I am allergic to press releases, or anything that shouts, “I am a press release”, which makes for 99.9 % of press releases. What also gets my capillaries bursting is calls from PR companies that start with, “I wanted to talk to you regarding my client XYZ ….who will be …..” Or this one: “We have sent you an invite for the launch of ___(random product or event) on ___ at ____which will be attended by ___ (list of random C-list celebrities). Will you be coming?”
Of course I won’t be coming. I have a life. I mean, give me a break. The least you can do is come up with a better opening line. But I guess lazy journalists will take anything that comes their way, which means PR companies will never go out of business — it’s a symbiotic relationship.
At the start of my career as an advertising copywriter, there was the era of the un-ad ad. There were a whole bunch of creative directors who constantly reminded us that the reader unfolds the paper to read news and features, not ads. Our competition therefore, was editorial content, not other ads. That was the honeymoon period for copywriters who dug body copy, like I did. Then the television boom happened and everything was about 30-second quickies. There was no room for print, and if at all, it was about, “We have to do a 100 cc ad. It has to include the client’s bio-data, his ex-wife’s photo, his dog’s name somewhere in the copy, his mission statement, his brother’s company’s logo and baseline and….”
I quit. I became a journalist.
Some days ago, I received this in my inbox. I would have blindly deleted it, just as I do every press release I routinely get, when the subject line made me stop for a second. It said ‘W.A.L.S: Women Against Lazy Stubble’, and I figured it could work as fodder for my column. (No prizes for guessing it was from a shaving products company). Now, forget the fact that I like my men with a bit of stubble and I am the one always asking the husband to go easy on the buzzing; it’s well, just more textural and if you may, alpha male. It briefly read:
For centuries women have spent hours grooming themselves to please men but that is changing. Women are now taking a strong stand against LAZY MEN AND THEIR LAZY STUBBLE. W.A.L.S is a movement that brings together all like-minded women who believe that it is about time men made a little effort to groom themselves and sport a cleaner and more confident look. Why should only the women make that effort? The founders of this movement are a group of young women who believe that EQUALITY should exist in all walks of life – including self-hygiene and grooming.
It went on..
“We would invite celebrities like Malaika Arora, Neha Dhupia and Mugdha Godse to be a part of an EXCLUSIVE story with your publication, where they can share their thoughts on topics such as….. and instances in their life where stubble proved to be trouble (with friends, husband, father, brother boyfriend, etc.)
I do hope there is an era of the un-press release press release. Meanwhile I can offer my services to PR companies looking to write them.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Lady killer
In the days of yore, one of the pre-tests to tell an instinctive cook from a laboured one was to see how one handled okras (lady fingers in common parlance, bhindi in more endearing ones). If you were the kind of person who chopped them and then washed them, out you went, scoring zero on ten. If you, on the other hand, rinsed the bhindis, laid them out on newspaper sheets, and gently dried then, nudging collective contact with the paper, you scored 7 on 10. And if you, like the more fastidious but rare breed, dried them one at a time with a kitchen roll, you scored a perfect ten.
Whatever the case, the mucilage is the bane of the bhindi’s existence…or its redemption, depending on how you look at it. For instance, while volunteering at WSD, boiled bhindi was commonly added to dog food and mashed, for those canines suffering from constipation—it always worked, even closer home for my cats.
One of the things I like about bhindi (apart from the fact that it is one of two vegetables that the husband likes) is the fact that they remind me of real people—they are thin, fat, tall, short, fair, dark, happy, grumpy, and seem to have faces… and their hexagonal contours seem to have an attitude of their own. Remember how in the craft class, the closest resemblance to people in a vegetable skit was Mr. Ladyfinger?
They always talk to me. Depending on their shape or size, they seem to say, okay, I have gotten a little corpulent here, so make sure you camouflage me well. Or, I am so tender and green, so please do as little as you can to me.
Personally, I like them thin and wiry, as I like my men. Also, like I hate disfiguring a perfectly good lady finger, I also like to eat them as whole as I can. So the traditional bhindi subzi doesn’t quite work for me, although being the seasoned Tam bram that I am, Vendakkai Pachadi is something I wish I had inherited from the parents. All my mother handed me down was a quickie yoghurt variant of it, which works pretty well, although the tamarind version is to be inhaled to be believed.
