The Year That Went By.........

It’s been more than 16 months since I wrote any post on this blog, it might have been the first year since 2010 when I hadn’t posted a single post but someone reminded me that I should write something, and here we are, the best thing I can think of was an honest reflection on the year that went by.

2021 was one of the most challenging years of my life, definitely not the worst though, but pretty challenging. In terms of worst years it will still rank 3^rd but owing to certain events towards the ending months and the intensity of ‘being worse’ in the other 2 years, it escapes that position despite me catching covid, dengue, losing close friends and relative, seeing my close ones struggling with health and also my own struggles to keep my startup afloat, the challenging and struggling life of an entrepreneur, my own demons and many other. As many say, this was a year where even a mere act of survival is enough to celebrate and pat on your back.

I started the year with a very high level of energy, highly motivated to make my start-up a grand success, achieve peak fitness, write a novel, start my own Instagram channel for poetry and Shayari and many other grand plans. I also set various aspirations like I will work from Dalhousie for a week, will travel to Japan as my first international travel, and many other items on the bucket list. It felt like it will finally be the year of Mayank, a year where I will rise from my relative obsolesce and sweep the entire country. A major success on both professional and personal levels. I aspired to have 50k+ followers on my start-up handles, 10k followers on my LinkedIn and Instagram Channel, reach 15% body fat and 65 kg weight, and many other things that were planned, except a few I failed to achieve most of the items.

Of course, I had the implicit condition apply that I won’t be hard on myself, I won’t unnecessarily push my body, I won’t go beyond my limits, I will calibrate the targets as and when needed. All this thinking left me in a perpetual stage of toggling between high euphoria and high existential crisis. On one hand, I wanted to be a superman achieving everything, on the other, I was just struggling to justify the efforts I was putting in. Will all these struggles, mental agony, hard work be worth it at all in the end or not? Whether becoming a successful entrepreneur will make me happy or having 10k followers on LinkedIn will make me happy or achieving 65 kg will make me happy, at times I had no answers and I tend to drive myself more into the process in such instances instead of more reflections.

There were weeks I was lying dormant just working the bare minimum and thinking about my purpose on this planet and there were weeks I worked so hard, I burnt myself physically and mentally justifying it as a need to keep my venture alive and not being dishonest with my ambition and aspiration. There were weeks I was struggling with bad physical and mental health and there were weeks where I was burning 800 calories a day or walking 25k steps a day. There were weeks of full gluttony and there were weeks of strict dieting. Too many extremes, low and high, all in a year.

When the year started, I didn’t imagine I would be at this stage right now. I was pretty sure either I would have achieved commercial success with my venture or I would have quit already, my own tenacity and persistence are surprising me. Also, when the year started I didn’t believe in miracles or clichéd stories, but something happened with me which changed my outlook towards life that miracles can happen with me also.

The month of January and February were pretty much stable, my co-founder and I were experimenting with our start-up offerings. My father retired in January and we had to brace ourselves for more financial adjustments. I also took a resolution of not eating any sweets (not no sugar) this year, which means no pastry, jalebi, gulab jamun, rasgulla for me for the whole year. I was looking forward to regaining my fitness routine and started exercising regularly. Overall, a very normal starting of the year.

Fast forward to March and covid cases were already increasing, I used to regularly monitor the stats that is when it slowly started spreading everywhere, in relatives, in neighbors, the numbers became faces, faces I know and cared about. Still, it didn’t really feel like a threat not in March. Those who had already got it before recovered well barring a few exceptions, so I hadn’t given much thought to it. When the cases were rising alarmingly in April I was in Indore, the rumors of the next lockdown were high back then and that’s when I decided it is time to come back home. At this time, we were searching for a mentor for our venture as we were pretty confused on what way to take ahead from here onwards.

The timeline from mid-April till May end was like a nightmare. Intially it was about arranging medicines like remdesivir and actemra to friends and college alums. First my young nephews got ill, then my sister, then mother and I, all 3 of us were found covid positive. I lost many close friends and relatives during this time. I almost lost the hope to come out of it alive, for an entire week I was bedridden and couldn’t summon the courage to even grab the water bottle near me.  I had already given my bank account, insurance and debit card details to my family. It took me a long time to recover physically and mentally from the entire covid saga. I have already covered the entire troubled time in my Hindi blog ‘kaahi ankaahi’, you can refer it if you want to know more.

