Friday, April 20, 2012

Faceless Friends, Fleeting Familiarity

What do I call this post? A thought, a musing or the beginning of a debate? You my friends have to decide what this has to be..I shall call it a sneak peek into what my life currently is - a commentary of what I feel and react to...and perhaps, because I am the your regular girl-next-door, this could be the story of many like me.

My world is the same one that you inhabit, but my human interactions ( and soon you will realise why I use such a technical term) have reduced to a point where it sometimes concerns me... On most days, the only thing that constantly talks to me is the television - left ON most of the time for the prime purpose of talking to me ( not entertaining me, mind you, I rarely even glance at whether news or a show is playing). While I was a busy broadcast journalist, talking televisions were a work hazard or rather a necessity. Now that I work from home, mostly in my pajamas, they are a force of habit and a comforting, familiar presence.

The only face-to-face human contact I have are with my cook, who arrives at sharp 8.15AM in the morning for forty minutes. If I have had a late night working, then all I do is open the door, mumble what she could possibly cook for me and return to my snug bed - she knows her routine pat and does not disturb my sleep but leaves quietly afterwards, shutting the door behind her. My maid comes around 10.30AM, by then I'm up and about and usually already settled on my beanbag with my laptop, wading through the mails that have arrived in the eight hours since I last checked mail! And then there's the poor, long-suffering sister - as if I wasn't enough to weigh her down, her work takes her out of the house by 9 in the morning and only lets her drag her bedraggled self back home late at night, by which time all she wants is to crash. So much for human interactions!

So then does that make me deprived? Not really, most part of my day is lived on the internet. My friends call me garrulous, I can squeeze in ten words in under five seconds. And my vocal chords aren't overworked - my fingers are and my keyboard shows distinct wear and tear. I cry, laugh, pout, leap with joy and love using just a few punctuation symbols - did you know colons, semi-colons and random alphabets could be mirrors to your mood?? :-) ;-) :-)


My emotions and longings, my relationships- love, lust, heart-to-hearts, counselling are all laid-bare over skype, g-chat and what would I do without Facebook?? Funnily for a journalist, the mobile phone is really not my preferred mode for communication. I'd any day choose a skype chat through the laptop over talking for hours on the phone or for that matter living life via SMS. 

My close friends are spread across the country and the world, there are just a few who are in the same city as me, the others are in Delhi, UK and the US - I share more of a virtual relationship with all - thanks to clashing work hours and the physical distance and more importantly, the few hours that now constitute off-hours (for them and for me)!! A number of people who were acquaintances and smile-when-you-run-into-them kind of friends while at school, college or work now know more about me and are in tune with the thoughts running through my head, thanks to my virtual personality. Funnily, the hitch is when they think they know me and are trigger-happy to make value-judgements on how I live my life or relate to my world around me. And that's when the hackles rise, tempers fray and the need to dish out liberal doses of sarcasm tinged with censure takes over. Imagine the irony of life, when your effort at sarcasm rebounds back at you with LoLs( Laugh Out Loud for the lazy typers) and ROFLMAO (Roll On the Floor Laugh My Ass Off!!)  

These days, I have a new love - online games - no gunfights or treasure hunts mind you! But Scrabble and Pictionary and Word Games. Now this is the confession bit, I don't play games on Facebook like a number of my friends. That to me, is too public because Facebook believes in notifying all and sundry what I'm upto. Now I could be jobless and looking for a diversion, but my 'friends', close and otherwise don't need to know that, do they?? So I seek out like-minded strangers, who are willing to play a surreptitious game of Scrabble online with me, on the phone or on the Facebook through a different id..So these days, as soon as I wake up,  I look for Jenny's ping or Slobiiii to come online to play their turn. I don't even know whether they are men or women. It does not matter. These two draw very well, so its easier for me to play Draw Free with them. I don't like Maddox much - very rude when I don't understand the drawings and a spoilsport, who often writes out the word when he/she can't think enough to draw it. But then, in the next round, along with the picture clues, there's often a Sorry that is posted...that is a connect - with a nameless faceless person on the other end of a computer or iPhone. There are a couple of cheats who play Word Games with me too...Aaah..let's not get into that contentious topic!!

