Saturday, May 29, 2010

the girl in the bus...


Kolkata buses; they are hot and stifling and yes... overcrowded and noisy. I was on-board one, coming back from watching a movie. The rabble of people fidgeting in the background, fighting for some little volume for breathing, standing or just managing to clamp on to some piece of metal which would enable them to continue their journey.



I have always found that there is a certain lack of humanity in public transports: People are eager to finish their journey, its stuffy and hot and uncomfortable; fights break out , there is an air of irritation and frustration, you hear people cussing all around you especially when you have a large bag with your laptop in it.



It was such hostile environment that I was travelling that day. I was standing somewhere in the aisle and about four feet away from a girl who was sitting in a window seat. Another thing about public transport is that though it may sound ridiculously obvious; there is a tremendous lack of privacy. You can't help it ... there isn't enough places to look at. She was messing around with her phone and try as might as I wanted to avoid it my eyes would inexplicably go to her screen and the Extra Large Font on the large screen of her Nokia.

She had received a message...

I did not know from whom it was from but she was reading the message over and over again; staring at the screen. The message was "I am sry. But I am brkng up with u."

There she was... the girl in the bus... jilted by her lover perhaps... And there was I, feeling like a thief... looking in on moments of her private life.

She typed "Thnks for all the wundrful time we shared." and closed her phone.

I watched her silently from where I stood. If she was in anguish, she controlled it well. She looked out of the window watching the meaningless traffic slide by, trying to suppress some emotions that threated to burst from her in an instant. And I stood there as an invader of her privacy silently watching. Staring.

I could not see her face from where I stood only the profile. I could not see the pain in her eyes. I could not see the minute facial expressions one gives before they crack. Her hand reached up for the window. I thought I saw it tremor a tiny bit, a shiver and a certain lack of belief in her present state.

I was a mute spectator of the controlled implosion of her sentiments, of the deliberate deconstruction of her mind, it was like watching a castle made of cards being swept away by the wind; there was no sound, there was nothing which would say that a world, perhaps, was destroyed here. There was no evidence of melodrama, there was no hint of a tragedy.

It was like watching waves on the beach. The surface of the water often belies the strong current beneath I had learnt;What I had not learnt was that human spirit could mimic their very persona.

Suddenly she turned and looked directly at the culprit, the peeping tom, the pryer of her thoughts, the watcher of the whole episode; me. I tried to look away, but my mind was overcome with panic. My body seized up with guilt. My eyes could not rearrange their point of focus.

I was overcome with sadness which flowed from her eyes, my heart went out for her, but still wracked with contrition my speech had abandoned me.

Suddenly the conductor shook me by the shoulder. I had missed my stop. In a whirlwind of events that followed I was somehow off the bus, one stop further than I had intended.

I was dazed, I did not have an opportunity to look again where she sat. It was over as abruptly as it had begun. I was left as clueless as I was before.

I started to walk slowly back to where I had to go, but all the while my thoughts remained with the girl in the bus.

(picture courtesy Zindy @ http://zindy.deviantart.com/ )

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Somethings I hate in Social Networking

Social Networking. The buzzword of today. Even this post is hypocritical in itself as Probably you will be redirected here through Twitter, Facebook, Orkut or whatever.





















Trust me. I am not against social networking. Rather I spend much* time commenting on pics, lol-ing, sometimes even rofl-ing, liking, disliking, tagging, re-tagging, scrapping, poking, superpoking and watching popular videos.

(*much here means 65% of my online time.)

But there are some things which irritate me about social media networking. My friend Shrey already has said something related to twitter followers in one of his posts, but my rabble is not site specific.

Things that irritate me.

1. People who want us to join societies on facebook : Yeps. Join societies. Thats the best way to save lame puppies. Or Hate Jews.

























2. People who play games via Twitter: Yes, that has started recently. Twitter-games. AAggh the Humanity!




















3. People who put faces of kittens and puppies with misspelt language : I don't hate puppies/kittens. I just don't think they are worth a click.























4. Win 10000$ if you forward it to 50 people: I mean what do you do when someone sends you one of those? Also in this category send-to-50-people-or-you-will-die-last-friday and send-to-20-people-get-kissed-by-the-love-of-your-life. I mean I knew Google was a big and rich company. But how can they find the love of my life. (or kill me by some obscure cancer)

5. Sign it for a reason: Online Petitions. What does one get by appending your name to the long list of arseh***s . I mean... what happens? does this list go to the President afterwards?
I can't imagine the scene.

6. People who ping me after I have written DND : Sometimes I have even written DO NOT DISTURB and/or DISTURB AND DIE but the same thing happens in Gtalk.


X: Hi!
Samar: DO NOT DISTURB PLEASE.
Me: hi
X: wassup?
Me: busy.
X: k. just wanted to say hi.
Me: k
Sent at 7:50 pm
X: so when are your holidays?
Me:


7. StumbleUpon Shit and Fall in It : Why do people add free download lists to SU? Average day looks somewhat like this.
  • 60 GREAT addons for Firefox.
  • Why is Firefox better than IE
  • Why is Chrome better than Firefox
  • Why is Safari Better than Chrome
  • Why should you shift to Linux
  • Why Microsoft Sucks
  • Open Office Downloads
  • 15 Open Source Apps you will love


NO. STOP.

8. When someone forwards a mail to 100 people and does not remove the irrelevant email ids: So then you can see the whole chain of people all around the globe who have been duped into reading the obviously useless thing that that guy/gal sent in the first place.
So yo have to scroll down for like... forever to get to the useless part. Sigh.

9. Old Hoax News: Do you remember the time that mails used to come to not go to dingy movie theaters for fear of being infected by the HIV virus. Sometimes those ancient emails find a way back to your inbox.



Tell me if you have other pet peeves of your own.