Entered June and I was pretty much mentally and physically exhausted, I felt like this is a new life and I have to take baby steps again. Many people advised me against exercising as there were many cases of a heart attack during workout sessions with high heart rates. I was finding it hard to climb stairs or walk 10k steps. There was a great brain fog also, it was tough to read excel sheets, create PPTs, conceptualize new ideas, and execute them. We started with a virtual career Bootcamp at that time to engage some school audience, we got a good number of registrations but not many attendees.

By July, I was pretty much in good physical condition but the existential crisis was more and more on many days. I was pretty clear on many aspects of life on what I have to do or need to do but not on whether the end results will excite me or not. That’s when I started finding refuse in video games and books, reality was a little hard to accept. That was also the time when my co-founder and I had a 6 hours conversation during a 30k steps a day challenge, where he told me that I need to take more risks, be more vulnerable, try new things and most importantly stop associating happiness with success and look for happiness beyond success. The discussion was one of the founding bases for the decisions I took in the latter part of the year that changed a major part of my life.

By August, we were trying to look for potential tie-ups of Diffr with coaching classes. We roamed around the streets of Indore, Ujjain, and Bhopal and met several coaching class founders. I also realized the impact of covid while roaming in commercial complexes. It is one thing reading about how the economy is impacted, but when you talk to people whose whole business was based on students, who were sent by home by their colleges, when you see 30%-40% coaching classes closed in buildings with a ‘to-let’ sign, when you hear a coaching owner saying that they have hardly earned anything from last 12 months, online coaching is just not working for them and they may need to evaluate other means of livelihood, you realize the impact this pandemic has had on many people and how lucky many of us were who had decent savings or regular monthly income. My dad also got hospitalized for a week which troubled us for a long time, it is one thing to suffer yourself and completely other to see your loved ones suffering, the kind of helplessness I felt during that time can’t be described in words, glad he recovered quickly.

The next 4 months passed very quickly, I have very little memory of what I was doing, a lot of stuff happened in both my personal and professional life. We organized a pan India case study competition for b school and got a good response, we tied up with some institutes to help us march ahead in our journey, we got recognized as a start-up by start-up India initiative, we finalized a vendor to prepare Diffr’s product (website and app), we hired some interns to help us build the product and services better. At the same time, I got dengue also, covid then dengue in the same year felt funny, 2^nd time I uploaded ‘Ashwathama hai mein, nahi marega’ pic on my stories. Dengue made me suffer so much, I had to take injections for headaches and wear knee caps for weeks, but as always, I recovered albeit I knew I have to say goodbye to a huge chunk of my hairline now due to back to back life-threatening illness. I sent my parents to my sister’s and I stayed alone for almost a month doing everything by myself from cooking to cleaning. I also went to Kolkata on a train journey to attend a wedding and give some change to myself.

Here I am writing this, trying to think whether it was a good year or a bad year, I don’t know but surely it was one of the defining years of my life. This was also the year I witnessed many miracles and it is high time I acknowledge them. The first of many was despite losing some really close friends and relatives, all my family members were able to come out of covid and many other illnesses healthy. Also, despite my personal struggles, I was able to persist another year in my journey of changing the mindset of society towards life and career and was able to touch the lives of some students and parents if not many, I realized the work I am doing has the potential to change the life of so many students and save them from having a successful yet unhappy life. I amassed followership of 11,200 on LinkedIn and I receive many messages every week from people on how my writing is able to inspire them, motivate them, help them and also give a realistic picture in a world of show off and pretention.

Last, but not least, something very clichéd happened to me, something that I would say I was waiting for a long time but lost hope somewhere between the later years of my life. Guess the rumors of finding it when you are not looking for it, or it happens when it has to happen or someday you will realize why it never worked out before was worth it. Being the Ted Mosby I am and giving up the hope of finding ‘the one’ in the rat race of life, at times you realize that things need not be overdramatic or larger than life always, you need not hear the violin in the first meeting, maybe you won’t hear the violin, time slowing down, a slow breeze blowing leaves, colorful flowers on road after 21 years and one day you will realize that there was always a melody in the background, when you pause and reflect in silence, you are able to hear and appreciate that melody and maybe the ‘larger than life’ drama starts after first recognizing that melody that was always there.

For the first 29 years of my life, I have always in some way associated my happiness with my success and I pushed myself to set the bar higher for that success. As I achieved more, my bar was set higher and higher, I craved more and I felt more and more empty and alone. Like a cliché, I realized success is not the answer for happiness, and maybe it is good to not celebrate always or be vulnerable and completely helpless and be dependent on someone.

