Cirkuit of Orkut

Orkut is one social networking site that swept globe in a sweep to such an extent that every household kid seems to be knowing which opening and closing tags are required to render a 'winking' emoticon. I am not here to market orkut or expain its features, but to tell a story of orkut & me. So just sit back, ease yourself and enjoy the read...

Though my first encounter with it dates back to my 1st year Post graduation, I got completely into it only after my post graduation when I was relaxing at home. Within 3-4 days of signing in I found scores of friends, maximum current batch-mates and few oldies (school-mates). That set the ball rolling. Everyday morning till night, I indulged myself on net. What was Google upto? What new Microsoft was trying? How Intel was getting subdued under AMD...all became secondary. Primary was Orkut. How communities in Orkut were so exciting! Reply to a message and keep on traversing to the community just to check as to who felt my message stimulating enough to reply. This went on for days together. All the while finding friends - this kept the excitement on. Within first week, my friends' list crossed two tons!

Soon a feeling captivatedly disturbed me - how could someone block orkut in offices? Infact it should be made mandatory for all to use! Google employees had their share of contribution in using it within their company, among their employees - and Google was growing. So, I was like shouting, you want your company to grow, better allow orkut to be used by your employees...

But the companies appeared more satisfied in displaying,

The URL you tried to visit contains one of the following keywords

orkut.com orkut

falling in the one of the following web categories:

Entertainment Chat Sites

Please contact your Administrator if you feel this is incorrect.

Arrey baba, every employee would have contacted the system administrator, if only their requests were paid heed to. Never knew whether they would be, with a cold face, bluntly shown their cabin to return to or exit door to help them permanently end their disappointment.

This fascination for orkut took to its heights when the only thing I spoke to anyone I met was ‘Orkut…orkut…orkut…..’ ‘Are you in Orkut?’ ‘What? You don’t know orkut??!!’ (never knew if this added to their assets or my sins!)

Soon I came out of this reverie when the activity of finding, adding friends came to a close, all the features explored and used with possible permutations and combinations. World became silent again.

Now, its once in a fortnight job to check any new activity – primary use still being finding friends. Orkut gets a lot of value for a reason known to all. After oxygen, orkut seems to occupy life-breath of many. Finding old friends still gives orkut all its credibility for existence. It will ever be remembered for getting together long lost friends which was once left to chance, luck…in other words, to God. Even God might be thankful to orkut for relieving Him from one of His responsibilities.

long live orkut…Long Live Orkut…LONG LIVE ORKUT….

But soon a day may come, where you wont require orkut to find friends. Looking at the trend at which people are getting used to systems and internet, a new born child may very well be presented with a email id as a new born gift on his/her’s naming ceremony day with family name as the domain name! A gift for being born on this planet where not only are humans bound together by the same air touching all of us, same earth under everyone’s feet but also the same web connecting humans virtually through wires and electrical signals.

Orkut is amazing to unearth and find oldies, sharing info about ourselves but communication is still a drawback. Mails is a better choice and that’s what Gmail is for!

Blog or Diary?

From my diary dated 22nd Feb' 08

Ah! Years passed I touched this book. So, very different I was earlier. Simple readings of my own writings from the past gushes across my mind the thinking and energy I had with me that time.

I have changed a lot from then. Stopped writing in my diary and started a blog, explored it and then it changed. I could never be myself. It looked as though I was writing for others' sake. I had heard that Blog is like an online diary. But I was wrong. It is not.

Diary is for me and me alone apart from few with whom I would like to share my thoughts. Not that blog does not provide that. Blog can be similar with access given to few to read and comment. But use of blog changed my outlook, attitude and understanding rushing past multiple events that eventually reverted me to get back to this paper - my very own diary.

i dont know why but my thoughts seem to flow freely when I pen down my thoughts than e-print them on screen. There is some 'apnapan', some belongingness with ink flowing in strokes, pinning the unseen voiced language to the uniformly glued paper holding the ink effortlessly for posterity for one to read and feel the same years later that I felt today on reading my writing of yesteryears.

Somehow the slant words seem to reflect me better. One may argue that I can choose appropriate font type from the plethora of font-faces available on the screen. But dear friend, my handwriting is not so uniform and perfect for a particular character to appear in the same way all the time, thus not reflecting me! I am not perfect in curves and dashes, thus electronic characters are not me.

Blog, alongwith brings many other options on the screen. Sometimes that seems more than distraction. Whereas here I just have a plain paper, pen and most importantly my thoughts flowing in sync with my thinking, with myself. Atleast for me personally I seem to loose myself when I sit in front of screen to type in my thoughts. This diary-writing is more intuitive. Ofcourse advantage of electronic media cannot be denied in terms of quick-sharing. That may be one of the reasons why this post would make itself to my blog.

What an evening today has been! A good chat and a stroll over a capuccino in the open air with like-minded collegues. Chat about what? About bloging and diaring, IPL, Pervez and what not. To top it, me writing in my diary gets back to me my hostel days where I frequently spent time to fill this same diary. What better setting could have I asked for than this, where currently I am relaxing on my bed, listening to 'Happy Days...', 'Jill Jill Jilla...', 'Arey rey...' from our very own Happy days to repeat the history that left me a couple of years ago...

आज अपने कल पराया हो सकते हैं|
और कल के पराये अपने आज हो सकते हैं||
ज़िंदगी में अपने न कोई रहे तो|
अपने क्या, ज़िंदगी ख़ुद पराया हो सकते हैं||