Bhindi raita (courtesy the mother)
Ingredients
Bhindi: 200 gm
Ginger, a medium sized piece, julienned
Jeera powder
Hing
Rai
Green chillies; 2, juliennned
METHOD:
Wash and dry bhindis. Chop them really thin and set aside.
In a non-stick pan, heat a tablespoon of oil, add rai, allow to splutter, and then a pinch of hing, and then the ginger and chilly juliennes and mix well.
Add the bhindi to this, salt to taste, and fry well on a low flame will crisp. Cool. Set aside.
In a bowl, whisk 250 gm of dahi to smoothen lumps, and add the fried bhindi mixture to it. Serve immediately as an accompaniment to rice or rotis.
Bhindi aloo with garlic (courtesy Manish, my sindhi foodie colleague)
2 large potatoes, sliced vertically
Bhindi : 200 gm, cut into 2inch pieces and then slit vertically
Garlic : 6-7 cloves
Green chillies: 2-3
Salt to taste
Method:
Peel the garlic cloves and slice the chillies and crush them with a bit of salt using a mortar pestle
Heat some oil in a pan and add the chilly garlic mixture, and then add the bhindis and aloo, salt to taste, mix well
Cook on a slow flame, stirring occasionally till well done.
Serve hot with chapatis or dal-chaval
Whatever the case, the mucilage is the bane of the bhindi’s existence…or its redemption, depending on how you look at it. For instance, while volunteering at WSD, boiled bhindi was commonly added to dog food and mashed, for those canines suffering from constipation—it always worked, even closer home for my cats.
One of the things I like about bhindi (apart from the fact that it is one of two vegetables that the husband likes) is the fact that they remind me of real people—they are thin, fat, tall, short, fair, dark, happy, grumpy, and seem to have faces… and their hexagonal contours seem to have an attitude of their own. Remember how in the craft class, the closest resemblance to people in a vegetable skit was Mr. Ladyfinger?
They always talk to me. Depending on their shape or size, they seem to say, okay, I have gotten a little corpulent here, so make sure you camouflage me well. Or, I am so tender and green, so please do as little as you can to me.
Personally, I like them thin and wiry, as I like my men. Also, like I hate disfiguring a perfectly good lady finger, I also like to eat them as whole as I can. So the traditional bhindi subzi doesn’t quite work for me, although being the seasoned Tam bram that I am, Vendakkai Pachadi is something I wish I had inherited from the parents. All my mother handed me down was a quickie yoghurt variant of it, which works pretty well, although the tamarind version is to be inhaled to be believed.
Bhindi raita (courtesy the mother)
Ingredients
Bhindi: 200 gm
Ginger, a medium sized piece, julienned
Jeera powder
Hing
Rai
Green chillies; 2, juliennned
METHOD:
Wash and dry bhindis. Chop them really thin and set aside.
In a non-stick pan, heat a tablespoon of oil, add rai, allow to splutter, and then a pinch of hing, and then the ginger and chilly juliennes and mix well.
Add the bhindi to this, salt to taste, and fry well on a low flame will crisp. Cool. Set aside.
In a bowl, whisk 250 gm of dahi to smoothen lumps, and add the fried bhindi mixture to it. Serve immediately as an accompaniment to rice or rotis.
Bhindi aloo with garlic (courtesy Manish, my sindhi foodie colleague)
2 large potatoes, sliced vertically
Bhindi : 200 gm, cut into 2inch pieces and then slit vertically
Garlic : 6-7 cloves
Green chillies: 2-3
Salt to taste
Method:
Peel the garlic cloves and slice the chillies and crush them with a bit of salt using a mortar pestle
Heat some oil in a pan and add the chilly garlic mixture, and then add the bhindis and aloo, salt to taste, mix well
Cook on a slow flame, stirring occasionally till well done.
Serve hot with chapatis or dal-chaval
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Verse case scenario
The husband said to me recently, in appreciation of my wifely and motherly excellence, “I feel like writing a poem about you. I would if I could, but since I can’t, I will stick to naming my weapons after you..”