2021, you were a life-defining year if not career-defining, I am thankful to many people who stood by me and supported me as I recovered from bad health and other crisis and I am thankful to God for showing me a path of happiness and satisfaction, thankful to the universe for guiding me in the right direction and thankful to one special reader who was following my blog silently for 11 years who changed my outlook towards life, guess a writer may not get as much popularity as a singer or dancer, but when it mattered the most, writing paid off.

Signing off, 2022 you are my ‘poos ki raat’ and I am ready with my ‘alaav’.

 

 

 

Identity Crisis of people of MP

Disclaimer: This is a light-hearted post with a satirical take on the existing stereotypes present in the country. I personally believe many stereotypes are not bad and are just playful and harmless in nature, if you feel hurt or offended or feel personally attacked, then attack voraciously and mercilessly on this post. Pour all your hatred and anger of working late nights, attending zoom meetings and webinars, gaining 5 kg in lockdown, watching your ex posting a cheesy ‘together forever’ marriage post and whatever that is making you angry here. Give counter-arguments and I will give more counter-arguments and let there be a meaningless comment war. Also, spread the hatred, build up a team, don’t fight alone, copy the blog post’s link and spread it in your WhatsApp group so that they can also come with their arguments and there will be more counter-arguments from my side and thus the post will generate huge visibility and attract others and soon there will be a virtual bloodshed here making me earn many followers! If you are angry but didn’t spread the hate to at least 10 people, someone will add ketchup in your 'Poha' next time you eat it, if you do it then you will get a packet of 'Jiravan' shipped at your address by me!

Now that you have understood clearly it is a light-hearted post, let us begin with my whines and complaints on my lack of identity. When I speak, I speak for many of the faceless crowd of MP. I spent the first 17 years of my life in MP, then I went to Rajasthan for a year, came back to MP for next 4 years, spent the next 1 year in Maharashtra, then 2 years in Jharkhand, back to Maharashtra for 1.5 years and then 1 year in Karnataka. In between, I traveled extensively to many states also because that is what a person in his 20s is supposed to do, travel and have some travel stories, else society will never accept you, and your grandchildren will feel ashamed that you didn’t have any adventurous stories to tell.

When I was living in MP, I was happy with my life. The temperature can be a little extreme sometimes but still bearable. Rains are normal. We rarely have floods or cyclones, no history of devastating earthquakes or other natural calamities. The roads post the famous Digvijay Singh era are mostly well built, easy to travel at least in western and central MP. The street food is amazing. People are simple and good, not very ambitious but also not very cunning and greedy. As I was growing, I realized that we didn’t have a big differentiator, we were not in news much. We didn’t have big megacities, we didn’t have spectacular tourist places, no specific food, dance or celebrity, we didn’t have a very well differentiated culture, no movies were based on any city of MP,  basically, we didn’t exist in anywhere mainstream. Nothing much has changed till date.

In a country where stereotypes are so prevalent, where you are first associated with your state identities. Being from a state with no stereotypes is a great drawback. I encountered stereotypes first when I moved to Kota, Biharis are good at maths, that’s the first thing I heard. Coincidentally, it was validated when I was solving a sum of domain/region and did it using a method requiring 2 pages but a Bihari sitting near me just made some graph and solved it instantly. The 17 years old version of me believed in the stereotype from that day onwards, Biharis are good in maths. Telugus are hardworking, Delhi/UP people are aggressive, Marathis are conservatives, Malayalis have a superiority complex, Tamilians have great pride, People from the hilly regions are good-hearted, Punjabis are jolly natured and many more.

A year in Kota was a big revelation for me, it also strengthened my belief in the notion of India as a country. People from different regions coming together, becoming friends, working towards a common goal of clearing JEE. Also, at the end of the year, one more stereotype formed, which till date is shared by many throughout the country, people of Kota are worst in the country. Many of us formed this stereotype mainly basis how our landlords and mess owners treated us. For a pampered generation, this was the first exposure of how cruel, selfish, and heartless the outside world is. A lot of us grew many years in that one year of our life. But also I realized that we, the people of MP are not stereotyped. We had no identity, we were not associated with any behavior, good or bad. We just didn’t exist on the radar of the outside world.

