It's getting late

It was just another Saturday morning and he was already late for his first day at the gym. He rushed to the bathroom and got ready in less than 10 minutes and walked out of the bathroom with water dripping from the hair near his forehead. Looking for the towel while walking towards the cupboard to change to a more comfortable cotton pant and t-shirt. Pulled out a soft towel and rolled it so that it fits in his pant pocket. It was never too late for him when it came to combing his hair. Spent a few couple minutes more than what he took at the bathroom, walking few steps backwards, still gazing at the mirror and already bending his arms and giving a challenging look at Ronnie Coleman's poster above the mirror. Picked up his wallet and walked towards the front door. His mom had already kept the protein mix ready on the table and it was hot. He didn't want to miss his morning dose of energy drink, but he knew his friend would be coming any moment honking outside his home. After all his friend was also late, but who likes being accused to be the reason at the end? He eagerly peeped outside the front door and found his friend was not there yet. Sighing in relief, he took the glass and walked past the front door, greeted by the gentle breeze of air over his face. The breeze was a little cold because his face was still drying. He sipped through the drink while listening to the oscillating wave of song heard from a far away Bhuvaneshwari Amman temple. He always admired the early morning silence with mild breeze, accompanied by the chirping of birds and the bell of the newspaper man at the corner of the street. Things were not the same a few years back when he used to wake up early in the morning and pulled out a  book to prepare for the exams. The sight of darkness outside the window, when everyone in the home were still asleep and he was the only one getting ready to perform the most annoying task of studying for the exams to be given later that day. He didn't even want to think about it now because it gave a bitter taste in his throat, just like a fever tablet stuck in the throat without enough water to swallow. 

While he's still a student,  but now in the final semester of his bachelor's, doing his project and preparing for campus interviews. He knew he still had to do his master's before getting into a job, but wanted to gain some experience with interviews. He had all the time in this world to enjoy the hidden beauty of early morning scenes, even when he knew it was already getting late for the gym. He was enjoying the delay because he can now point fingers at his friend for being late to pick him up on his way to the gym. The gentle silence of the scene was broken when his mom shouted from the kitchen "seekram ulla va, school bus vara time aachu". The very first page of his history book had sent him to the dream he always wanted to live in. Knowing he hadn't prepare enough for the exam and at the same time realizing it was just mid term, he slowly walked into the house gulping the glass of water he was holding in his hand, trying to wipe the bitterness in his throat, he stared at the political map stuck above the mirror. 

Confession

If you are reading this thinking I am about to confess something, you are wrong. This is not about me. This is about the various confession groups that mushrooms in Facebook. Every organization, especially in IT industry has a confession group on FB and we end up being notified for new posts on these group even though we are not part of that company or even industry sometimes. Thanks to our job hopping friends on fb, who shows interest in commenting on these confession posts. Sometimes you get to know where a person works based on which confession group he comments on and your mind voice goes like - Payapulla company maarinadha sollave illa.

I always used to wonder the motive behind such confession groups. Are they even helping the person who's posting these confessions anonymously? Wait, are they even for real? What is the guarantee that the admin of such groups doesn't post cooked up story once in a while or too often? After all who else is going to know the source of such posts except the admin. When you read a confession post and think that is too dramatic and unreal, then it probably is. Would you even dare to let the admin of your company's confession group know all the mischievous things you do? It can be anonymous to people reading the message, but definitely not to the admin. So probably people are not truly confessing something they are guilty about and truly want to admit they committed something they are not supposed to do. Instead it's either a cooked up story by the admin of the group or the admin's friends or some random person who has a good imagination to narrate a story that interests many people. 

Ok, let's assume the confessions are true for the sake of further analysis and fun. As soon as the admin posts the story from a confessor, people put on their judgement hats and begin giving advices, scolding and shaming the confessor. Let's take a look at the types of people commenting on such confession groups.

Sincere Sigamani: These are people who truly believe the confessor is for real and actually looking forward for any kind of help and advice from random web surfer. They get serious about the topic and start giving sincere advice, as if the  confessor is going to follow it and thank the commentator for helping them. But most of the time the advice given by these people is like (a+b)^2 formulae. Everyone knows the answer.

Police Perumal: As the name suggests, these people will be too much of a police. They right away conclude the confessor is a criminal and start cursing them. They even go to the extent of cursing the admin of the group for posting such stories. 

