A quaint tense

The success of Orkut in India has confirmed what all of us already knew - we like gossip, we like to be informed about people we barely know and we absolutely love showing off through photographs. Of course, now Google has gone ahead and introduced the concept of privacy and locked accounts, which is why there has been a drastic reduction in the number of logins and users. Facebook may be the bomb in US and other countries but ask the new users and they will tell you that it is way too complicated and yes, private!

Personally I like both. I am still loyal to Orkut but I love the privacy options offered by Facebook. No matter how many conspiracy theories I am fed, I will continue to trust Google and all of the services it comes up with. To me Google is like the neighbourhood departmental store. New, fancy, posh supermarkets and hypermarkets may come and go but they can never be the same as the one single shop, known by many names - provisions, departmental store, Ganesh store etc where you can get anything and everything, from pencils to shaving blades, under the sun and a single trustworthy roof.

What is the agenda of this post and why am I rambling on and on about Orkut? As usual, building the foundation for what is to come. If the number of "friends" on this very active social networking site was a measure of popularity, every loser with unlimited access to the internet and a passion for new "fraindship" would be a celebrity in his own right. But obviously that is not the case. We (used to?)add people just on the basis of the most trivial things. Heck, sometimes I don't even remember the full name and/or details of the person whose profile pic (real or fake) pops up on the right side. From juniors/seniors in college to those we left behind way back, during our school days.

Batch mates/seniors/juniors from school. Yes, that's where I wanted to get to. We might have kept track of the lives of our friends and many may still be in touch with those, but not acquaintances. College days most of us still remember, if not vividly. Now school days, those are days everyone claims to want to relive. I don't know how many of us actually mean it or whether we say it just to sound very wise and all grown up, but let's move on.

I will confess straight out. I don't like it, I don't like it at all. Till recently, I had the comfort and pleasure of imagining people I did not like or get along with to be doing not so good in life. Well now my mirage has been spoilt, my hopes have been shattered! People who can barely talk clean are jet setting all around the world, people who struggled to get through school are pursuing their masters degree.

Is it wrong for me to wish bad luck on those I may not like based on more often than not frivolous reasons? You bet! Is it possible that these very people have changed for the better over the years and deserve all that they have achieved? Maybe. Does this logic make me feel any better and consider life as being fair? Hell no!

PS: My blog went through an identity crisis and after much soul searching and theme searching reverted to the original one. Why mess with something that works, eh?