Life of Vijay - The Holiday Season

It was holiday season and the festive mood filled the air, with everyone ready to leave the office early and spend the Christmas Eve with their loved ones. Vijay was drafting his holiday greetings email and added recipients carefully so that no one at the office was missed. He drafted the email and saved it to send later that evening before leaving the office on a long vacation until after New Year’s Day. It was indeed the end of a tiring work week when he had to wrap up the final release for 2019. A major project going live without any major incident was a perfect gift anybody working in IT industry would ask for. Relaxation slowly settling in, Vijay walked towards the coffee machine with his mug. It was a little above 3 PM and there were very few people in the office. Most of them were off for the long week/month/year end and those still at office probably had their flights later that evening. Vijay grabbed a cup of coffee and went near the window overlooking the parking bay of his office. He could see only white cars everywhere as it had started snowing an hour back and it’s expected to stop anytime soon as there were no snowstorms in the forecast. Maybe it was just nature's way of adding joy to the holiday mood. Vijay finished his coffee looking through the window and decided to leave home for the day. Before ejecting his laptop from the docking station, Vijay gave a once over of the holiday greeting email he had drafted and checked the recipients once again and hit the send button and immediately regretted his decision to send the email from office. His outlook did not respond to his clicks. Vijay was trying to close the outlook but had to wait for all the out of office replies from his recipients before he could safely turn off his laptop. Had it been a regular weekend, Vijay would have slapped close his laptop without waiting for all those blinking lights to turn off. But since the couple of minutes were sure not to eat into his long weekend, Vijay waited patiently before packing his laptop, pushing his chair back under the desk and turning off his monitor, to leave home.

Melody songs of Ilaiyaraja playing in the car, Vijay gently drove his car back home to avoid any incidents as the roads were slippery due to snow. Vijay pulled into his apartment parking lot and began walking towards his home. He could see his 4 year old son already jumping in joy upon seeing the snow through the glass door and asking his dad to take him out to play in the snow. Vijay could very well sense that's exactly what his son was asking him even though he couldn't hear a word. Vijay slid open the door and heard him say "snow la vilayadanum pa". He assured his son that he will take him out to play as soon as the snow stops falling and asked him to get dressed up so that he doesn't feel cold when he plays outside. His son ran towards his room shouting "Amma, pant eduthu kudunga". He freshened up and sat on the sofa and pulled out his phone to check on the notifications he received while he was driving from office. Thank God, nothing from outlook, he dismissed all the notifications and casually logged into facebook and began scrolling through the posts, mostly holiday greetings from his friends. Something caught his attention and he scrolled back up to see the list of friend suggestions. That was a familiar face and name, thought Vijay and clicked on Siddarth's profile. Siddarth was Vijay's school friend, but Vijay had no one from his school on his facebook friend list to receive Siddarth as a suggestion. Not giving too much thought into facebook's friend suggestion algorithm, Vijay browsed through Siddarth's profile. Siddhu completed his MBA from a top business university in India and is now working in Qatar. Curious about knowing about his other friend's from the school, Vijay clicked on Siddharth's friends list and started searching for names that began flowing through Vijay's mind like his class 11 A's attendance register. That was the last year Vijay studied in that school and that was the last time he saw all his friends from that school. Vijay's life had turned upside down after the XI standard annual exam results were published or we should say were withheld, just for him. 

Vijay still remembered that fateful final day at his school in Adyar where he was standing in the middle of the playground with tears flowing down his cheeks and everything around him blacked out for few moments. His mom was standing just next to him talking to Mrs.Meera Venkatesh, Vijay's class teacher for XI standard 'A' section. 

Mom: Please give him one last chance and I will ensure he does well in his XII standard. We have already arranged for his tuition for XII.

Mrs Meera: Am really sorry, but I do not have anything to say in this matter. I am just conveying you what I was asked to, by the school management.

Mom: His entire career will be in jeopardy if this happens. Just one more year. Please consider.

Mrs Meera: I can only pity for him at this point, but cannot really help him in this matter. This is not our first warning to Vijay. We have been insisting him to take things seriously when he failed in all the subjects except english in his quarterly exams this year. We even sent out a notice to you through him to come and meet us, but neither you nor his dad turned up to collect his marksheets.

Vijay's stood there with his face sinking down in shame while his mom stared at him in disbelief

Mom: We are really sorry, we couldn't make it due to some problems in the family. Please give him one more chance.

