"Lonely im so lonely,

I have nobody,

To call my own"

Sitting here alone at home on a sat evening not knowing wat to do can be very frustrating..... but then again i convince myself by sayin tht its jus one of those saturdays when u dont feel like doin much.... Loneliness can be the single thing tht kills most ppl..... we've all heard abt ppl say tht they have absolutely no one to talk to even though there r around 20 ppl around them all the time..... why???????? cos no one wants to hear them out. There are also ppl who like doin things alone, they like their space, like spending time with themselves and being alone...... like me!!! so is being alone, being lonely....... no definitely not...... being alone, likin to do things alone is normal, but being lonely is like a fish thrown into a new sea, completely lost.... loneliness is also one tht leads to depression....... ppl who are depressed tend to spend time with themselves and prefer being away from company.....

Being alone is a choice... loneliness kills that!!!

The cucumber seller of Chennai

"At peace with himself and with the world rushing past, this man was dressed in poverty. But in his presence, it was I who felt poor"

On a hot July day, my colleague Moses and I were trying to locate our car on Chennai’s Nungambakkam High Road in front of Nalli Silks when I saw a roadside cart laden with cucumbers. The seller was vacantly gazing at passersby. Clad in a white shirt and a dhoti worn in the traditional Chennai style, he had long hair and an unkempt beard. I did not know Tamil, and asked Moses to find out the price. One rupee apiece, came the reply. We wanted one piece each. The cucumber seller began deftly slicing them to put salt and the delectable red chilly powder on the neat halves. As we bit into the cucumber, I asked Moses to tell him that his pricing was too low, and that he should raise it. Moses conveyed this. The seller shook his head, and replied that "customer satisfaction" is more important than extra profit. The words ‘customer satisfaction’ were in English. I gulped my patronising comment. At this time, Moses excused himself to find our car. After a few moments, the seller asked me in English where I was from. From Bangalore, I replied. What follows here is our conversation. His statements are highlighted.

Isn’t the Karnataka budget due to be presented tomorrow? Yes, that is true. Living in Karnataka, it was easy for me to concur on this.

I wonder how the governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu will ever solve the watersharing problem. Man cannot solve this problem. It has to be God. After all, it is an issue of how much rain is going to fall! I nodded. I was not sure if I had a view at all.

See the way the monsoon is progressing. It does not look good. The progress of the rains is leaving a ‘V’ of a dry patch as the clouds move north. Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and the states up north will have problems. Politicians are the ones who use such problems to create a divide among people. They always do it. They use water, religion, anything they can, to create a divide. Look at the way Amarinder Singh of Punjab is taking a stand. I looked at him, in part admiration and part disbelief.

You’re from Bangalore. Things are going well for you folks. But I don’t understand how people with shady business interests can become representatives of public opinion there. It was part complaint and part observation.

At this point, a fellow peddler arrived — helped himself to some of the cucumber, and the two had a quick conversation on some issue I did not understand. After the other person left, I asked him if selling cucumber was his full-time vocation. He told me that right now it was. Earlier, he sold lottery tickets, the trading of which has since been banned. As a result he had to switch his business to selling cucumbers on the wheeled cart. No complaints and no issues. Meaning to engage him further, I asked him his religion. This drew an instant look of disappointment from him: "Sir, I am an Indian. That is my religion. In my eyes, all people are equal, and it does not matter to me at all." The clarity of his response and his conviction took me completely by surprise. His net worth was probably equal to his day’s turnover. The newspaper and magazines he reads, to keep abreast of things, wipe off the disposable income he generates. Bare feet on this busy, dusty road, he sold a low-value, perishable product from a rickety cart. At peace with himself and with the world rushing past, this man was dressed in poverty. But in his presence, it was I who felt poor. We are not complete if we are not connected. It is only when we are connected that things make sense. Only when things make sense, we can form an opinion. Standing there, I wondered how many in the corporate world know who the chief minister of Punjab is, and about the progress of the monsoon! How many have an informed view on river water politics and budget proceedings of another state. Soon, Moses appeared with our car. It was time for me to go. I shook hands with the nameless cucumber seller of Chennai.

Actually, I wanted to touch his feet.

- SUBROTO BAGCHI

orkut... a breath of fresh networking to many

Someone told me....... if orkut was a country, it'd be the 3rd most populated in the world, only next to China and India. I found a lot of my long lost buddies on orkut..... now thts a common statement u hear...... why did orkut become so powerful???? It was not the first of its kind...... hi5 was already there..... orkut was and is the most user friendly networking site one can come across..... its gr8 in many ways..... in fact i personally find it much better than chattin....... the minute i log onto Gtalk by "mistake" i get a dozen "hiiiiiiiisssssss" so to speak..... even before i change my status to exxxxxxxxxtremely busy.......... whereas in orkut, all i do is find frnds to who i hv somethin to say or i hvnt said anythin in a while and jus scrap them...... once he/she replies i reply back..works a lot easier....... u dont need a frnd to be online to chat with them.... a convenient form of chattin is wat it is.

