Twenty- five Seven

The perils of social media

May 1, 2014

Balloons Float Skyward, Survivor Outreach Services Family & MWR Command, 100724 (Photo credit: familymwr)

Bottling things up, brushing things under the carpet, letting sleeping dogs lie, turning the other cheek, all these mechanisms which supposedly help to keep the family peace also help in letting wounds fester in your mind, making them go deeper and deeper into your psyche. So I thought rather than go to a counsellor or a priest or tell a friend, I’d tell the universe via FB what I thought about things.

So when I had a happy day, I blogged about it. I also blogged about my sad days and the other days in between. But it was Facebook that actually got me into trouble.

Thanks to FB, many lives become public and I discovered a lot of dirt. This led to a very tangled situation, ugly even and potentially dangerous….some of my family members thought I’d not only gone over the edge but would actually attempt doing something so silly as jumping off the balcony! Sadly for them I’m made of sterner stuff and even though I can go on and on about something to the point of sounding crazy, I’m not. I’d like to think I’m a perfectly rational being who sometimes likes to let it all hang out.

Apparently, in my effort to air my thoughts I’ve upset many apple carts and ruffled many feathers and have been told via via via to keep my outrageous comments to myself. When I protested that my blog has a limited audience which is gradually diminishing, I was told to the contrary that I have a thriving following especially someone from the family who makes it a point to snitch.

I, therefore, studiously avoid FB and had actually deactivated my account till last week when I accidentally reactivated it to make a comment on a fellow blogger’s blog. Immediately a notification popped up that a nephew had just celebrated a birthday. I was tempted to click onto his wall and wish him a happy birthday when all the ghosts of FB past flashed before my eyes.

I may be paranoid but truly there are people out there who are stalking my virtual world and making my real world a misery and it is best if I keep my life FB free.

So while FB is a useful tool for keeping in touch it is also a bomb that can blow up in your face and best used judiciously.
Voting in South Mumbai

April 24, 2014
Voters of South Mumbai are notorious for their indifference towards the elections. Of course they voice their opinions vociferously at cocktail parties or social dos but apart from criticising, they do little else. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn’t the first voter at our Polling Station and that there was quite a crowd gathered outside within half an hour after the booths opened.

I could hardly sleep last night as I wanted to be the first at my polling station to cast my vote. Unfortunately I wasn’t the first but definitely among one of the early ones. Our polling centre was quite full and this time round I found the voting process much simpler than before.
- We were very sensibly allowed to take in our cell phones and bags which meant that voters could go straight to work after casting their ballot
- Cars were allowed within 10 m of the polling station and some senior citizens were allowed to come in just for a few minutes till they got in/out of their cars
- The voting cards already had the number of the Polling Station printed so there was none of that last minute rush to see whether or not you are on the electoral rolls
Child of Misfortune – A detective novel that fails to thrill.

April 23, 2014

This review is a part of the biggest <a href=”http://blog.blogadda.com/2011/05/04/indian-bloggers-book-reviews” target=”_blank”> Book Review Program </a> for <a href=”http://www.blogadda.com” target=”_blank”>Indian Bloggers.</a> Participate now to get free books!

Meet Amit Pratap Rathore, a
barely  5 foot something child of
privilege who is known for not sitting for his Board exams, abandoning his
quest of Mount Everest, giving up his startup company – in short, famous for
starting something and not seeing it through.

Also meet the inscrutable super
achiever who is part French and part Indian – Jonah Michel who joins school in
the graduating year and poses the greatest threat to Amit Pratap Rathore’s
unchallenged supremacy in chess, swimming and debating, thereby sowing the seeds of lifelong rivalry.

Also meet Mansi Agarwal , friend to
both  who grows up to become a
journalist and meet Kang,  a 19
year old social engineer or hacker operating out of Seoul, Korea.

To this add some more random
characters like Bubujika Makinda from East Africa and Dame Loretta Quin among
others; some detailed descriptions of exotic locales like Leh, Seoul, the
City of London; stir in some good old schoolboy rivalry; a smattering of deep knowledge of terrorism, drug
dealing, money laundering, hacking ; garnish with some romance and violence and
you have a potboiler that is supposed to keep you spell bound to the last page.

Sadly though, this book fails at some level to keep you enthralled. Despite the good language, and thorough background research the characters don’t ring true and the story seems terribly contrived. This first book by Soumitra Singh ends up looking more like a Hardy Boys clone
rather than a sophisticated thriller in the manner of Ludlum  and Forsyth. The story starts with Amar landing up in Leh
supposedly to track down Mansi and takes us back in the past to their life in Bombay after the gruesome decapitation of a Buddhist monk, the theft of the Prophet’s Hair an unsuccessful suicide bomb attack and the destruction of an
Al Qaeda camp near the Siachin glacier. These seemingly unrelated incidents are
part of an international conspiracy of drug dealing and money laundering all eventually tying in with a larger terrorist plan. Somehow
Jonah gets wind of this and lures Amar, the bleeding heart idealist, to help him bring the
culprits to book.

While all of this doesn’t seem improbable, what is hard to believe is the proficiency of these young detectives: at age 16, Jonah is an accomplished chess player
and a proficient killer who cold bloodedly gets rid of his enemies. It is no
surprise then that by the age of 21 he is fluent in Kashmiri and Czech, an
expert in martial arts and weaponry, a computer whiz and a financial
consultant! Amar too, seems to be another whizz kid with a razor sharp mind that allows him to understand the
entire Kashmir problem in a mere 7 hour session at an Internet café and figure out
the exits in a building that he has just entered a few seconds earlier!

This is a brave first attempt but unfortunately “The Child of Misfortune” is an exercise in futility. Perhaps this book will
appeal more to young adults rather than old timers like me and I’d rather wait
till Soumitra Singh grows up and finds his place in the sun.

The perils of social media

Voting in South Mumbai

Child of Misfortune – A detective novel that fails to thrill.