Mrs Meera: I actually have his TC with me and the principal did not even agree to change his XI result as a "Pass" in his TC

Those were the final words Vijay heard from Mrs. Meera before his first drop of tears rolled out of his eyes. His schooling has come to a jarring stop exactly an year before he was supposed to complete his schooling and enter a college. Little did he anticipate that he will be sent out of the school and least did he expect his TC will have "Fail" marked in bold red ink which means he cannot even join XII in another school but will have to continue in XI standard again, if at all he was admitted by a different school, which everyone knows has a very bleak chance. 

To be continued...

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. 

Water - So Pure

The purest form of water, in a vapour form waiting to condense inside a holy place, inside a bigger cup varying in size, shape, color, some contaminated, some still retaining a little purity. Irrespective of the nature of the cup, the vapour still condenses to its purest form. It takes months to condense and once condensed, the droplet gets its own little cup but still doesn't lose its purity. The cup grows bigger everyday. The tiny cup gets its first few drops of water from where it condensed within. Utmost care is taken not to contaminate the water in the tiny cup. The first few drops added from another cup, even though dirty does not alter the nature of the water in the tiny cup. It often reminds the other bigger cups around it on how important it is to remain pure. However the bigger cups continues to add dirty water to their cups, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. Shouldn't the bigger cups know they are supposed to add only pure water to fill themselves, for their tiny containers continues to get daily dose of water droplets from them? Many forgets they feed their little cups and many don't care a damn. 

Time passes and the tiny cups are no longer tiny and begins to add water from other smaller and bigger cups on their own, unaware of their purity. Though the water from other smaller cups are often pure, the water from the larger cups alter their level of purity. After all smaller cups can only add a little water while the larger cups contribute more. Now, the once pure water, get their own nature, based on the level of impurity added to them. Every bigger cup tries to purify the water in the smaller cups they own, by adding as much of pure water as they can. But the bigger cups need to have enough pure water to dilute the impurities in their smaller cups, else they will end up adding more dirty water to their smaller cups. The bigger cups cannot add hot water to the smaller cups, for the smaller cups are fragile and easily crack. Once cracked, its really difficult to hold water in them. Not all cups grow to their fullest. 

The impurity in the water starts to corrode the inner walls of the cups. The longer the water remains impure, the more the cup gets corroded. It's really important to dilute the impurities with pure water still available in abundance, but it's entirely up to the cup to select its source of water. The sooner the cup realizes it's being corroded, the better. The scar left behind by the dirt often never disappears. 

The smaller cups keeps growing and is exposed to water of all levels of purity. The larger cups never stop debating over who contaminates the water in the smaller cups, while every cup contributes in some way to alter the nature of the water in other cups around. It would be totally unfair to attribute the impurity to a certain cup. Water flows everywhere and so do their impurities. They are only diluted and never removed. Some larger cups do not notice the dirty water in their smaller cups for they are hidden by the smaller cups themselves and are not exposed until they begin to corrode. The smaller cups don't realize they get their own small cups when they grow bigger and they need to preserve some of their purity to add to their own smaller cups.

Purest water always comes from the sky above, but some cups don't agree and deny the existence of rain. They try to purify their own water, but remember the impurity can only be diluted and not removed. One can only hope the cups that truly want to self purify their impurities do not add their dirty water to other cups. Contaminating water in other cups doesn't make one's own water pure, they only spread impurity. Nonetheless, cups that don't believe that a source of pure water exists but realize the importance of not being a source of impurity is equally good. 

The cups run around looking to add sugar to their water while letting the salt in them contaminate the water in other cups. More sugar in the water did no good to the purity of the water, but just improved its taste. Little did the cup realize that the purity is what matters the most and the taste was a mere material. 

The cups have grown to their fullest and can grow no more. Now all they can do is replace the water in them. Remember all the impurities the cups accumulated over years that corroded their inner walls? They have developed cracks in the cups and they can no longer hold water to their full capacity. Its now too late to mend those cracks and the cup begins to fall apart. Little do the cups understand the reason behind their existence. All the sugar the cup was running behind to add to its water and all the salt that contaminated the water in the cup were left behind, some added to other cups and some just disappearing with the dust. 

There comes a day when the cup breaks down to dust and after all the water it once held with pride was sucked by other cups, with just one final droplet left behind on a tiny piece of a diminishing cup. The one final drop with the same level of purity as the very first droplet that formed in the tiny cup, evaporates into the air, back to where it all started, in its purest form ever, only to condense again. This time in a different place, in a different cup, forgetting its past and unaware of its future.

What's Breaking?

