WHAT'S YOUR ONLINE PERSONALITY?

You bump into them in the virtual world every other day. They might annoy you, they might pester you or they might entertain you. Read further to see how many of them you know personally. And to find out if you are one of them.

Their profile picture would probably be a selfie or a shot taken in front of the mirror wearing the skimpiest of clothes and a pout. They are here to make ‘frans’ preferably of the opposite sex and spend their free time sending friend requests to strangers. Most of them in reality, perhaps, wouldn’t dare to step out of their rooms in those clothes but online they are someone else. 

These fools have a deep love for gross photographs of strange diseases. They truly believe liking a page can save someone. And with good intention plead with you to like the same, send you invites to join the most extraordinary causes from saving crows to cleaning roads! What they actually need is to be told that to make a difference they need to first get up from that comfortable chair of theirs. 

If you look at their friend list, you will have a mini-heart attack. They have a fan following as big as the Schinderler’s list. They consider themselves to be the center of the world and don’t let go of any opportunity to flaunt their narcissism. They’ll bombard your homepage with pictures of themselves bathing, hallucinating, sleeping, crying, and the list simply goes on. 

They can only talk in puns, without them they are mum. Every comment of theirs, every link they share, every tag, every status needs to be witty. Else they get constipation.

These fellows might not have read a single play written by Shakespeare but will quote him every other day. For them a status is equivalent to a quote. Rumi, Einstein, Osho, Neruda, and Eliot no one is spared from their quoting spree. 

They are like the silent observers of the social networking world. They lie dormant for months at a stretch making you to forget them completely. And then suddenly they give you the creeps by commenting on your oldest possible photo.

The poor souls don’t believe in letting a like go waste. They practice what they preach and begin by liking their own status and photos! For them random statements about the weather, everyday laments, falling ill and even a person’s demise is like-worthy. They follow it up by pinging and pestering you to like their cousin’s daughter’s baby’s photo. And lord save you from their wrath if you fail to like them. 

ON A HUMOUROUS NOTE

Mayajaal

Recently one my colleagues explained to me the profound philosophy of the Mayajaal of Appraisals… Appraisals are perhaps, by far the most mysterious and dreaded word in every professional’s life and this philosophy expounds the workings of the dreaded appraisal word….how THEY, the slave drivers of us slaves, have developed this philosophy…how THEY have successfully implemented it despite the best efforts of lesser mortals like us to rise above it.

This philosophy depends on a number of givens. First, those who have to leave will leave. They don’t care about whether they are leaving before appraisals or vice versa. They are driven by greater emotions to find greener pastures. This aggrieved lot usually believes that it is a grave injustice that they are stuck at such a place. Basically they feel they are much above the place and also that if they continue in the so not happening place the world might miss out on a legend. This lot also includes calculative criminals who nurse grudges and leave with a sadistic vengeance. Their triumph often consists only of the shattering slap on the faces of their detractors when they drop their resignation letter.

THEY, the makers of the philosophy also don’t worry about the lot who will not leave unless given the pink slip. This bag of loyal losers will stay put, crib, cry, mull, and even dream about the forthcoming appraisals. For them THEY create a Mayajaal of the forever coming up appraisals. Next month… next to next month… next Diwali… next year…next campaign… next promotion…next this…next that...next next…The anticipating losers happily or unhappily thus have many reasons to stick to their place. They don’t want to experiment, they don’t want to work hard (funnily enough they may anyways be working hard in the same god forsaken place). Some of them have even discovered a most innovative excuse for the prevailing scheme of things, namely – “too many changes reflect badly on your CVs.” The morons don’t realize with a mindset like theirs no one would anyways be interested in their CVs.

Stuck between the two lots of criminals and losers are the mixed bags. The poor souls who are neither here nor there, and are basically a confused lot who can’t tell black from white, right from wrong and often are the followers of the herd. In this Appraisal Mayajaal they are the lot who are struck worst as they can’t make up their mind where to look. And if and when they do break out of this confused territory they infringe the former territories.

THEY, the makers of the Mayajaal are not bothered with the first lot. THEY direct their energies in amusing the losers lot and also giving the confused mixed bags regular dosages of confusion. The Mayajaal continues to thrive. And if ever anyone falls out of the losers bracket to the any of the other two territories THEY don’t take tension because there is never any scarcity of new fools waiting to be recruited.

Yet again...

I have got an extraordinary capacity to forget, misplace, lose or do something wrong with things. While my friends have conferred me with celebrity status in this aspect, I am not quite kicked about it. Sometimes it makes me feel why me?... Makes me feel so frustrated that I feel I should list down my stupidities and invite people to tell me their stories which are equally stupid or worse than mine…

Let me begin with the latest one… Smart that I am I ignored half a dozen HDFC ATM’s around my office of which I have a debit card and chose to withdraw money from an AXIS bank ATM. This despite the fact that my colleague had just conveyed me of her inhibitions in using her ATM card at another bank, because her father had recently lost his ATM card to some moron ATM machine of some other bank. I not only refused to listen to her sound advice but also bragged that I always withdrew my money from whichever ATM was convenient, be it of HDFC or any other bank. Now it so happened that the ATM machine which we went to, had the good sense of refusing my card for the first couple of times when I tried to forcibly feed it my card. But persistent that I am I invited my own doom, and tried to insert the card by twisting and turning the card at various angles.

Finally, seeing my single-minded dedication the moron swallowed my card, only to flash a moment later “Sorry link with satellite broken…” the screen continued like this for 10 minutes and finally when it went back to normal the only thing it had to say was “welcome to axis bank”…it is pointless to say here that my card had been very conveniently digested.

