Marriage is for Masochits.

'nuf said.

Face It.

Facebook troubles me.

Once upon a time we were casual acquaintances, Facebook and I.
Our relationship was amiable enough. Not the kind of thing where you connect everyday, but when I did look Facebook up, it was always a pleasant affair. I caught up with old friends, photographs were shared along with general pleasantries. I don’t know if you remember, but back then, Facebook was a student thing. You had to be part of a school network and someone needed to invite you to join. I remember tracking my courses with Facebook, getting to know other students in my class, and even reading a few course related discussions. It was wonderful.

Then came that period where people sent each other things. From scuba suits to potato chips, random objects were flying through Facebook-occupied-cyberspace. It was entertaining for a bit. I must confess I am guilty for gifting multiple hatching eggs and at least three puppies. In return I received a hook, line and sinker. I have spent a few hours idling my time, figuring out which house I would belong to at Hogwarts; when the quiz results said Gryffindor, I gleefully displayed it on my wall. I nicknamed at least ten people and having no wheels of my own back then, I had three bumper stickers added to the messy mélange.

I would go so far as to say… back in the day, when I was a student …I liked Facebook.
Hence, I was part of the trends that changed Facebook from being the healthy social networking site it was, to the full-time distraction it has become today.

Today I find Facebook most disagreeable. Not just because I take issue with its invasion of privacy, I hate Facebook because of what it has done to people and relationships.

Recently, while playfully reprimanding a friend for not being in touch, she responded by saying,  “Dude I’ve been so busy!! I haven’t changed my status message on Facebook for two whole days.”
I rolled my eyes so far back into my head you could only see the whites.
Also, I did not think it was funny anymore.

This phenomenon isn’t uncommon though. Thanks to Facebook, we all live under the unrealized fear that we are constantly being watched. And guess what… We are!!
Whether we consciously acknowledge it or not, each and every one of us is spending a considerable amount of our time, energy, and creative resourcefulness to portray an image of ourselves online. This is usually followed by frantically refreshing the page to see if anyone has responded to my new relationship status, favorite quotes, hair color, what have you. Such strenuous idleness!

My simple question to you is, why does it matter so much?

Sure, we all like a little bit of self-indulgence. When we were kids we filled out scrap books for our friends writing out as neatly as we could, our favorite color, hobbies, songs and so on. When I think back, I think that process was an important part of growing up, because in our own juvenile little ways, we were trying to find and define ourselves through those pages.  We were trying to be funny, witty, coy or whatever else.
But aren’t we all grown up now?

Is it really necessary to add “not updating my status message” to your daily to-do list? If so, let me ask you, when was the last time you called your mother or your best friend?

I guess what I am trying to say is that while a lot of people can live on Facebook, I can’t stand it for more than ten minutes. Seeing as how I have turned blue in the face from condemning Facebook up until now, you might think I feel proud of myself for being abstinent.

If irony is your brand of humor, you’ll be in stitches when you hear this.

As far as my Facebook-ing capabilities go, I don’t feel holier-than-thou, instead I feel deprived.

My Facebook handicap makes me, in turn, the victim of a lot of eye-rolling and remarks like, “Whats wrong with you?? How could you not know that?? It was all over FB!!” Or worse, “Don’t you care for me anymore? I’ve put pictures up on Facebook for the longest time and you haven’t commented on any one of them!”

You don’t say.
It must have been after I spent those agonizing ten minutes, sifting through that ceaseless news feed, with its  excruciatingly detailed account of everyones activities.
Can’t imagine how I missed it.
Does this situation warrant a “Sorry” from me?
And what on God’s good earth is Farmville??!!

Somehow, the way the world is set up today, if you don’t live on Facebook, you’re just not alive. I can’t be sure my friends will email me or call me if something important is happening in their life, because they’re Facebook-ing about it to the whole world anyway. My aversion to Facebook means I miss out on their lives, which is why I feel cranky and constantly out-of-the-loop.

I honestly think that in an increasingly complex world, Facebook adds to the misery. It invokes all our frivolous tendencies and takes us farther away from doing things that matter. Like writing a letter, or making a phone call; doing something personal for one person or a close group of friends. It’s not too hard. Like I told my friend, “An email is merely a minimum of three status message updates rolled into one.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love that you can use Facebook to find people you might have lost along the way and even for the occasional shout-out. I love reading some witty little snippets, the videos some folks share are things I might never have discovered myself. Sometimes I read things that are outright educational and that makes me so happy. I also think Facebook is the easiest way to share photographs that are public-appropriate.