After a year in Kota, I was back to MP. Again, back to the region which is full of stereotypes but has none of its own. MP has lots of communities co-existing together. You will have South Indians (Seriously no offense meant to South Indian readers, but most common people of MP can’t differentiate between Tamil, Telugu, Kannadiga, and Malayali), Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Bohras, Marathis, North Easterns, etc. Most of our stereotypes are negative in nature, negative to the limit of being offensive. “Saanp aur sindhi mein koi jata dikha, to pahle Sindhi ko maaro”, one of my friends told me during my teenage. Now, I had lots of Sindhi friends back then. The Sindhi community is a very rich community here because most of them are associated with trades. But the general views about the community is not so good, at least back in mid-2000. Bengalis are arrogant, Marathis are miser, Bohras are not courageous, Bengalis are arrogant, most stereotypes were negative. We spared the Rajasthanis and Punjabis. Punjabis are always treated as kind-hearted, selfless, and benevolent always ready to party. A major chunk of this stereotype is due to Bollywood and the way they portray Punjabis. But one of landlord refusing to give me Rs 2300 security deposit despite him being a crorepati changed this goody-good stereotype for me. Most of us couldn’t differentiate a ‘jatt’ from a ‘jaat’ back then.

Some of the logics also didn’t make sense. We perceived Rajasthanis as good but Marwadis as selfish and miser. But, we also didn’t have any stereotypes for ourselves. We didn’t exist on our own radar. How can we exist on the radar of the outside world?

When I returned to Indore, the era coincided with the rise of social media, social media further exaggerated all the stereotypes, initially packed in the name of jokes but then state/region wise pages and thus you can enjoy the fight between Mumbaikars and Punekars on which city is better or the fight between Kolkata People and Hyd people on which city has better Biryani at 3 AM in the night before your end term. Indore made good use of social media and it eclipsed the whole MP, we will discuss this part later.

When I came to Pune, my lack of identity became more visible to me. Working in an IT company in a city where there is a crowd from the whole country and when they ask me whether Ujjain is in Rajasthan or Gujarat, honestly I felt hurt. Also, an IT company is full of stereotypes. Telugus are spoiling the work culture by working beyond office hours, Punjabis do not respect their bosses, Delhi guys are flirty and rowdy. The stereotypes increased 100 folds and yet we had none. Indoris tried their level best to mock the Maharashtrians Kanda Poha telling them again and again that the best Poha can be found only in Indore, apart from few jokes on how Indoris think they have everything better, they were not able to gather much attention.

One more year passed, and I came to XLRI, my dream college. This is when the identity crisis hit me the most. We had multiple regional committees, the part I liked the most. They used to have a regional dinner, where they would serve the special snacks and dinner of their state to the entire college. So you got Rajaxi (Rajasthan Association of XLRI), Taxi( Tamil association of XLRI), JMAXI( Jai Maharashtra associated of XLRI). Most states have their own regional committees, except, you could guess it. MP, we have no special committee.

A bunch of state MP, UP, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand were merged and for some reason, we added Assam also and then a committee was formed named COWBAXI (Cow Belt Associated of XLRI). As expected, the committee became heavily dominated by the UP and Bihar crowd with which we share very little in common. Also, If you want to see exaggerated stereotypes, a B School is the best place to come. Everyone is a competitor after all with which you are competing for jobs and thus there are moments where the competition is max fuelling a good amount of hatred also. Having no identity at all, we MP folks sail quietly in these 2 years.

I remember once a meme trend became popular in social media describing how a room of a particular state person will look like. I used to check regularly whether they will feature room of an MP guy, they showed for most states. Bihar, Kerala, UP, Punjab but not MP, we didn’t exist in the meme culture also. When I worked in Maharashtra for 1.5 years again post MBA, I was always confused about whether we were included in the term ‘Bhaiya’ or not which was used to describe north Indians. I never found out an exact answer, but I am pretty sure we were not. Are we even considered North Indians? I don’t have an answer yet to this question. We were part of the famous acronym BIMARU, but then also, people just know that we are poor, upto what extent, they don't know. We are just clubbed together with other poor states.

Meanwhile, let’s get back to the Indore equation. Indoris perhaps too much disappointed by this lack of image went a step above. They carved out an image of Indore. In that process, they did quite a few things which annoyed me to a great height. First of all, they highjack western MP culture. Now as I said earlier, MP didn’t have a very distinct well-defined culture. Western MP shares traits with Rajasthan, Eastern MP with Uttar Pradesh. Even I don’t have any idea about North & South MP. North MP did get some attention due to the famous Chambal region of Bhind Murraina famous for the stories of Daku. Central MP particularly Bhopal who was ruled by the Nawabs for a long time had a little distinct culture but not so prominent. The most you might have heard would be Jagdeep’s famous role of Surma Bhopali in the movie Sholay.

