Day 34 : Look Up From Your Mobile Screens

My daily commute to work my favorite part of the day.

I travel by train for thirty minutes to reach office. There is a lot disruptive internet connection along the way so I turn off the mobile data. This in turn gives me half an hour of social media black hole. No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, more importantly no WhatsApp. Darn there are way too many groups and people online everywhere, leading to a bunch of useless notifications propping every few seconds. And as much as I try not to, I do end up unlocking and checking the notifications out of habit to see if anything has come up in my direction. For me it has become like a second nature now. It’s a disease.

There was this really awesome video on this - 'Look Up.' A spoken word film for an online generation

This was a hard hitting video on how our online presence in social media is damaging this generation's interpersonal skills. Inevitable went on to become viral in YouTube, Facebook and all the other social networking sites. The sites that played villain in this film. Humph, ironic.

Anyways, coming back to talk about today's train ride. I was as usual sitting there with a song (Rahman’s) blasting away in my earplugs, idly watching out the window to the buildings and roads running past by the railroad tracks. Soon got bored of it, and turned my head into the compartment for another of my favorite daytime pastime; people watching.

Almost everyone in the train had the earplugs on. Almost everyone had their heads bowed down in utmost reverence to the little rectangular idol spurting light and words like LOL and ROFL and GFY. Some people I could see were mating little images of candies to each other on their Candy Crush apps, quite obsessively. Some were watching TV shows or movies on their mobiles, which I personally feel is a grave insult movies were not made to be watched on such a small screen.

The crowd that made me feel most uneasy was a bunch of college kids. There were nine of them. I could easily make out that four of them were a thing, as in GF/BF, and then there were three other guys and two girls who by their looks of uncomforted were naturally the third wheels of this group.

The thing that made me uneasy was not disparity in their amorous equality; it was their lack of attention to each other. The third wheels naturally were doing something of their own to occupy their time. This mostly should include pulling each other’s legs, especially the couples, raunchy jests at their professor’s expense, the like. But here, they were all also bowed down to their mobile screens. Yes, there was always someone saying something and the rest listening or at least pretending to. I am sure no one had any idea what the whole conversation was about.

The couples were no better, one pair had a girl who was shopping for something on the Flipkart app while the guy who had been trying to say something to her, soon gave up and plugged his earpiece and started watching out the window. In the whole group the other couple were the only people that showed some potential, sure they played that Surfer game for a bit but at least they were doing it together.

Now I think I hated seeing them. Their lack of friendship. I'd like to think that it was just one of those days when they all had something to do than spend time with each other. But when I sit and think of the things that they felt were so important than spending time with each other, I feel queasy. Come on, you can always play that stupid game when you’re alone. Is it that important to do it right now?!

I don’t think I have any right to accuse them of anything when I’ve done that so many times myself, especially at home when there is a stupid movie going on. Movie watching has always been the family-time in my household. I sort of see it slipping away.

I believe Gary Turk did mean something by that video. I think we are all going down a very troublesome road.

Today, I plan to shut off the notifications on my mobile. And hope to keep my hands off of it more each day.

Day 18 - 25 : Old Friend's Wedding

Ah. Where shall I begin?!

This past week was so freaking amazing. Visited Gujarat after ages. And darn was it AWESOME!

Nothing compares to the feeling of belonging when you are with old friends. It's almost like coming home. The same old familiar jokes, same old familiar stories, and the usual banter and pushes and shoves. And if these friends happen to be of your college times, you can be guaranteed that things are going to be all the more eventful.

I remember one of my uncles’ say how the best times he had ever had and the best friends he had ever made were of when in college. Back then I was in high school and I sniggered at him thinking how I'd had the best gang of mates while in school and nothing would beat roaming around town with them in a borrowed cycle.

The wedding I was to attend was of a pair that had met in college and have been together ever since. So this wedding also was a special one. More of the old faces were compelled to make an appearance like me. The more the merrier.

When I looked around the dinner table when all of us were seated. I could see how we all were now in a very different place in our lives than how we were in college. A few of us married for a while now, a couple just newly married, no children as of now; but then that could change anytime as well. A few new marriages in the pipeline, by the year's end exactly half of my original group would be married. And why shouldn't it be so, after all it is nearly five years since we left college.

Damn. That’s a long time.

But I still feel overtly nostalgic about those times. We all do. We still recall the midnight card games, junk food, assignment completions. We all go gushy over the times when one of us got the kick by a girl, or when one of us actually got to go out with one. We all laugh of the times when we goofed off in class and pulled pranks on each other.

Damn. There are so many things.

But I still think not a lot has changed about any of us. Maybe we're all the same as we always were. Sure we've got fat, slim, rich, poorer, stingy, whatever. But we are still the same with each other as we were. We still torment each other with the same lame topics as we did earlier. And we still like and hate the same things about each other. I guess that's what friendship's all about. Being the same, always.

Today, I plan to spend a lot of time revisiting the old college picture's folder.

Day 9 : I Opened A Textbook

Finally opened the textbook today. And I have not opened one since college. 'Twas surreal.

Sure I read books all the time. In that sense, currently I am reading Angel of Death by Higgins. But unless Sean Dillon goes ahead and discusses SQL query to transpose rows into column without using CASE WHEN, this book cannot really be called a textbook. Textbooks are basically a big boring book with a lot of pages, written in dreary language and occasional grammatical mistakes, every step of everything detailed out in even the tiniest of details. That does make it sound a lot like 50 Shades doesn't it?

Anyhow. Here I am with an open textbook in front of me again. The last time I ever opened one was a Mathematics one, filled with equations and calculus. I hated it. This is one about a SQL primer course. And I sort of like it. I think it’s because now the book that I've taken up was of interest to me, and maybe something that I would actually like to learn more about. Of my choosing.

If you know anything about the education system in India, you would know this much - the student never has a say in anything.

In any and every education up until Post Grad. The only choice you can ever take up is - engineering or doctor, biology or computers. Sure there are a bunch of others Bachelors/Masters studies available out there. But if you are from the middle class and have shown even an iota of brains during schooling, you are forced in either of these paths. Nothing else is even an option for you. Most of us choose engineering, because let’s be honest about it, medicine is a serious/tedious business. (Couple of years working in IT has taught me, our lives aren’t all that peachy either.)

Your choices when you do get into engineering are also pretty limited. You have mostly four - mechanical, computer science, electrical, IT. I still honestly think the Mech guys are the real engineers; at least they end up creating something that they can actually hold and say "I made this". IT/CS, even some ECE guys are just service guys without that sort of ownership privilege.

I personally know hundreds of folks from my college alone, out of which I can name just a handful of them who is actually doing something of worth, related to what we were taught in college. And from them only one is from CSE/IT. What most of us do now in their day jobs is a long way different from what we were taught in school. Sure the basic stuff is the same. But the application is poles apart. It might sound apples and oranges, but I really think if given a choice/exposure back then. There are a lot of things I could have kick started doing early in my career.

All that is gibberish I know. I tend to ramble when I am in the vicinity of technical documentation. Anyone who has attended an engineering exam knows this. You could ramble on about anything to get that 10-points answer right.

I remember preparing for exams, one month Prep Leave, one month of long exams cycle with bunch of gaps between papers. Searching of textbooks and class notes at the last moment. Put off the actual preparation up until the last couple weeks and sleep through all the previous ones. Spend hours just hanging out with friends, playing cards all day. Wake up at midnight, to drink team and biscuits from Hostel canteen. Damn I feel way too nostalgic right now.

Today, I think there will be a lot more of that than any real learning.