(I will do another write up on what happened post this and how caring the customer care personnel are)

Let me tell you there many more such bank related incidents which I have had. I have had the good fortune of forgetting my ATM pin on one other occasion, and having used the wrong pin doggedly for more than three times got my ATM card blocked for good. On yet another incident, after withdrawing the money and being super excited to spend it I forgot my ATM card inside the ATM machine. But that is not the catch I went ahead and did my shopping without even realizing I had forgotten my card inside the machine. It was only while I was returning I happened to cross the same ATM and the good old guard returned me the ATM card.

If you are not yet thoroughly disgusted let me tell you of the another filmy instance when I thought I lost my pan card. That day too I was on a shopping spree, lost in my own world. Suddenly, I realized my wallet had disappeared, along with it my debit card and room keys. After much cribbing I went to the police station to write a report. A month later, I realized my pan card was nowhere to be found. I ransacked my whole room, delayed a number of other urgent processes which required a pan card. My roommate suspected that I must have lost it with my wallet, and suddenly I found it quite a plausible reason. I cribbed again and went to the police station again, paid money and got a duplicate pan card made basically doing the same thing twice. But the story doesn’t end here. In utter disdain and mockery of all my efforts, my original and so called lost pan card resurfaced in an unseen corner of my suitcase just a few days after I got my duplicate pan card made.…and the current status is that the duplicate pan card on which I had spent extra money is missing.

Let’s move on to other stupid anecdotes. Every morning when I half-wake-up, (‘half-wake-up’ because I do everything before reaching office wordlessly as though I am sleep walking) I either make breakfast or lunch or nothing…err that sounded unnecessary. Anyways, the food / dabba we get at office is awful. So, sometimes I take the pains to prepare lunch on my own. On one such fateful day, when I had good home cooked food lying right on my desk, I conveniently and absolutely chose to forget all about it. I went ahead ordering my dabba as I did on all other days when I didn’t get lunch from home. At lunch time, I obviously had surplus food on which my friends happily feasted on…

This is the last story I am going to tell you…While on the road whenever I have to attend a call I forget to keep back my cell. Once I continued to walk almost 200 yards with my cell phone pressed to my ears even though I had ended the call long ago. Much to my embarrassment I realized every one was staring at me as I looked like a dumbo…

Now, the turn is yours…

The Sexiest Diseases

I know the title itself sounds very funny. Diseases are something we curse, we abhor, we pity, we fear…they come stubbornly, sometimes with tell tale signs, sometimes without any warning. We don’t have any choice in them. But suppose we did?

What would you choose? As a child, I for some reason found certain ailments really fascinating.

Super Sinus / Sinusitis: Sinus was always this attractive nerdy disease to me. I related it to people who read too much. My eldest sister who was in a boarding school at that point of time was the epitome of a sinus veteran. I remember how mom used to tell all and sundry about her sinus problems, whether it was the drawing room or the market place, almost as if it was something to boast about. I always thought if ever I wanted a chronic disease I wanted Sinus. :D now that I have also inherited the legacy of sinus, I don’t know if I am really enjoying it. Still it gives me a regular workable excuse for absence.

Admirable Asthma: Another cool disease in my childhood imagination. I remember one of my cousins who dropped out of school because of acute asthma. The idea was quite appealing to me; I thought if I had asthma I too could avoid school forever. I heard of attacks where people made him sniff leather sandals. Lots of fussing over, pampering sounded quite nice. I have changed my opinions.

Magical Myopia: This is one disease I heartily prayed to acquire. Both my sisters took specs while still at school. My mom explained it as “Academic pressure”. No wonder I wanted specs too, half of it was probably to hear my mom say “academic pressure”. I took specs in 9th standard. I somehow couldn’t believe it had finally happened and my best friend who was by then fed up of my asking what was written on the black board complained to my mom. I was the happiest girl when I went to the optical store with my father. But all the compliments that I got for the prized specs was a frowning “Too much TV, Too much lying down and reading novels” courtesy mom.

There is actually a part II to the myopia story - the lens story. After conquering the specs I was obsessed with the lens. My sister had already graduated to lenses. But I was still not worthy of it. I kept persisting for it to no avail. My sis lost her lenses and was awarded with yet another pair. Hell broke loose because of this injustice. I cried, I wailed and created a great ruckus and achieved one of my few (and I hope final) adulthood thrashings. Within a couple of months, however, I was the proud owner of a pair of lenses. Sadly now, I find lenses more of a botheration unless I am in a mood to dress up.

Exotic Eye Flu: Ever heard of something so strange. Bird flu maybe yes. Let me tell you it’s the most attractive eye disease I have discovered recently. It’s nothing like its gross cousin conjunctivities. To begin with eye flu is not visible; there is only a slight redness in the eye. You keep putting eye drops like rose water. The doctor tells you to avoid the PC. While this may not be enough to take a leave, you can at least flaunt it in front of your boss.

Fantastic Fainting: I don’t know what else to call it, but fainting seems to be the most romantic of all diseases. Especially if there is a Mills and Boons hero around ;). It can save you from any situation. Besides if you like being seen as a delicate darling it is the ideal solution. And even if that’s not what you want you can also faint in a fit of anger.

There are many more attractive diseases. I can hardly write about all of them like low pressure, fever (that’s the only time mom fed me rotis), anemia etc etc… you see little illnesses are not such bad things. So, next time you are ill use your imagination.