So why is it then tht people find orkut more of a bane these days..... the other day there was a show on CNN-IBN, with people analysin the pros and cons... but why i ask??? People complain of others snoopin into their profiles, lookin into their albums, readin their scraps, etc..... i once saw a guy's profile and clicked to see his scrapbook...... he had scrapped himself "stop readin others' scraps" and in his album, "stop lookin at others' pics"... then why the hell r u on orkut, dammit!!!! when u get urself a nice lookin profile, with pics and stuff u know wat to expect....... its not a closed forum, there has never been an attempt to make it a closed forum and there never will be as well...... its a freakin open forum, where people r free to do wat they want......

sometimes i get bugged with requests from these random people who claim they "want to make friendship with me", rings a bell does it??? all i do is politely delete or decline their request.... delete their scraps from my scrapbook...... thts the best u can do.... if u dont want people to look at u or to know who u r then dont become a member........ its as simple as tht.....

another thing i find extremely weird is tht people dont put their own pics...... the other day some girl i knew form school had an aishwarya rai pic... all tht she had scrapped was hi.... i had no clue who the hell she was, i then went through her album, which was filled with baby pics and other actors pics........ now people pls introduce urself or the simplest thing i resort to is the delete or decline button........

The CNN-IBN show also said about how kids these days get spoilt by these websites and how they get into unnecessary trouble, through orkut, youtube etc.. where ur life is "pretty much exposed" (thts exactly wat they used) to the outside world...... now lemme get this straight... u mean to say tht "kids" these days get spoilt.....

a. they're not kids if they know how to get themselves an attractive profile on orkut.... attractive enough to call for other people to view their profiles.....

b. do u say tht people never got spoilt in those days, the days before internet and technology???

today its an orkut, youtube, or a porn site..... in those days it was a movie theatre, a few sweet words here and there and a zillion promises which go down the drain once u've know the person......

Again is love all tht we're lookin at here...... there r so many communities on orkut which give u some really good info..... but the problem is tht especially if ur a girl..... the minute u scrap someone and ask them a doubt, they assume u would become frnds with them, so tht they can flaunt ur scrap and say, oh a girl is my frnd....... wat cheapos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Theres this sayin, even in darkness theres light, similarly, even in orkut, theres both good and bad, a bit of yin and yang..... the telephone, bus stands and office of a few years back have been replaced by the mobile phones and orkuts of today....... thts jus abt it...... its jus the medium which is different, the people and their mentality is still the same...... the one who wants go the bad way and learn things will always do so irrespective of whether they have a sophisticated medium like orkut or not...... orkut is merely one which brings things about a person to light, in front of others........ u hv to choose wat u want people to know abt u and wat u dont want them to know...... its jus a matter or choices and preferences... get them in the right place!!!!!!

Its a confused life out there!!!!

Its funny how one wants to start their blog by talking abt life.....

Life... has any other 4 letter word sounded so powerful? Maybe yes, maybe not. How many of us have spent some time thinking why we exist in this world. The world is chaotic enough to hold so many people and animals, so why add on to the burden with one more life? Sometimes even while i'm talking to someone, I end up thinking - why am i standing here and talking to him/her... who is he/she... who am i...

Probably theres no single answer to it. A lot of people i know tell me that we live in this world for a reason. Whatever happens, happens for a reason. If thats true then where is the reason? So do u mean to say we all live in this world for a specific unknown reason. Tht sounds too good for an oxymoron of sorts, but yes thats the truth. In my opinion, we all lead a very confused life. One that has a lot of meaning which is still unknown to us, one that has us playing many different roles all at one time, etc. etc.

Everyone should live a life by exploring a lot of things, play with theirs and others emotions, try and experiment and do new things in life......... BUT WHY????????? I guess its a question whose answer we may never find out in our lives, but then thats what life is all about. Every minute we're learning new things be it about people, about situations, circumstances, places, anything under the sun. We keep unwinding and rewinding our thoughts, we're never exactly the same as we were even a minute ago. Its one big confusion, if u choose to sit and think over it. U might even think, why are all of us born different, i mean the permutations and combinations just seem like an infinite number... we could've all been the same, look alikes of each other, doing the same thing, wouldnt that make life much more simpler and uncomplicated? But then thats where the fun of life begins... The end of life might be the end of everything to some people, or might be the begining of something else, to others, but to me the end of life is like telling u "u've learnt enough, i've given u the time and u've utilised it, so its time to move on".

So people who're alive can pinch and wake themselves up saying "ur still not over and done with, theres a perfectly good unknown reason as to why u r here so utilise it and see wat u can do the best, its a question of time management, u see"

The very fact that this blog aimlessly beats around the bush with the one point of LIFE is reason enough to believe that its an extremely confused life out there... not just for u or me, but for every single one of us living on this planet.

So live ur life, live it to the fullest that u can think of and questioning things to this extent will only leave u to be like me :)