90's kid: Every confession group gets a comment from a 90's kid who most likely is not a 90's kid but a kid born in late 90's who is actually a 2K kid. Irrespective of the confession, the agenda of these kids will be to highlight their inability to find a girlfriend. They get super jealous about the confessor if the post is about a guy cheating on his girlfriend or wife.

Pullingo: They are everywhere these days. While they are not truly pullingos because nobody knows what that word means, these people are not even the pulligo that people imagine what pullingo actually is. If that was hard to interpret, please read it again until you understand it because it's the most important thing to know. Comments from these people are mostly irrelevant to the post and they are actually from a parallel universe who co-exists among other people commenting on the post. 

Memes maams: They are very talented set of people who manage to find a relevant meme containing Vadivelu, Goundamani, Santhanam or Nithyananda dialogues countering the confession. They take things lightly but seriously light. 

Then there are people who get annoyed by all the confession groups and comments and think people are wasting time on other's problems and trying to give solutions without knowing the full story. These are the people who once used to read all the confessions and comments, so much that they have done some analysis about the type of people commenting on confessions and write a post on their blogs about it. 

Whassup??

Am pretty sure anyone who owns a smartphone uses whatsapp and anyone who uses whatsapp is part of at least 18 groups. Three groups each from elementary school till post graduation that has 1 all boys/girls group, 1 group with almost everyone from the class and 1 group with a subset of friends from the class. Basically enough groups to keep everyone occupied throughout the day and create confusions enough to make you forget which group you are texting in. 

Every whatsapp group follow this ritual of so called 'celebrating' someone's birthday, anniversary, wedding, promotion, new car, new mobile, new pair of slippers and what not. There's this one person in every group who remembers everyone's special day in the group and never forgets to change the group name and display picture and wishes starts pouring in from everyone in the group. Few people in the group show up only to send their wishes and abscond the next second and never comes back until it's someone else's birthday. I mean why even bother coming, you don't even get a piece of cake there. Then there's this one person who always records his wishes as a voice note, forcing others in the group to search for their earphones, though all know it's just a birthday wish and not some Airtel super singer SS01 giving an electrifying performance in the grand finale. A couple of group members from different time zones wake up to see their favorite group missing from WhatsApp only to later realize it has been temporarily rechristened. They are ones who send their wishes either too early or too late and they are the ones who don't get to see the group renamed to theirs because everything happens when they are sleeping on the other side of the earth. By the time these expats wake up and thank the group for their wishes, everyone goes to bed and forgets why they are being thanked by some random person the next day. 

It's better not to open WhatsApp during festival days because every group will have the same name and sometimes the same display picture putting us in the risk of inadvertently texting in a group we have been staying away from, for a long time. All groups become super excited about every festival and flood the groups with forward messages, images and smileys. They also become super patriotic on independence day and republic days but only on whatsapp and Facebook. 

Every group has this one person who sends out a picture that contains quotes with good morning and good night and that's everything this person sends, not just to one group but to every group the person belongs to. The one person who only forwards comical memes for everything that's trending in a day. Forgot to mention the smiley quiz and the urgent requirement for B+ve group blood being circulated ever since text messaging was invented. Then the video of MLA "Anil Upadhyay", always from the ruling party, shooting a deer, slapping a woman, thrashing a street vendor, kicking a cat, biting a dog and doing any cruel act that makes the viewer believe he indeed belongs to the ruling party and goes to the extent of creating a petition in Change.org addressed directly to the President of India, to sack the MLA who belongs to God knows which party or if he's even an MLA. Such online petitions are a topic by itself that I will reserve for another post in my blog.

Then we repeatedly see the message where a HIV infected employee from a soft drink company, most likely frooti or maaza, mixed his blood with the drink, cautioning people not to drink these bottled soft drinks for the next few days. Ever wondered, if at all this was a legit claim, how was this problem even discovered and why did the soft drink company themselves recall that particular batch of drinks off the shelves? Such messages are not going to stop people from consuming soft drinks. 

And we have this forward message that contributes 10 paise for each forward, towards the heart transplant surgery of a someone. I know it's not right to start a sentence with an 'And' but am sure people wouldn't argue about it when they think forwarding a text can really deposit 10 paise into someone's account. If that was the case, then India would be the richest country in the world earning a fortune just with forward messages.