with the best family, friends, colleagues and well-wishers one can really have especially the ones who are up there chilling with the gods.

 Each day teaches us something, it’s up to us to take out positives from that or no, most times we don’t but life keeps giving us hints on what are the right things to do.

My 33rd birthday last year was extremely special as Kabir was there in my life, a couple of weeks old as an infant and now he there in my life as a live wire that keeps us ticking and on our toes. A lot of people feel I am obsessed with my son and think about him more than I should, such people!!!! are right I say J.

Being a father for an entire year has given me more sense of achievement and fulfillment than anything else has ever given me. I never knew I could do the sort of stuff that I really do for him, stuff like making him sleep, entertaining him, playing with him, singing along with him, calming him down, giving him a bath & making him walk gives me more smiles and pleasure than any electronic interaction over the internet ever gave me. You do become baby focused when you become a father, they were right.

If there were two things I would want from life at the moment, was to watch my dad play with my son and to be motivated enough to learn how to cook.

If there is one thing I would like to do before I turn 35 next year is maybe to ensure with me he does not need his mother or his grandmothers around.

I must thank god for being very kind and doing what is best for us, for giving us sanity, wisdom to do the right stuff more often than wrong.

Great day , enjoy my birthday and each and every day 

14/11/2014

OUTRAGE( EOUS) , Bane of the internet :(

Internet  outrage is the new war that we are all fighting, some negotiating it and some actually inflicting it without even knowing what effect it can really have on us and the anonymous person we are communicating with.

It is known, that  when we are alone our behavior would be natural, when we know no one who knows us can see us, we can behave like we really want to. It is because of this that many of us sing in the bathrooms, dance while driving, fart freely in our work cabins and cheat in exams if there is no risk to be caught.

Internet or social media is an extension of ourselves and while its far ahead in being good than bad, but a disturbing trend being observed lately is of excess bullying, abusing and intolerance on the internet. The point is that  my identity is known on facebook as its mostly friends socially that I am in contact with,  so my comments on any post or photo are pretty moderate, but when I am commenting on a group where I am just a profile, which is full of people with similar interests and maybe passions but are not known to me in person, I can turn into some sort of an unreasonable knuckle head and criticize unreasonably any person or view , because I would never have to really interact with any of them in person so no chance of social embarrassment in real life

With anonymous identity ,Where I find it nice is when people develop guts to flirt with the opposite sex, or women are able to speak their hearts out and express themselves on twitter, arguments can sometimes turn really ugly and any cute woman can suddenly become a “ b*t**” and some sweet guy become a “ b**ta**” . I might never have the strength to actually interact with the opposite sex, internet gives me that strength and also gives me the power to abuse what / who I really like.

On the internet nothing is mentioned in isolation, If I say “ SRK is good” then I mean Salman Khan is bad, if I say"BJP is good" then it means Congress is bad, if I say Barcelona is good then it must mean Real Madrid is bad, which can be fair, but if you are in the opposite camp and you come across a passionate and a very free troll you have had it, he/she would keep sending you links and photos on his argument( selectively) until you agree to it. Such arguments do little more than being counter productive.

Abuses on the internet is also because of lack of knowledge( literary or otherwise) of most users, if I don’t have an argument strong enough, I abuse to shut the person down, the other person might abuse back then I increase the degree of abuse till the other person backs down.

Internet is also repetitive in arguments, same arguments get shared again and again as more often than not there are no arguments, because we got to remember that we don’t live in a perfect world and no right is fully right and no wrong is fully wrong its how we would like to believe it.  “ SRK hams” “ Congressis suck Gandhis” “ Modi killed Muslims” I mean come on, these arguments are so repetitive that twitter sometimes has hashtags for them.

One more trend today is collective outrage against businesses expressed on the internet, if on a foodie forum one person has had a bad experience in a restaurant, he will ensure that he would try and ruin that restaurant forever and its possible, with negative news spreading like wildfire and people being in love with collectively dissing entities and people together, ganging up in most cases, any defence by the business owner in that case counts for nothing and his business can be decimated in a day for an error that can occur at times with anyone. The fact is that there are firms doing this business of sabotage as a part of their key activities.

I would like to believe that my football team is the best and anyone disagreeing is usally a loser, same holds true for almost any choice we have from our school, our rock band, favorite films etc etc.

Sadly not just teens, but people in 30’s like us are victims or perpetrators to this, atleast I often get into arguments with people and feel good to shoot them down, maybe not with abuses but I would like to have my word top every argument, obviously I am not abusing or doing it as a part of any plan or scheme but it is in me and it is in all of us. I got into this habbit especially during the time of elections when my views were strong and anyone opposing my view had to be shunned down, after the result of the election was in our favor I did ridicule the others subtly and shame on me for doing it.

While internet is certainly the integral part of our lives, every strategy has a cost and internet gives you the power on your screen and then as we all know “ with great powers come great responsibility”.