A breaking news article is enough of a trigger to awaken the judge within us. A judge who comes to a conclusion the very moment a news breaks, purely based on stereotypes and far away from truth. Ever wondered why many high intensity cases run through trials for years? Heavy backlog of cases with never ending accumulation of newer crimes are certainly not the only reason behind this. A judgement pronounced in a case changes the lives of all the parties involved and such verdicts are never provided hastily. How many times have we seen judgements provided by lower courts being altered by a superior court of Justice? Aren't they thoroughly analysed in the lower courts? Every case will be given all the time it demands so as to bring out the truth and avoid convicting the wrong person. That being said, will it be fair to jump into conclusions without even hearing the full story, let alone analysing them. Sadly that's what's being done everyday by most people. Thanks to the zillion sources of news channels that easily manipulates a person's thought process. What's funny is that the same mind that accuses a person or a community due to stereotyping, fails to agree the truth even when it's proved wrong based on evidences and analysis. People are fine with news manipulating their minds as long as it aligns with their perception, even if it's not true. 

The real problem seems to lie behind the fact that news are being perceived more as an entertainment rather that a piece of information. We have started enjoying arguments and debates on everything and refuse to settle for simply knowing that something unusual has happened somewhere. Simply put, we fell for the tactics by news channels aiming to keep us hooked to them. 

Remember the beautiful days when newspapers were the only source letting people know the happenings around them? News was confined to a limited number of pages and nothing more. People were left with just the basic details of what, when and where that greatly limits one's imagination beyond a certain point. Even if one imagined more it never manipulated anyone else in the form of comments or social media forwards. Things were still greatly under control when TV channels aired news for half an hour twice everyday. Those news hours were mostly viewed as a disturbance amidst our favorite programme on the TV. Things were never the same when dedicated channels started mushrooming for just news. Seriously, is everything aired round the clock that important to know? Can't we survive without knowing every other crap in the name of news? It doesn't just end there. News channels go a step beyond in elaborating a news by letting 4 people shout on top of their voice about what they feel might have happened and how they think should it progress and how a certain community is always behind similar incidents happening in the state. Thereon, the core issue is diluted with too many other ingredients totally unrelated to the news and the real problem take a turn towards a common agenda of accusing a certain community of people. The already manipulated and emotionally charged minds starts identifying insignificant similarities that can relate the current incident with a person or a group that is unrelated to the news and the vicious cycle continues to roll and snowball picking up everyday incidents. By the time the first news finds its logical closure, the damage is already done and we either ignore the facts or doubt the judgement. 

It all begins with us being judgemental about every other thing happening around. We fail to filter out things that don't really matter to us and start consuming them which slowly corrupts our mind. A solution to this could be as simple as listening vs analysing something we hear. Listening is enough for one's awareness whereas analysing leads to unwarranted conclusions especially when done without knowing the facts. 

Compulsive Opinion Disorder

A mental health condition which needs immediate attention and addressing in this heavily connected yet sadly disconnected world of social networks. There used to be a time when people stayed away from matters that doesn't really matter to them. Before the age of smartphones, everybody's world was confined to just friends and family. People rarely paid attention to others people's opinion. A feedback or response that we provided to someone we didn't know was subtle and polite. The most common way to disagree with someone was to say nothing at all. Arguments were never intended to belittle someone or attack them personally. We cared about staying to the point and not deviating from it. I believe the main reason that kept people in their limits when it came to commenting on someone's opinion was 'identity'. Anonymous commenting rarely reached the ears of the speaker. 

How much I wish the comments section on a person's social networking profile was accessible to just a closed group of people associated with the person. That will reduce the number of threats, hatred messages, bullyings in the form of anonymous comments from random people. Imagine if one day we start hearing all the comments from social media in the actual voices of people who posted them. Am pretty sure the noise would deafen every single living being on earth and beyond. Comments have become more of a noise than a voice.

The habit of voicing out our opinion to every other social media post that comes our way is the real cause of these unwanted noise. While the fact is nobody really looks forward to our opinion, but are just posting their opinion on something they came across. A person need not agree with everyone, but that is no reason enough to personally attack the author of a content. Social media has become a breeding ground of stereotyping and hypocrisy. Something that was designed to bring hearts closer is actually making them drift far apart. Taking it easy and moving on is the need of the hour. The sooner we realize this, the better.

While we cannot expect local laws to think through every possible way to end cyberbullying and intensify punishments, what we can really do is be a responsible netizen and treat others with respect. After all behaving ourselves when no one else is watching defines the real "I".