INGLORIOUS BASTARDS
The five lives we live.
Read carefully, it could be one of us.
PS: Spare me for the colors.
Life 1 : Real Life person for
Family & friends.
Life 2 : Real Life person for work
Life 3 : whatsapp version of one’s
self, whatever we do on whatsapp.
Life 4: projected image of one’s
self on social media and internet
Life 5: Ideal image of one’s
self that we want to be or try to be.
0600 hrs :
L-1 & L-5 : getting up
in the morning, cuddling up with the son.
L-2 & L4 : Taking updates from
the global markets, and wondering what will
happen today getting help from reuters and Bloomberg apps on your 128 GB Iphone
7.
L-3: Taking stock of all whatsapp
groups overnight, checking out statuses, responding to multiple posts.
L-5: Going for a run
L3 & L4 : updating people that
you have run so others can burn if they have
not, you ran only 3, but say you ran atleast 5, I mean who runs 3 km.
0800 hrs
L-1: breakfast for the day
L-2: Attempting to read the pink
papers alongside to say all the smart things when you meet clients or
colleagues today.
L-2: pretending to be busy to talk
to anyone as you are running late and not interested concentrating on the news.
L-4: You get a birthday reminder
of an old flame, and you wish right there and hope you get a response
L-5: You promise your son that
you will take him swimming in the evening, its summers afterall and I can come
back early.
L-5: Been a while, you promise
your wife a dinner at her favourite Chinese joint, you have not even celebrated
your anniversary properly.
0900 hrs
L-2 Login to work concalls, on
Bluetooth so you can use the phone for the internet simultaneously
L-3 & L-2: Markets opened, you
take stock of the opening trades, interact with others on whatsapp on how markets will pan out, you are proud you are member of
8 groups like it. You thump chest on one of your recommendations
L-3 : Gossiping on the college
groups cracking some jokes, sharing links from one group to another making use
of time in traffic.
L-2 : give some unsolicited advice on the markets
and handling clients to colleagues and attempt cracking jokes
1100 hrs
L-2
& L4 : client calls and emails, in between you realize you have not
paid your bills, you do it and then you get
a facebook notification of a friend traveling to US and forget traveling the
bill.
L-4: You login to makemytrip to
see how much it costs to get a ticket to NY and find it expensive, you like friend’s
photos in New York.
L-2 & L-4 : You get frantic
calls from a client about some errand you missed, you make an excuse and see that
the birthday wishes you made to your ex-flame in the morning is liked by her
and responded with a thanks, You spend the next 45 min to figure a good text to respond to her “ thanks “ , but
end up with responding with a “ smiley “ and “ Thmbs Up” , you check out her DP
and remember the good times together.
1200 hrs
L-2 & L-4 : Meeting clients, on
the way would make more calls to clients but end up getting on the facebook
group debate on the debate on Army’s
atrocities in Kashmir. You put down some 18 -30 year olds and feel awesome
about it, and forget about the client phone calls you had to make, anyways make
them in the evening when you think clients will be free.
L-3 : Plan for lunch with ex
colleagues on whatsapp, you say yes, while you carrying your lunch from home,
discuss the venue for lunch for the next 45 min, while the markets are tumbling
because of Bank of Japan announcements.
L-4 : You have a look at what
happened on the internet and make a note of informing clients about the sudden
fall.
1300 hrs
L-1 & L-4 : You postpone
your meetings by 30 min to accommodate friends and eat at a fancy place,
clicking pics of your food to instagram
later, you I phone 7 camera is awesome and you swell your chest with pride with
all the appreciation on Instagram with all the alerts.
L-3 : debate starts off on your
school group about your re-union, and you aggressively pitch for goa, you start
recommending ideas and prices, spend an hour convincing your friends.
L-2: Your client calls up, you are
late for your deliverable, you promise it will be done by tonight, you go for
another meeting, back by the night
1530 hrs
L-3 : Intelligent conversations in
one group are posted as your own in another so you seem smarter, good time to
recommend stocks you think.
L2 & L3: Recommend stocks to
your clients to be bought tomorrow, with some rationale on whatsapp, easy to
talk to many clients in one go, most clients
respond with an ok at best, they prefer a call , but you don’t have the time to
L-1 : You call for green tea in
office and chat with colleagues over it and in no time spend one hour in petty
office politics
L-4 : Your ex flame that you
wished on birthday says “ where is my gift ? “ You spend 30 min to figure as to
how to write something very smart and ultimately write a stupid “ A coffee with
me “ is your gift, you make a fool of yourself and you know it, you are upset.
1700
L-2 Client is now furious, You
promise him a detailed analysis of his portfolio, which he wants since the
morning, you spend 1 hour making it, and are still not even half way through.
You crib about the lack of support.
L-4: You get a notification on the
amazon sale, you think about buying the under armour t-shirt for running , but
end up buying some cufflinks and shoes for 10 k, you did not even need them.
1800 hrs
L-1 while your colleagues are
leaving, they ask you to join them for a drink, you think the client wont call
in the night anyways, shall, finish at home tonight.
1900 hrs
L-1 Drinks at a microbrewery,
You promise only one or two, but they are playing some Pink Floyd and you end
up having 4 drinks and tikkas and pizzas and mutton, bill 4 k per head.
L-4 Lots of pics for snapchat
and drink pics for facebook.
L-1 Your wife calls up to check
for swim for the son or for the dinner, you mention that you have too much work
and have a team outing you cant escape, but feel guilty so think about leaving
early from drinks.
2000 hrs
L-5 You head home and since you
have not kept your words, you show more excitement towards everything and offer
to take everyone for dinner if not a swim and offer to take your son swimming
the next day.
L1 & L5 : You say that you
had too much work and are really tired, your wife offers to order food at home,
and you say that’s a great idea, she
compromises on her wish for an outing to Monk for this, but then you promise to
take her out soon.
L-5 : You are nice to your wife,
offer to make her a drink maybe and sweet talk her to believing that you are
really busy
2200 hrs
L-2 : You have dinner and start the work
for the client, realize he has sent a stinker on sms, you are too tired to do
it with all the drink and food, you reply to him that there was a system error
and you would do it tomorrow. Client says ok
L-4 : You check out facebook to
see what anyone else is doing , and get into a heated debate on Dhoni vs Gilchrist
on a Cricket group that you are on, you take data out of google and wiki and
win the argument which lasted for one hour and had its fair share of hate and
outrage.
L-2 : You send some work related
mails late, so everyone thinks you working harder.
0000 hrs
L-1 You finally go to sleep by
reading a Micheal Lewis book , liars Poker, read for 10 min.
L-4 You make a quote from Liars
Poker as your status update
L-3 You also send the same quote on
your various whatsapp groups
L-5: You decide you will not
waste as much time tomorrow onwards and try to sleep
Next day GO BACK TO
TOP
Many of us live atleast 5 different lives each day,
destroying relationships, friendships, work life, fitness everything and in a
quest to do so much, we end up doing nothing.
I have taken an example of a man who is in my profession but
it could be anyone, social media interference of some 500-700 people that we
are engaged with at all times are increasingly killing each one of those lives
and there is a feeling of time passing too quickly for all of us and all of us feeling
very tired.
Those filtered faces on Instagram, those shared jokes and links
on whatsapp groups do more damage than Nicotine, alcohol or marijuana could ever
do, it is an addiction worse than caffeine and cocaine.
