I had always hated to become a writer by night, except some educational writing, compelled by the desire to earn a degree. But the last few days have brought the writer in me to wake only after midnight.
The IPL is surely to be blamed for this. I read my daily dose of book after the night IPL match ends around 1130 pm and after midnight your body and mind gets diluted and flows in the ether.
If you listen to equally airy thin music from the collection of ‘Guns and Roses’, Kurt Cobain and Bob Dylan, the heart pounds like a unstable volcanic mass and thoughts erupt and spread like clouds that can burst as the right temperament touches them.
One such thought burst yesterday, technically this morning as I write. The thought is about being eternally happy and innocent. Do we ever manage to stay innocent in all our thoughts and actions? I think we don’t.
The ability to hide sorrow with the faint smile and happiness with the dumbfounded awkwardness is familiar to all of us in workplaces.
Those who are lucky have a family and friend network to be innocent and real whenever they want to. I think for millions of others the gift of social networking is doing miracle.
It’s like the village chowpal or you, where you have your small society that gathers, drinks chai, hookah or whatever they want. They talk about all sorts of issues -- sensitive, insensitive, political, social – and that too in small groups of likeminded ones.
Here you have the option to share your mundane views without being rebuked. You share your best moments through pictures, which can be enhanced with the gift of technology and spares you the time and effort of actually looking good.
You can share your disillusioned state of mind by sharing Bob Dylan‘s Knocking on Heaven’s Door video through YouTube, despite actually being a hope less singer yourself.
It’s good for your self esteem, your heart and mind too. You learn the slangs and management case studies here before anywhere else. I dare to disagree with whoever did the study inferring social networking sites reduce productivity. I claim they boost in more than one ways the individual’s moral, ego and power her/him even to stay on the top of her/ his professional developments.
Even in personal relationships it helps you find some and also protects you from losing some. It helps you with regular birthday wishes, which all men now can’t blame they forgot.
It also gives you opportunities to wish at personal and professional developments thereby cutting on actual travels. Lot of carbon foot prints reduced. Besides you chat and save millions of trees every year, it’s another thing you destroy them as toilet papers and on Pizza delivery.
The verdict is social networking makes your life better. As I am writing the last line, I can say it took me about 25 minutes to compose this prose and I’m still listening to Knocking on Heaven’s Door on the background.
Note: By the I posted this story I had switched to Lady Gaga's hit number' Bad Romance' so that my romance with midnight writing ends and I could catch some sleep.
PHOTOGRAPH: By Samrat Mukherjee. We all social networking aficionados, like the thirsty little boy pumping and getting his water, do our tweets, FB messages and meet our thirst of virtual society.