Before you roll your eyes any further, let me explain. The husband is a gamer (for those of you who came in late) and no, nothing has changed post infant, except perhaps, the fact that he uses headphones while he goes on about massacring people and escaping with the loot, so that the infant is not permanently marked by violence at the tender age of (almost) five months.
The weapon he is referring to is ‘Lalli’s bane’, something that has the power to inflict instant fatigue leading to immobilization and eventual death (just like I do with my sharp tongue, he says) with just a few whacks in a combat with soldiers, orcs, minatores, evil henchmen, or generally anyone he wants to kill in the game, Elder Scrolls Oblivion.
The infant has also joined the ranks in his gaming world and currently, Rehaan is the name of the main character in Fallout 3 (his current PS3 craze), a boy who is trying to save the world in a post apocalyptic Washington DC, and searching for his father to solve a mystery. Earlier, I was Lee, the warrior princess in a first person fantasy shooter game. “See, I think of you even when you are not around,” he says, almost in his defence.
Coming back to poetry, there was a time when I used to judge men by how well they wrote. Or least how well they wrote letters and notes and poems to me. It was an unstated pre-qualification for any man in my life, and many not-so-nice-men were given the benefit of doubt just because they wrote poetry, or what seemed like it then. Like a friend of mine who judges men by whether they recognize that her bag is, indeed, a Louis Vuitton. But I realized pretty late that the cadaverous poets also came with other baggage that I didn’t necessarily want to deal with, and besides, in the email era, it didn’t seem to matter any more. If you want something interesting to say to someone, just find it on Google.
The husband doesn’t write poetry, or cook or talk about rainforests, eco-friendliness or recycling, or approves of my desire to settle in a village or enjoys getting wet in the rain, or likes rearranging furniture every now and then, or is a backpacker or has been chased by a cow while going to school. But then that would have made two of us. And what could be more boring than marrying your clone? So I am just happy to be the ‘bane’ of his existence.
Before you roll your eyes any further, let me explain. The husband is a gamer (for those of you who came in late) and no, nothing has changed post infant, except perhaps, the fact that he uses headphones while he goes on about massacring people and escaping with the loot, so that the infant is not permanently marked by violence at the tender age of (almost) five months.
The weapon he is referring to is ‘Lalli’s bane’, something that has the power to inflict instant fatigue leading to immobilization and eventual death (just like I do with my sharp tongue, he says) with just a few whacks in a combat with soldiers, orcs, minatores, evil henchmen, or generally anyone he wants to kill in the game, Elder Scrolls Oblivion.
The infant has also joined the ranks in his gaming world and currently, Rehaan is the name of the main character in Fallout 3 (his current PS3 craze), a boy who is trying to save the world in a post apocalyptic Washington DC, and searching for his father to solve a mystery. Earlier, I was Lee, the warrior princess in a first person fantasy shooter game. “See, I think of you even when you are not around,” he says, almost in his defence.
Coming back to poetry, there was a time when I used to judge men by how well they wrote. Or least how well they wrote letters and notes and poems to me. It was an unstated pre-qualification for any man in my life, and many not-so-nice-men were given the benefit of doubt just because they wrote poetry, or what seemed like it then. Like a friend of mine who judges men by whether they recognize that her bag is, indeed, a Louis Vuitton. But I realized pretty late that the cadaverous poets also came with other baggage that I didn’t necessarily want to deal with, and besides, in the email era, it didn’t seem to matter any more. If you want something interesting to say to someone, just find it on Google.
The husband doesn’t write poetry, or cook or talk about rainforests, eco-friendliness or recycling, or approves of my desire to settle in a village or enjoys getting wet in the rain, or likes rearranging furniture every now and then, or is a backpacker or has been chased by a cow while going to school. But then that would have made two of us. And what could be more boring than marrying your clone? So I am just happy to be the ‘bane’ of his existence.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Quick gun vegan
I turned vegan about three weeks ago. Now, don’t give me that, “Oh, poor you, you seed-eating, fruit-infested, lettuce-chomping, whole food junkie you!” I might come back with, “I am having a pretty good time, you sausage-ridden rodents!”
But this is not about ‘to meat or not to meat.’ Point is, I was already a vegetarian, so giving up dairy products didn’t seem like a big deal. Plus, I like experimenting with my life, and a workshop on Peas Vs Pills that I attended with the infant did it for me. He of course had no idea that his culinary repertoire was being planned on his mega outing, but then, too bad! Such are the perks of motherhood. Till he has a mind of his own, I appointed myself as his thinker.
