Being Social!

Interestingly, I’m publishing this post on the time when probably the whole World is riding on the wave of Google+; and, rather entertainingly I am well included in this World!

Months back, a realization occurred to me when an email popped up into my Inbox.

To: Punit

Subject: orkut - Mr X. has left you a new Scrap!

Body:

Mr X.: You have received a scrap from your friend Mr X.

“Hapy Bday dear”

View your scrapbook l view mr X.’s profile

- Stop sending my emails

- Change my email options

- Help Center

I was something, in some state that can’t be actually described by terms like amazed, shocked, shattered, sad etc. I wasn’t ready to understand what’s happening? Mr. X has been a very close mate, amongst my best friends, for last 5years; and on my best day what I received from him was just a Scrap, not even an SMS, call would have been a bounty!

Yes, my friend had moved on to the new Social Life, i.e. social through cables, that uses Scraps, Testimonials, Messages, Likes and some absurd Poking, moving friends into Virtual Circles, etc to show their affection. I was born in a village, and brought up in a two-storey Quarters’ complex in a Government colony. My mom says we, I and my brother, used to spend most of our leisure time with our neighbors upstairs. I remember how friends were called up on birthday parties to devour the delicacy of puri-chole, dosa/idli-sambhar, chole-bhature and even kulfi prepared at home by mother and sisters. I still remember a few journeys I did in the General compartment of Indian Railways, in an environment full of smells – sweat, fried-peanuts, thekua, litti, baked corn and thousand other things! And, how can I forget spending time with friends, stealing jaamuns from someone’s tree, cricket in that small ground, feeding fishes at that pond, playing I spy (that we always knew as ice-pice) whenever it was an powercut.

Now, alas, everything that was once part of everyday life is much readily available on the “Actual” Social Network. One can farm, feed fishes, play cricket, race on concrete, say Love you, like whatever is qualified (!) for liking, even I’ve been busy classifying my friends into virtual G+ Circle since last night only to realize the huge number of classified friends I’ve earned in last few years. But, ‘without touching, without being ‘actually’ together, without being traditionally social’!

I don’t know what the future of Social Networking is, and I’m not that qualified on front to anticipate it. but, the thing I know is that whatever may become the size of one’s farm on Farmville, cereals will always be farmed in fields irrigated with hard sweat; howsoever Likes one gets on Status, a single Hello of a friend will always be unparalleled; whosoever pokes one on FB, a true friend would indeed be a friend in deed; whosoever write a testimonial, a real one will always be one who’ll stand by when needed; whatever may be the picture posted, best friendship will always be if it framed one and one’s friends! I love cherishing old memories with all I'm-not-able-to-meet-soon sort of friends, but talking to them in a while has its own flavour.

Social Networking may live forever, being Social shouldn’t just be define on Network; but with the ones one is actually networked!

Trekking Ghansoli Gawli Dev (Parsik) Hill

It’s been there for geological ages, we have been looking at it for last about 4years and I have been planning to trek it since a long time. Finally, few weeks back, we trekked the Ghansoli Hill.

Ghansoli Hill is located at the eastern boundary of Ghansoli town, behind our office complex at RCP. The hill or better hillock is a part of small range that separates Kalyan and Navi Mumbai towns. A search on Google Map returns with a name Parsik Hill for it, though there is one more rather famous Parsik Hill in Navi Mumbai. We also found a NewsArticle, that talks about NMMC plans to develop Nature Awareness Centre at this hills and calls it Gawli Dev Hill. Here, we would be calling it Ghansoli Hill. I asked my colleague about it and he readily agreed. The very next Sunday we did it with another friend. We weren't aware of the route. All we knew is that a Central Road runs along the western edge of the hill and can be reached through the Vashi-Mhape road. We later found that there’s a Bus…

Riders of the Nation of a Billion - Dimensions and Horizons

Incidentally I wrote a post of my tranformation from just around the corner corporate junkie into a Rider (for sure, still gradually) few days ago. Now, here are the Indibloggers with a Contest for the Bikers of the Nation with Castrol guys.

When you look at the scenario of Biking in a general sense, you would be attracted by the road-rowdies and rookies who ride to spread nuisance and are mostly acknowledged for their deeds by the newspaper. Hooligans may be the right word.But, once you get involved with the passion, you would be able to see how the passion of Biking, or rather Riding, is evolving in the country where 2-wheelers over-power 4-wheelers by scores of galactic height, but have never earned respect on highways just coz they are the smallest-speeding machine there! I would try to let you through the Indian Riders tale, so that you be able to appreciate how the riders of the Country are working, though in a segregative way, to evolve the Bikers’ Code for the Nation of…

32 comments

Read more

An evening in the Chilika Lake

(This post has been published in TheViewspaper as The Paradise called Chilika)

This year seems to be much more happening than I expected. I realized it when I got an invitation from a senior colleague to attend his marriage at Bhubaneshwar. Hidden was another invitation to revisit the Puri-beach and also the Chilika Lake.

I hadn’t still come out of the hangover of my pan-India ride, when the date to fly to the City of Temples knocked at doors. Packing the very morning of departure with least pairs of casuals and 3sets of party wears, I joined Kaustav and Abhimanyu bhaiya on our tour de Chilika and Puri, also the Odiya Wedding.

Chilika Lake is the largest coastal lagoon in India and the second largest in World. It is an essentially shallow brackish water lagoon on the east coast, spread over the districts of Puri, Khurda and Ganjam of Odisa state. The lake, popularly known as Chilka, was designated the first Indian Wetland of International importance under the Ramsar Convention, in 1981. …

SUB3 July 2011 at 00:27
well said...times we forget the different between the real and the virtual us...soon we are going to land up in identity crisis...

Cheers!
SUB
Punit Dubey3 July 2011 at 21:26
Yeah, but haven you ever noticed how easy is to write/blog about these perhaps vicious cultures than to actually leave them.