So while this might in parts sound like a tirade, it is not meant to be only that.  You could consider this a plea of sorts going out from me to you. A reminder that we should not forget the finer things… like phone calls and meeting up for coffee with our laptops out of the way.

I am not saying don’t Facebook. I am not saying Facebook is the scourge of our times.
I am saying go write a letter, go call someone. Log out and Hang out instead!

Just so you know I do Facebook. But on that really plump bell curve, I am at the far left backed up against the y-axis. Hence, do forgive me in advance for being socially awkward with this networking phenomenon.  If you poke, prod, write on my wall, knock on my window, cry through the lock or whatever, odds are I might not get to you immediately.

Send me an email though, and I’ll write you a song.

Bookworm

The first real book I ever read was written by Enid Blyton. While I don’t remember the title, I know this book was from The Blue Dragon Series: Books for Very Young Children. At the time, I was “six and a half and a bit.”

Up until then I read and re-read a well worn compilation of stories by the Brothers Grimm and Anderson. I had reached a point where I could recite their tales, one after another, without so much as looking at the book, making me sound quite like those cassettes which accompanied Read-Out-Loud books.

It was my dad’s idea to take me to Kings Circle so we could buy second hand books from the street vendors who sold them. He talked about it for days and each time he mentioned it, I got more excited. “There are so many books for you to read!” He said, “There’s The Adventures of The Secret Seven, and Famous Five, and the Five Find-outers.” He paused and recollected, “St.Clare’s, Mallory Towers.”

I remember being very impressed. He knew so much.

“Have you read all of them daddy?” I asked him.

“Yes, when I was a boy. My brother and I, we used to read a lot. Not Mallory Towers and St.Clare’s though, those are girls books,” he added, “But you can read those too.”

Gosh! So many books! I had thought to myself. I’ll be an old woman by the time I’m done reading all of them.

***

I remember the day we got on the bus headed for Bombay’s bustling suburb where I would finally get my first Enid Blyton. I could barely contain my excitement as I spent the bus-ride bargaining with my father.

“Will you buy for me five books?” I asked.

“Let’s start with one,” he said looking amused.

I was sorely disappointed for a few seconds but continued undeterred.

“Will you buy for me four books?” I asked.

“Let’s see how many they have.” He said.

Even back then I couldn’t argue in the face of logic, what if he had only one book. I sat and stared out of the window. I wondered if there would be princesses and evil step-mothers, witches and so on. Thoughts of the wonders those pages might hold kept me preoccupied as we got off the bus and walked towards the little store on the sidewalk.

I vaguely remember my dad talking to the vendor, asking him if he had any books for children, preferably by Enid Blyton. The man reached into a pile, dusted a book and handed it over to my father. It was blue and worn. The dog-eared edges straightened out from sitting snugly between other books in the pile.

I loved blue.

If the book was blue, it had to be wonderful.

I was sure of it.

I tried reaching for it as he looked it over.

“Wait.” I felt so impatient.

As he paid for it, I tried my luck once again, “Only one?”

“Yes. For now. We’ll buy you more when you’re done with this one.”

I remember us meeting my mother and possibly going to the Aastik Samaj Temple. But more than anything, I remember the bus ride back home. It was late and the buses were running fairly empty. I had my very fist book in my hand which I opened up to the first page and pretended to read.

It felt like such a fantastically important thing to do. Needless to say I didn’t read a single word, leave alone a line. That bus ride was all about posing with my book. All I did was revel in the glory of the moment and pretend to be all grown up. I had in my hands my first book, without ANY pictures.

I was officially a big girl.

Over the years, my father has bought me many wonderful things. However, that book was the best gift he has given me to this day. My first “real book without any pictures.”

***

The first story, in the first book without any pictures is one I have never forgotten. It was about a brother and sister called Jane and Henry, who ventured up a hill one afternoon where they discovered a magic shop. They went inside and bought some alphabet biscuits which the storekeeper warned them were magical, so they must eat them carefully. The little boy, who was more reckless than the little girl (an idea which agreed with my personal reflections on boys at the time) went ahead and ate three biscuits and promptly started sprouting feathers and grew a beak. He had turned into a chicken! His sister soon realized that the three biscuits he had eaten were shaped like the letters H, E, and N. Since they were magic biscuits, he had turned into a HEN! So what clever little Jane did was search through the biscuit bag and until she found two more biscuits. She made her hen-brother eat them, and voila! He was HEN-RY again!