That virtual connect makes up for the lack of cousins and aunts and uncles and colleagues and neighbours having a regular stake in my life. These faceless virtual friends are convenient too - antiseptic. If they don't know me, they can't interfere in my life can they?? My interactions are increasingly getting anonymous, however, my private life has never been more in the public eye - thanks to a life lived largely on the internet.
                                                           
Where do I head from here? Where do you head from here??

15 comments:

  1. Gah! tell me where you are, I am coming am meeting up with you..

    well and to be honest, I am pretty much jealous of your lovely lifestyle..if I were in your place, I wouldnt go anywhere, I would stay just where you are?

    But then am I a case of grass greener on the other side? may be may be, but still, to answer your question, I am not going anywhere from where you are right now..I love it :)

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    1. Wow...Rs Mom, thanks for the offer for some human contact, I will surely take you up on it soon...Just as soon as I know when I'm plunking my suitcase back in Mumbai next...:) But I think we need to have a face to relate to instead of just the :) :p and :? right?? :) Well, honestly, there's little I want changed about my life as it is right now..Institutionalised slavery, as I call my days at a leading TV news channel, was appalling and I had turned into a Robot..Now I live, breathe and laugh, albeit most of it virtually!!! :) So I guess, we agree to stay we are and crib about it sometimes, no?? :)

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  2. What an irony to lead a life confined to a laptop for most of the young people now! You painted just the true picture of lives of many in the city these days:)(Not to miss the smile)

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    1. Stories of our lives now Rahul..in fact, my pet joys these days are swooning over Tabs and iPads and netbooks..Anything that makes travelling with computers (which is non-negotiable) easier..:) and since we use smileys liberally to let our virtual friends know what we mean and the tone we mean it in, I shall use it liberally to compound the irony of our existence :D :D :D

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    ReplyDelete
  4. You are living life , the way , thousands, or lakhs re living. It is good you have so many friends to keep you occupied, chatting and discussing and consoling. So what is less?
    You dont travel around, waste petrol, and other facilities, do not add carbon to the atmosphere. It is a good life.

    BTW, this is what future life going to be. No one need to
    get out of their dwellings,(no high fashion), Laptops/whatever it will be? telepathy will do the communication.:-)

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    1. :) I like the way you envision future so simplistically. But I think Im still optimistic about the future of human interactions, just the way there have been a redux on just about everything, from culture, tradition and even religion, I think we might see a redux of lifestyle and family interaction and relationships..:)

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  5. You dear girl, have taken virtual communication to a new level with virtual games. Not content with just being a virtual person, now you want anonymity even in that? LOL How far are we ready to go to keep our lives to ourselves? but like the balanced girl that you are, you can be optimistic about the future. Though this life seems to be ideal, the human touch is going to be in, and sooner than later, because just as quickly as some technological marvel occupies our imagination, it fades out too for a hark back. I would call it a wistful soliloquy. how is that for a nice jazzy name for this post? :D (See I am so happy with you!)

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    1. The reply comes to you from Istanbul, just adding a locator to our virtual conversation. :) Wistful soliloquy - love that title, in fact, soliloquy is lyrical even though a tad bit melancholic...:) I don't think this life is ideal, but I believe we have moved leap years away from what our concept of ideal was. :)

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  6. Real or virtual world,we are virtually logged on(pun intended) for major part of the day.
    Let me take you out for dinner when you touch base at Mumbai:)I would have called it'The Lost touch'.

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    1. Doctor Sahiba, I should be back in Mumbai by somewhere mid next month. I do touch back before that, but then the suitcase is in a perpetual state of preparedness and I have found out that I have to be Up in the Air soon after I land.. But as soon as I'm back and feeling the Mumbai heat, we must rekindle 'The Lost Touch' and get in touch...:)

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  7. Many of us are such diehard fans because we can discuss ideas. I've discovered ordinary folks with extraordinary ideas. Being human I love it best when there is a response to my posts. I feel fb et all have their place but not all the time. I keep it for fmly and frnds and visit it twice or thrice a week. Doubt if I'll ever succeed in giving up on the human connection though. We really have the best of both worlds - lucky us, touch wood, smiles.

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    1. Isn't it weird KM, how we find it so easy to eloquently share our innermost thoughts, ideas and worries so easily and the nameless strangers that read our state of mind far outstrip the known faces ( and in that I include those that I interact with, like you. I like to be an optimist like you and think we are merely expanding our circles, to include human and virtual friends..:) I'm waiting for the day I include humanoids too..;)

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