My Facebook Addiction

Due to many reasons, one being me addicted to this social networking website; I decided to stay off of Facebook. I logged off from the app and also the browser in my phone. Safe side I took off the app from my main screen too. That was the easy part.

What followed was difficult.
The next day I woke up and my hand automatically reached for my phone, I opened the browser and went on the website to find that I had logged out of it. It was then that I realised my last night's decision. The same action happened multiple times that day. After a while I realised that my phone was used by me mostly for Facebook, followed by Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram. I hardly ever use the phone nowadays for calling.
So that morning, which was a Sunday, I got up and started reading the newspaper during breakfast. A habit I used to dilligently exercise when I was in the 7th standard in school. After 2 hours, I had read the newspaper from front to last page (well that is an exaggeration, as I don't read the sports section. But I did read the whole editorial section, and all of the first page news). Sitting for 2 hours straight reading would have been a piece of cake for me in the pre-smartphone era. But it wouldn't have been possible today, as I keep checking my phone for any new updates from Viral social media websites like Buzzfeed, Scoopwhoop, BoredPanda, Cracked.com, and some Bollywood news websites. After so many years, I felt a pure feeling of achievement not marred by guilt of not giving all I've got for the task.
Afterwards I cleaned a whole shelf of old textbooks and notes. Right from 12 pm, till around at 9 pm in the night, breaking away only for food and some tv. This task which I've been procrastinating for years (I still have my BA notes), was finished in one day.
I did face certain difficulties.
1. The need to post what I'm doing. It made me crazy. "watching this film", "watching cricket". The need to tell someone 'exactly what I'm doing was so bad that at one point of time I was going to blab out loud a witty status when my whole family was taking a nap. The disgusting feeling stopped my from doing that though.
2. I didn't get to share with the world my happiness of Leo finally getting the Oscar, nor the songs I'm listening to, the films I watched.
But what I achieved in the past few days is gold.
1. My fingers got some well deserved rest from handling a huge phone and scrolling and tapping.
2. I hardly ever have to charge my phone.
3. My phone doesn't heat up.
4. My mind got some rest from the world. Social networking sites are full of problems going around in the world. Granted that they help you being in touch with what is happening in your country and world. But does stating your mind, having to defend your POV, pull your hair at the blatant disregard for fellow humans and animals is supporting the issue or even beneficial to you?

But all things are not so happy happy. I did cheat.
Now I am focused on Snapchat and Instagram. But here's the deal, there's only so much you can do on both these sites. You can check out the daily updates of certain websites on Snapchat, and Instagram gets really boring quickly. It's just pictures of mindless stuff sometimes, with equally mindless, unrelated tags. I did also go on twitter an tweeted about Leo.
Also I logged in to send a friend request on Fb. But I swear on myself that I logged out immediately afterwards.
So even after cheating on the 'Diet' I do find myself most of the time without a phone in my hand.

It's been a week since I was active on Facebook. And I'm alive and sane.
So now I'm going to log in again on Fb to share this post, I hope I come back alive!

My View- Coldplay-Hymn for the weekend

    

     India is getting increasingly intolerant. Aren't we hearing this quite often? And if you haven't heard it yet, be sure to watch the Newshour and you'll get your dose of the word 'intolerant' from Arnab 'The Nation wants to know' Goswami.
     I can't answer whether India is intolerant or no. Because having learnt research methodology I want proper numbers. Maybe we have always been intolerant; but you didn't feel it until a few years ago because you didn't have a large screened smartphone with fast internet, 2-3 social media apps, with viral-social-media websites giving you biased conclusions of a news report.
     You never know? Endless possibilities.
     Coming back to the topic, having seen the whole video Coldplay- Hymn for the weekend, I have no issues against the video. Nothing is out of the ordinary. You come across most of the shots, locations the minute you step out of your house, whether you live in city or rural areas.
     A few years back people celebrated Slumdog Millionaire winning an Oscar as if it was produced, directed by an Indian. That film actually set foreigners perception of India as a poor, filthy country more than a 4 minute song. But the latter is facing so much ire.
     What is the problem with people playing Holi in the video? Does it have to be put bluntly in the video with a calendar showing the day as "Rangpanchmi" for them to celebrate the festival?
     If you have a problem with Beyonce's every inch of skin decked up with jewellery? Please go turn on your tv to any Hindi entertainment show, and you'll see women sleeping with those massive jewellery and makeup on.
     Bringing me to the recurrent occurences of Sadhus, and children dressed as gods in the videos. A country obsessed with religion. Ask yourself truly, are we not? If Sadhus in India can sell noodles and another following suit, can't they be in the video being themselves? And every fancy dress show you'll find atleast 1 kid dressed up as Hanuman and everyone gushing over how cute the child looks.
     And if you think the video is adding to the image of India as a fire-blower, snake charmer country, you should know that the India's highest rated TV show is 'Naagin' on Colors Tv, a show with 'Ichchadhari Naag and Nevla (mongoose). Other top rated shows include one with kaala jaadu (black magic), possession etc.
     If you live in a city like Mumbai, you come across almost everything that happens in the video everyday- slums, people celebrating some festival and blocking traffic, sadhus, beggars, child labourers.

     I accept that there is also another India, where people wear formals, brave traffic or crowded public transport, have lunch between 1-2, and come back in the same way. But that doesn't make the former portrait as false. Both exist.
     
    P.S.- One hindi news channel had a problem with the shot of a person smoking, saying it is portraying that drug taking behaviour happens in India. Shouldn't you, being a news channel, know more about the drug problem?

