Celebrations

As we grow older cynicism tends to rhyme with philosophy and sometimes seems synonymous as well.There is no denying the fact that I'm no longer a teenager and hate to be called as one for the gyan bank I have developed all these years is through my experience and learnings and this is what adds the maturity angle to my thoughts and makes it all the more concupiscible. May be this is precisely why I fail at comprehending certain personality and character traits.Flaunting your principles seems to be the modern society's inexorable imperative.Having a set of byzantine ideals is one thing and tweaking them one at a time as you fancy is another.

As days progress we tend to get more and more shallow at heart..What seemed wrong a decade ago seems plausible now and worse yet,is termed as thrilling/adventurous.If you had noticed this major phase shift from the past you could as well wonder why we tend to stick to a few things just because we had been doing this for the past many years.Blindly trusting and following is one thing and not questioning or feeling for it is another.

Come 26th January,we all get decked up to 'celebrate' our Republic Day.Schools start practicing march past and an entire line up of drills and cultural programs; corporate offices call in for an ethnic wear day and some people visit various orphanages and donate stuff to the underprivileged.I wonder how many of us look at it as the day India was declared as a Republic rather than one extra holiday.Some crib about it being a dry-day.But how many of us know the true meaning of a Sovereign Republic.

It is not just the 'celebration' of our national holidays but applies to adapted 'days' like Mother's Day or Father's Day or the ever famous Valentine's Day.

How did this come into being?We don't care.

Why do we celebrate this?No idea.

How do you want to celebrate this?Just like everyone else does

Primarily we showcase a generation of youngsters who do things just for the heck of it.Leave the festivals which have a heavy nationalist sentiment attached to them,even those like Valentines Day,which attracts so much of attention,gung ho and protests tends to lose its significance and is limited to exchanging cards,gifts and flowers or worse yet,going on a proposing spree.Holi,our improvisation is using of water filled balloons and eggs.Ever paused to think,it is a puja?Deepavali,we see only the loud crackers.Ever wondered why your mother takes so much time for the puja and insists on cleaning the house,decorating it and lights those lamps(diyas).

It is not a crime to not know the history behind anything but not even trying to understand the spirit behind it,definitely is.Everything we celebrate got to have a soul to it.So this Republic Day atleast wake up in time for the flag hoisting and spend some time watching the effort our defense and school children put in to showcase our nation to the world.Before you switch that telecast to the next music channel,pause and appreciate what we are and celebrate being part of something; let us start with the nation.

Cliché Nazis

We are a bunch of cliche nazis! We love to see people from our own perspective, from our own looking glass, filter them through our sieve and if someone does not comply, we brand them 'not good' or worse yet 'sick'. What a few people would never understand or do not want to understand would be the fact that a person is defined by the society he grew up in and the friends he keeps.Even pretty mundane things like what or how you would judge right from wrong or otherwise. This situational and circumstantial prudence could be regarding anything or everything.It is how you see things and people around.

I understand that overt forms of bigotry are strictly proscribed fortified by culture and ensconced in the conscious but if you are ruling a person out or looking down at way he looks at things or understands his world or choose to vilify that individual for this reason,then please understand that this act of yours is insanely foolish.

Exempli Gratia, most of the people in and around the southern part of India would believe that you have no ambition in your life if you are not doing your Engineering or got done with it and are not planning to do your masters in Management.You are a person of flexible morals and gullible principles if you had been into more than one relationship in your past;for them you have,if you do, to have been into only one relationship in your past and should get married to that person else in all probability you would be looked down at as a person who fools around and philanders or as they would put it,'no one might take you seriously'.I am yet to figure out why people around would not take you seriously because of what you were to or with some person or some other person was to you,sometime in your past.Life is big,it's bigger than anyone of us,sometimes things happen,and you have no say in that,most of the times.What happened or how you reacted to certain things or how you perceive your environment now depends on an equation that has a heavy weighted variable for uncertainty.

Clichéd Questions

X sees Y online.So, X pings
Case I : X is has seen Y online after a very longtime
X:Hi
Y:Hi
X:Hw r u?
Y:doing good.
How r u?How's life?
X:usual
u temme,how's work n all?
blah ... blah...
makes sense!

Case II : X and Y meet up daily,they are cubemates at the office,they go to the foodcout together.And post dinnner Y chooses to come online.
X:Hi doood!
Y:Hey bro!
X:ssup?
Y:u temme ssup...
X:done with your dinnner?


Case III : Case I and Case II were independent of the gender of X and Y.Now, Y is a friend(girl) of X who got married recently.
X:Hi Y!
Y:Hey,hw r u?
X:Am good!U temme,how's life?
Y: :)
X: So,how's ur hubby?
Does it make any sense?Why do people ask these clichéd questions?None of them is interested,you are getting no information out of it,you are just wasting the other person's time and bandwidth!

KK's guide to identifying if you are boring-the-other-person-in-the-convo-to-death

1.Sometime into the discussion and the other person replies you in "ohkie(and its derivatives "owk","k","ohk","kk","okies")","aha",":)","hmm..."
What Do I Infer? Means that the discussion is going to end in another couple of minutes,choose not to reply to end the discussion straight away,the other person will like it that way too.
2.After a long silence one of you keys in stuff like "watelse","aur kya" ,"and..."
What Do I derive from this? Means that none has anything else to say,type in a bye(or bbyeeee or bubye or byeee in some instances) and close the window.
3.You see "X is typing" on your chat window for a long time
What Do I Infer? Means that the person at the other end has hit a space key or something and is working on something else).This might be either to give you an illusion that he still has something to say and shush you for sometime or by mistake(rare instances)
4. You are typing in something and the status icon goes red(busy)What Do I Infer? Means DoNot Disturb on non MS Office Communicators.Stop typing and mind your work!

So,What?By following these steps and cutting a uselessly long discussion short you are
· Helping save power and there by environment
· Saving bandwidth
· Saving your time
· Saving the other person's time and bandwidth too