I thought it was sheer genius. I went on about it for days, telling everyone I met the story of Jane, Henry and the Magic Biscuits.

There was no looking back after that day.

I read whatever I could, whenever I could. Books became my constant companions, my measure of time and maturity. To this day, every memory I recall, I associate with the book I was reading at the time. And the books dearest to me, have such strong identities. They smell different and feel different at my fingertips and in the palms of my hand. They often feel heavier and lighter than they appear depending on the power of the story contained within the covers.

Why many have been the times when I have felt like a complete stranger in a place and had my confidence restored only when I reached into my bag and felt the familiar edges of a book I have accompanying me.
It always feels like holding hands with a dear friend.

Books have determined who I have befriended and who I have loved. I have lived in them, gone to them seeking counsel, warmth, and reassurance. I have laughed and cried with them, and unknowingly memorized sentences spun by mesmerizing wordsmiths until their identity became indistinguishable from my own.

When I was a little girl I thought I would be an old woman by the time I was done reading all the books there were to read. Today I know the more you read, the younger you feel.

If we are the sum of our experiences, the greatest factor in the equation that is me has come from the books I read.

Uncertainty

I have no memory of life without uncertainty.

I was six years old when I experienced the first big change in my life. It happened on board the Jayanthijanta, a train that plied the route between Mumbai and Kanyakumari. My parents, grandfather and I were headed to Kerala for Diwali. When I got on board that train, I was certain that I would only get off it when I had reached my destination. I was also certain that I would get off with everyone I got on the train with.

I was six then, but I am absolutely certain that even if I had twenty more years to my credit, I would still have left that train with unsteady steps and buckling knees. My grandfather passed away on that journey. I didn’t see it coming, neither did my parents, and I am pretty sure my grandpa was not anticipating it either.

It wasn’t a dramatic demise. He merely lay down and closed his eyes, waiting for the train to roll into Jolarpettai Junction in Andhra Pradesh, the designated dinner station. He had told my mother he was hungry minutes before he passed away, so I suppose he was thinking about food when he breathed his last. Within the next hour, there was a doctor on board who declared him deceased. “Cardiac arrest,” he had said to my parents and with those two words, I was formally introduced to Uncertainty.

Today, I actually do have the aforesaid twenty years on the six-year-old I used to be. I also have crystal clear recollection of my feelings from that day. My grandfather was my whole world, and while many adults don’t give children enough credit for understanding things, I understood perfectly well what had happened. I knew he was gone and I didn’t feel sad. I felt like Hansel and Gretel might have felt when they were lost in the woods. I felt alone, confused and scared.

The entire experience left me acutely aware of the impermanence of things. I would wake up at night and crawl next to my mother and stick my little fingers under her nose to make sure she was breathing. Sometimes I would just shake her awake to be sure. As I grew older I tried to control everything around me so as to leave nothing to chance. Most of the time it worked, but my mind was constantly filled with dread, with caution; and when things did transpire how I wanted them to, my relief was only momentary before I moved on to trying to control the next thing.

If at this point you’re waiting for me to describe yet another life-altering experience that changed things around yet again, then there really isn’t one.

However, I will admit I was wearing myself down. In my efforts to not feel alone and abandoned in the woods, I was working myself into a whole different dark, thorny jungle of my own, complete with its own set of witches and sham gingerbread houses. I refused to look at the situation in fairness and accept that for all the unexpected downfalls, there were unsuspecting highs.

It was not an epiphany but logic which made me realize the two could never be separated – Life and Uncertainty. The first characterizing feature life acquires once conceived is uncertainty. Once I grasped uncertainty I started to feel vulnerable and through an extension of my vulnerability I started to feel alive.

Once I gathered myself enough to look uncertainty square in the face for what it is, I accepted that even at its worst, it really was not all bad. Understanding the impermanence of things made me cherish what I had. I looked after things I wanted to keep, if they were separated from me I learned to let go and wait for whatever else would fill the gaps. And through it all I grieved and laughed, dreaded and anticipated, lived and let life be.

None of it was easy of course, but I think I’m getting better at it with time

I really do mean it when I said I don’t remember a life wherein there was no uncertainty. I tried controlling it. I tried denying it existed. Until I reached a point when I accepted uncertainty for all the lows and highs that it brought into my life. After all, if you have to live your life with something, wouldn’t you rather look it straight in the eye, embrace it, and smile?