Being a woman

As a woman of this world,
I have a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders.

I have to be pretty all the while
But dress appropriately so as not be the object of everyone's eyes

I have to be mature, take my own decisions
But stay in my limits,
Coz duh! Girls have limited brain function

I have to take it as a compliment when people say "wow you can drive"
Coz for us right is left
And patriarchy is right.

I must have long hair
Can't cut them short.
Coz lambe baal is positively correlated to the amount of sanskaar

I have to go gaga at every baby i see;
even though they are wailing and disturbing my sleep;
Coz i hold baby making apparatus in me

When i'm angry, or sad it's always because of the unfertilised egg leaving me
Not because the external circumstances like a guy being a douche to me

I have to sit with my legs crossed, or close together
Coz keeping them wide open is code for "come at me"

And finally,
I have to analyse all the things that go wrong with me
Cross-examine myself
Coz it's all because of me
Because i'm a woman

Grim Realizations

Life is but one,

Comes with a clock

Ticking to the end. 

Tick

Excel in studies

Tock

Excel in work

Tick

Excel in relationships

Tock

Excel in life 

And you forget to have fun

Forget to quench your existential thirst

And then you are ashes.

Sadly you aren't a phoenix.

Thoughts in my mind

My mind is a black hole
sucking matters from everywhere
It lacks the filter
which shuts out things, and people
who should not be cared

For the mind can handle only so much of stress
Contradicting my psychology texts

Swirling around, like thoughts in a pensieve
Nowhere to go

Trapped in my mind
Trapping me in my life.

Memories of MA-2

When you enter the class 5.10
You see a bunch of budding future psychologists
Eating as if they came from a starving land
The teacher sighing at the sheer amount of time passed with the kids hogging
She thinks of how it all started

June, 2014
The sun is burning
Everyone would come early
To catch the seat in front of the door kept open
A certain fan would stop turning
The whole class would sit quietly
Waiting for 5 hours to end

Come rains and terms like MMPI, ROR become our friends.
The class bond over food
With pasta, oats, bhel, and dhokla passing hands,
Feeding our tummies
Giving us the strength to face the tests

And then we have guests like "Chees-mayo sandwich, and franky and McD"
Disrupting the teacher
Lighting up the still hungry

Perhaps what really brought us together was our love for chai
It was love at first sight
The day we had bhajji and chai as it poured outside
Our love is so deep
That we have chai even when it's too many degrees outside

Let me tell you about the monster named "Dissertation"
Which gave us many a sleepless nights
From running hither dither to collect data
To understanding the finer nuances of Anova and Manova
As minute formatting slipped our attention
We realise after binding that theres a problem with the indentation

Second semester brought in counselling
Which is very helpful to us mental health professionals
We successfully apply CBT to ourselves
And secretly wondered whether Freud did make some sense
The 3 principles of PCT are ingrained in our heads
We can jump out of out beds and recite the steps to behavior therapy on a bet

And then it all came to an end.
Just like that
We dint have to reach college by ten
We dint have to convince ma'am to let us out early
Those days are gone when we got hooked to trashy songs
And laughed our hearts
All full of innocence

But those memories have found a place in our hearts
Where they will be cherished till time stands still.

The ever-debated question 'What is Life?'

Life. Can one ever operationally define it?
Let's try.
Life-something opposite to and preceeding death

But that is debatable. It may or may not be just life and death. It can be a cycle -no start, no end. A continuous circle of repetitive life and death.
We can also argue that death is not the end of life. It can be Life in a different avatar.

How can we ever know what death is?
How can we ever make up our minds about something that we have no idea of? It is just like judging a new girl in class- making assumptions based on her clothes and accent. The person may turn out to be what you thought she would be or she maybe a world apart and than what you thought. The same is with death.
Why do we see it is as something dreadful?

So coming back to Life.
Everyone's perception about life is subjective and so is life itself. There is no one perfect, proper life. I wonder how Plato would describe Life in his 'World of Ideas'. He said that there is a perfect world somewhere and everything that we know is a copy image of the perfect thing. So the table that you see burdened by your books is sort of like a xerox copy of a single perfect table in the world of ideas.

So how must be a 'perfect life'? 
Is it being rich and having all the luxuries?
Or having nothing and still feeling contented?

How do I see my life? 
Truth be told I ponder over my life most if not all the time. It may top my list of thoughts thought and beat others by a huge margin.

  When you have to define something you can do it by comparing it with something else.
If I compare my life with my relatives and friends, then I am good just as they are.
If I compare to the richest people in the world, well, I don't have a diamond studded bathtub nor am I crying for one. However, I am not starving either.
If I compare it to the people who don't have anything, who have days when they don't have one meal to go in their tummies; are diseased, isolated, then I have everything that I could ever ask for.
But what did I do to deserve this beautiful life that I am living? Why can i step out and go to college when there are others who can't? What have I done to deserve parents who love and protect me, who have created this safe haven for me to live and enjoy when there are infants discarded in dustbins? When a girl is abused by her own family? When a gay is not accepted by his own family?

Why have I won the lottery to Life?

Why do people suffer?
Why do people torture?
Is that what's their Life?
Is that what they're after?

But why are someone blessed?
And the others cursed?
Is it past life karma?
But can't they be forgiven?

What's in store for me?
What do I have in me?
Do I even mean something?
Or am I just a Star destined to be dust
and then brushed,
aside.
Does my living even matter?