The husband was both amused and despondent when he found out. Since the two of us met, he has evolved from a classic omnivore to someone who now eats all that I eat, but needs his sausage and burger goodies on the side. But no day or meal for the husband is complete without oodles of dairy products – cheese, cheese spread, mayonnaise, butter, cheese slices and then some... (it is a miracle he weighs what he weighs, thank god for his metabolism)
Our fridge has been about ‘his shelf’ and ‘my shelf’ and a lot of our dates (I still prefer to call them that) comprised laying out a cheese platter, picking out a favourite DVD (post Tata Sky Plus, it is favourite ‘recorded’ movie or show) pouring each a glass of wine, and just savouring the goodies.
Now it turns out, that he will be chewing on the cheese while I will be chomping on my lettuce. But we haven’t had any problems so far, so I guess we were doing good. Till he asked me, “Is Rehaan going to be vegan too?” with much trepidation.
I could sense that he had nurtured visions of taking the son (that already sounds all-grown up, the poor thing has just learn how to flip over) to the nearest Mc Donald’s soon as he turned two and the two of them feasting on burgers with extra cheese, coke with extra coke and fries with extra fries. Now, he sees them paling away, and of course, that is causing him endless worry.
“Well, for now, yes,” I said.
“But shouldn’t we allow him to decide?,” he whined.
“Okay, you can tell him where a hot dog comes from and he can decide, yes,” was my reply.
Ah, we were going to have ‘parenting issues’, I figured. But I have at least bought time for now.
How am I feeling? Very calm, strangely. Must be the vegan thing. Even nincompoops haven’t been able to rattle me in the past month, so something must be working.
But this is not about ‘to meat or not to meat.’ Point is, I was already a vegetarian, so giving up dairy products didn’t seem like a big deal. Plus, I like experimenting with my life, and a workshop on Peas Vs Pills that I attended with the infant did it for me. He of course had no idea that his culinary repertoire was being planned on his mega outing, but then, too bad! Such are the perks of motherhood. Till he has a mind of his own, I appointed myself as his thinker.
The husband was both amused and despondent when he found out. Since the two of us met, he has evolved from a classic omnivore to someone who now eats all that I eat, but needs his sausage and burger goodies on the side. But no day or meal for the husband is complete without oodles of dairy products – cheese, cheese spread, mayonnaise, butter, cheese slices and then some... (it is a miracle he weighs what he weighs, thank god for his metabolism)
Our fridge has been about ‘his shelf’ and ‘my shelf’ and a lot of our dates (I still prefer to call them that) comprised laying out a cheese platter, picking out a favourite DVD (post Tata Sky Plus, it is favourite ‘recorded’ movie or show) pouring each a glass of wine, and just savouring the goodies.
Now it turns out, that he will be chewing on the cheese while I will be chomping on my lettuce. But we haven’t had any problems so far, so I guess we were doing good. Till he asked me, “Is Rehaan going to be vegan too?” with much trepidation.
I could sense that he had nurtured visions of taking the son (that already sounds all-grown up, the poor thing has just learn how to flip over) to the nearest Mc Donald’s soon as he turned two and the two of them feasting on burgers with extra cheese, coke with extra coke and fries with extra fries. Now, he sees them paling away, and of course, that is causing him endless worry.
“Well, for now, yes,” I said.
“But shouldn’t we allow him to decide?,” he whined.
“Okay, you can tell him where a hot dog comes from and he can decide, yes,” was my reply.
Ah, we were going to have ‘parenting issues’, I figured. But I have at least bought time for now.
How am I feeling? Very calm, strangely. Must be the vegan thing. Even nincompoops haven’t been able to rattle me in the past month, so something must be working.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Hitch or miss
I don’t understand engagements. I don’t know what the big deal is about Shilpa Shetty and Raj-whoever getting engaged. I mean, think about it. They have been going around forever, buying cricket teams, villas, posing for covers, throwing diamonds and whatnots at each other with amazing regularity. And now they announce they are getting engaged. “That’s it?,” I feel like asking. “Gimme more!,” I feel like screaming.
