Thursday, September 22, 2011

All in All You're Just Another Post on the Wall

For the purpose of this article I'm going to refer to a social network as FB unless mentioned otherwise, like it or report it. I would also like to thank those people who were my observations, you know which ones you are.

FB is like a mircocosm of sorts where a friend can refer to anyone between and including that hot chick you met once who is very obviously beyond you, complete strangers with whom you share a fair number of mutual friends, vaguely familiar people from the past and celebrities. For people from this part of the world, friends on FB could also refer to bittu, monu, sonu, tinu, mummy, papa, bhua, mausa, tauji, jethani and even the occasional dadaji. And then along comes Plus. No one plus ones anything. I plus oned one of my posts myself but then minus oned because plus oning something that one posted oneself is a little stupid. Nonplussing, this plus business.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Ask Uncle π

This article was written for The Fourth Estate a long time ago along with Tejas Sanjay Deshmukh. It popped out in some cleaning up and seemed worth a second print. This one is also the original without any of the cuts made by the Dean then.
The last two were written for the hostel creative writing competition and were added on the 12 of September when they came up in the cleaning up too..

Dear Uncle π, I am a freshie in one of the new hostels. Don't get me wrong - by no means am I wishing to convey a message that sounds like "I hate my hostel" - but I am faced with a rather unique problem. I have been allotted a room, on one of the higher floors, vertically above the entrance, and every time that I return after classes I have problems in reaching my room. In fact, I have spent only about 63% of the nights in my room. Anyway, not going into statistics, after I climb out of the lift I realize that I have already lost all sense of direction. Just to regain it I go all the way back to the ground floor to check out where the entrance is. After I climb out of the lift on the ground floor I find that I am at a loss so as to where the entrance was. But then life is not all roses, so I go search for it anyway and keep trying. This method fails often, approximately 37% of the times. Please help.
The Spanish follow the father of the ugly duckling, searching for the lost boy (6)