Friends tell me engagements are about making the relationship official. May be I have a different viewpoint, but to me, the minute you announce to friends and family that you are seeing someone, it becomes official. If you think you need to peacock yourself with finery just to announce this, well, that’s your problem. Funnier is when someone says that X is engaged to be married. I mean, what else can you be engaged for? Saturday night dates? Chauffeur services? Photo ops?
Still others tell me it’s an occasion to party. You can’t possibly throw a party just because someone is your girlfriend/boyfriend, so you get engaged. This is also one way to ensure that someone else pays for the spoils and you get lots of presents. Methinks this is a very practical reason.
I am always suspicious of people who get ‘engaged’. Makes me wonder if it’s their way of buying time, or keeping that window open. May be it’s like saying, yes, I want to commit, but I can only come half way. May be it is a more extricable situation. After all, calling off an engagement is far easier than calling off a marriage.
But then there are a whole bunch of them ladies who are deeply concerned about ‘the rock’. How else can they wriggle that out from their boyfriends, they wonder. I feel like telling them to learn something from Sushmita Sen and buy your own. Besides, there’s only so many fingers you have. Unless, of course, you are the ‘much ado about a rock’ kind of person, which I guess a majority are.
And then there are those who decide to spend the rest of their life with a childhood sweetheart, and since they obviously can’t marry at age 20, they get engaged. Till someone (usually parents) tells them that it has been ‘A very long engagement,’ and then they move on to level two.
A friend of mine had a north Indian equivalent of an engagement a couple of years ago, called ‘roka’. The word makes me squirm — its literal meaning is ‘to stop’. She explained it was to stop the boy from straying or running away. Why don’t we just ask the concerned parties to wear placards, or to be more subtle, a chain with a pendant that says ‘Taken’ or some such? Cheaper, isn’t it?
What I still don’t get is, people in their blooming thirties and forties who get engaged. I mean, what are you waiting for? The next botox session?
Friends tell me engagements are about making the relationship official. May be I have a different viewpoint, but to me, the minute you announce to friends and family that you are seeing someone, it becomes official. If you think you need to peacock yourself with finery just to announce this, well, that’s your problem. Funnier is when someone says that X is engaged to be married. I mean, what else can you be engaged for? Saturday night dates? Chauffeur services? Photo ops?
Still others tell me it’s an occasion to party. You can’t possibly throw a party just because someone is your girlfriend/boyfriend, so you get engaged. This is also one way to ensure that someone else pays for the spoils and you get lots of presents. Methinks this is a very practical reason.
I am always suspicious of people who get ‘engaged’. Makes me wonder if it’s their way of buying time, or keeping that window open. May be it’s like saying, yes, I want to commit, but I can only come half way. May be it is a more extricable situation. After all, calling off an engagement is far easier than calling off a marriage.
But then there are a whole bunch of them ladies who are deeply concerned about ‘the rock’. How else can they wriggle that out from their boyfriends, they wonder. I feel like telling them to learn something from Sushmita Sen and buy your own. Besides, there’s only so many fingers you have. Unless, of course, you are the ‘much ado about a rock’ kind of person, which I guess a majority are.
And then there are those who decide to spend the rest of their life with a childhood sweetheart, and since they obviously can’t marry at age 20, they get engaged. Till someone (usually parents) tells them that it has been ‘A very long engagement,’ and then they move on to level two.
A friend of mine had a north Indian equivalent of an engagement a couple of years ago, called ‘roka’. The word makes me squirm — its literal meaning is ‘to stop’. She explained it was to stop the boy from straying or running away. Why don’t we just ask the concerned parties to wear placards, or to be more subtle, a chain with a pendant that says ‘Taken’ or some such? Cheaper, isn’t it?
What I still don’t get is, people in their blooming thirties and forties who get engaged. I mean, what are you waiting for? The next botox session?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Sweet nothings
Last week, the mother asked me when ‘my diwali’ was. I was nonplussed, but I realised quickly that she implied that since I was now married to a ‘north indian’, her Diwali and my Diwali were on different days. I found her question out of place since reams have been written about why I will not change my name, or adopt a karva chauth and why festivals are non-negotiable, and how ‘my Diwali’ will always be ‘my Diwali’. The infant, when he grows up, will probably have a bonus Diwali (‘his’ and ‘mine’), if he cares for it, and if he doesn’t, too bad!
*****
I still remember my childhood, when we were all woken up at 4 am, slathered with oil and then scrubbed clean with gook, made to wear new clothes, suitably haldified (you did that to everything new, to neutralize all evil), and then dispatched to different neighbourhood homes with a thali full of mithai and savouries. Now, of these, the north Indian homes were rudely awakened from their slumber on a day when it was clearly not Diwali, so they just looked at you in a funny way and mumbled, “But Diwali is tomorrow!” We were so embarrassed, that soon, we refused to go on mithai delivery duty to these homes. We felt like aliens who just celebrated Diwali on the wrong day. We were too young, and MNS was not around.
****
It’s rangoli time. I love rangolis. They are more festive to me than anything else. They transpose me to an era of innocence, although, even then, it was like displaying your best footwear. Or bindis perhaps. As children, we did the whole geru thing, the simulation of a mud floor with this brown mud-like block, wetting it and evening it out, drawing the rangolis, sieving the colour-base mix and packing it in a muslin thingee, before you let it fill in the outline. Sometimes, we even made the rangolis freehand and didn’t use a grid. That was a sign that you had arrived. Hierarchies were clearly established in this collaborative exercise, and I stood somewhere in the middle. This time, it was just about the mother and me, and things were much simpler — she is good with the big picture, I am better with the details. She draws the outline, I fill in the colour. It’s a classification we have made peace with.
***
I was a bit ambivalent about what to do with festival text messages. Now, I do a blanket ignore, since I figured, if people have just copy-pasted a vanilla template, I needn’t bother about composing individual replies. (May be there are vanilla reply templates as well). I figured, it’s easier for people to send out blanket SMSs than to reply to them, so that’s what they do. Send. So they are absolved from replying. I do neither, and wonder if I am anti-social. May be I am. But you would be too, if you get a message that reads: “May millions of lamps illuminate your life with endless joy, prosperity, health, wealth and happiness forever.”
Or this one: “May this Diwali light up new dreams, fresh hopes, undiscovered avenues, different perspectives, everything bright and beautiful and fill your days with pleasant surprises and movements,”
Whatever!
*****
I still remember my childhood, when we were all woken up at 4 am, slathered with oil and then scrubbed clean with gook, made to wear new clothes, suitably haldified (you did that to everything new, to neutralize all evil), and then dispatched to different neighbourhood homes with a thali full of mithai and savouries. Now, of these, the north Indian homes were rudely awakened from their slumber on a day when it was clearly not Diwali, so they just looked at you in a funny way and mumbled, “But Diwali is tomorrow!” We were so embarrassed, that soon, we refused to go on mithai delivery duty to these homes. We felt like aliens who just celebrated Diwali on the wrong day. We were too young, and MNS was not around.
****
It’s rangoli time. I love rangolis. They are more festive to me than anything else. They transpose me to an era of innocence, although, even then, it was like displaying your best footwear. Or bindis perhaps. As children, we did the whole geru thing, the simulation of a mud floor with this brown mud-like block, wetting it and evening it out, drawing the rangolis, sieving the colour-base mix and packing it in a muslin thingee, before you let it fill in the outline. Sometimes, we even made the rangolis freehand and didn’t use a grid. That was a sign that you had arrived. Hierarchies were clearly established in this collaborative exercise, and I stood somewhere in the middle. This time, it was just about the mother and me, and things were much simpler — she is good with the big picture, I am better with the details. She draws the outline, I fill in the colour. It’s a classification we have made peace with.
***
I was a bit ambivalent about what to do with festival text messages. Now, I do a blanket ignore, since I figured, if people have just copy-pasted a vanilla template, I needn’t bother about composing individual replies. (May be there are vanilla reply templates as well). I figured, it’s easier for people to send out blanket SMSs than to reply to them, so that’s what they do. Send. So they are absolved from replying. I do neither, and wonder if I am anti-social. May be I am. But you would be too, if you get a message that reads: “May millions of lamps illuminate your life with endless joy, prosperity, health, wealth and happiness forever.”
Or this one: “May this Diwali light up new dreams, fresh hopes, undiscovered avenues, different perspectives, everything bright and beautiful and fill your days with pleasant surprises and movements,”
Whatever!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The great hackeroo
Ellen Degeneres, said recently about her 1000th show, “It’s kinda overwhelming. We started in 2003, and that was a whole different world. For one, there was no Facebook. So if you had to poke someone, you had to do it the old-fashioned way.”
It got me wondering about my Facebook dependence and the ‘friends’ I had acquired through it. I do find it useful, at least right now, to chronicle my infant’s movements, post photos and status messages (literally). I realise documentation is important, as sometimes you can totally lose track of time and then wonder where the baby days have gone (I have no evidence of mine except three photos). And then one day, you realise he has an account too, and has sent you a friend request (it has happened to my friends).
Of course, to make me feel like a non-junkie, I routinely go through the exercise of deleting
a) Those who I don’t really know (and funnily enough, there are several of those)
b) Those who have nothing to say to me, for then, I wonder if they are just being voyeuristic about my life
c) Those who I have a strict work-relationship with, for I wonder what they are doing popping up in my leisure zone.
Otherwise, I am no cyber vulture, and I still send hand-written notes to people once in a while, so may be I am just in the wrong era (there are several other reasons why I feel thus, but we will go into that some other time). But what totally flabbergasted me was a recent text message I received from a random (who, incidentally had made it to my ‘friends’ list by some quirk of fate). The message read:
“A really mean and vicious hacker got into my Facebook account and deleted it. He (I don’t know why women always get the benefit of doubt) has deleted my personal email accounts also. So when you see my name is not on your friends list, you know why. I can’t make any new accounts until the Mumbai police cyber crime cell doesn’t arrest him. Please inform any common friends on my Facebook disappearence. I am feeling really, really sad and violated and I request you to avoid such a thing happening to your loved ones.”
A few days later, I got this one:
“While the hacker hasn’t been nabbed yet, I got my Facebook back!
It gets better. Another contact was allegedly ‘reported’ for having too many Facebook IDs, and her account was closed. She was shattered, to say the least, and went about several attempts to get her account (and her social life) back. She actually made desperate calls to California (yes!) to get it reactivated, and they finally complied. “Imagine, all my friends, my pets, my albums are there. What will I do?,” she cried.
Poke! Poke!
It got me wondering about my Facebook dependence and the ‘friends’ I had acquired through it. I do find it useful, at least right now, to chronicle my infant’s movements, post photos and status messages (literally). I realise documentation is important, as sometimes you can totally lose track of time and then wonder where the baby days have gone (I have no evidence of mine except three photos). And then one day, you realise he has an account too, and has sent you a friend request (it has happened to my friends).
Of course, to make me feel like a non-junkie, I routinely go through the exercise of deleting
a) Those who I don’t really know (and funnily enough, there are several of those)
b) Those who have nothing to say to me, for then, I wonder if they are just being voyeuristic about my life
c) Those who I have a strict work-relationship with, for I wonder what they are doing popping up in my leisure zone.
Otherwise, I am no cyber vulture, and I still send hand-written notes to people once in a while, so may be I am just in the wrong era (there are several other reasons why I feel thus, but we will go into that some other time). But what totally flabbergasted me was a recent text message I received from a random (who, incidentally had made it to my ‘friends’ list by some quirk of fate). The message read:
“A really mean and vicious hacker got into my Facebook account and deleted it. He (I don’t know why women always get the benefit of doubt) has deleted my personal email accounts also. So when you see my name is not on your friends list, you know why. I can’t make any new accounts until the Mumbai police cyber crime cell doesn’t arrest him. Please inform any common friends on my Facebook disappearence. I am feeling really, really sad and violated and I request you to avoid such a thing happening to your loved ones.”
A few days later, I got this one:
“While the hacker hasn’t been nabbed yet, I got my Facebook back!
It gets better. Another contact was allegedly ‘reported’ for having too many Facebook IDs, and her account was closed. She was shattered, to say the least, and went about several attempts to get her account (and her social life) back. She actually made desperate calls to California (yes!) to get it reactivated, and they finally complied. “Imagine, all my friends, my pets, my albums are there. What will I do?,” she cried.
Poke! Poke!
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