Western MP includes many cities like Ujjain, Indore, Dewas, Ratlam, Mandsaur, Nagda, and many other small towns. They all shared a common culture. Most of us started our day with Poha Jalebi, sev is a staple diet in most households, our street food includes Samosa, Kachori, Kandavada, Aloo Bada, Sabudana Khichdi, Fafda, Bhutte ka kees, and other fried snacks. Most of us speak a local dialect called Malwi, because we belong to the Malwa Plateau region. So all in all, a great deal of homogeneity in a wide region.

With the rise of social media, the influence of Indore also grew. So, Malwi became Indori. Poha Jalebi became something that is specific to Indore only and the tastiest one can be found only in Indore. Even the youtube cooks started using the term Indore Sev, Indori Poha, Indori Bhutte ka kees. This became a reason for frustration for a lot of nearby small towners like me. We felt further identityless now. Already, we had no stereotypes in the country. But the few habits we thought were unique to us was now hijacked by Indoris. The poha we ate daily while growing up was unique only to Indore, we felt reduced to nothing. Funny fact, when I was in Kota, during winders a Poha Thela opened in front of my house with the name ‘Ujjain ke prassidh pohe ( Famous Poha of Ujjain)’, you can imagine my happiness back then. Indore took away everthing from us then. Funny thing is many Indoris don’t know that Sev was originated in Ratlam (the same city which was portrayed like a brothel in Jab We Met) and Poha is native to Maharashtra,.

This was also bearable but then came round 2. Indoris started insulting us. If you will upload any picture of eating something that you were doing since your birth like eating bake samosa or eating poha. You will get a message from many Indoris like:

“if you want to eat the real shit, come to Indore.”

“Real Poha can be found only in Indore”

“Best Bake Samosa is in this shop of Indore, you are eating substandard thing”

It further annoyed many of my friends. How come our food became cheap, bad, and not original.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Indore as a city, many Indoris are my good friend. But I can’t tolerate this hijacking of culture and insult of my food. There are many things unique to Indore. Being the cleanest city of India for 4^th time, people there did a great amount of work, one can always see the difference. The sarafa market of Indore is quite unique, none of our city can compete with it. But the basics, the pohas and the jalebis, the sabudana vada and bhutte ka kees, let us enjoy our own. We, the people of small cities, face 2 crisis, we don’t have a city-level identity, and our identity is being stolen by Indore. This just reminded me about the chapter we had in our 11^th Class English Book (CBSE), the last lesson, where the invader stops the education of native language and language is associated with identity and freedom. We associate our food and habits as our identity, don’t steal it away from us.

Now let’s come back to the main topic. We, the people of MP, still don’t have any identity. We don’t know whether we are north Indians or not. We don’t have any specific language. We don’t have any particular distinctive food. We don’t have any unique dress. We do not even have any dance form of us. We are not seen as either selfish or good, hardworking or lazy, cunning or stupid. Nothing, we just don’t exist.

Even our news didn’t exist. VYAPM scam was such a massive and compliated scam, yet many do not know about it. MP was 3^rd in the Covid cases for a long time, doing far worse than the entire country, yet people were focusing on Gujarat and UP. Then we improved, now we are at 15^th position, but no praises for us also. Our CM got covid, no one cared. Rahul Dravid, Salman Khan, Lata Mangeshkar, Atal Bihari were born in MP, but they are associated with some other state. We don’t have any popular celebrity associated with us. Even Kishor Kumar was born in Khandwa, a small town in MP. Many people born in MP, moved to other states and became famous and they are then associated with either their native background or their new state. That’s what people of MP do. Born, get out of MP, become famous, die there.

Although, we don’t face that kind of crisis like my fellow North Easterns who at times are not even considered Indians. We don’t have to give any identity proof, yet we don’t exist. We don't even have a good noun form for us. Bihari, Bengali, Maharashtrian, Kannadiga, Telugu, Punjabi even Chattisgari ! But we can't be referred as madhya pradeshi, we are just MP wale! How to solve this problem? I am open to ideas. Let’s discuss this. Fellow MP walo, let’s assemble, brainstorm and devise a solution. Rest of India, do study us, give us some stereotype, anything will do, we can improve on later! Let us feel included.

PS: On a serioius note, no offense meant to anyone !! It's just a collection of observation I have found while working and travelling to different part of the countries! Yet, the beauty of this country is the way we coexist despite so many differences. Just reminds me of 'Mile Sur mera Tumhara' and 'Desh Raag' videos of Doordarshan, we are one, we are whole, we are India ! :) :) 

Miss Me ?

Sitting in front of the beach, carelessly sipping my beer, enjoying the sunset, what a blissful time to be alive. I was in some next level of trance, everything seemed so surreal, so tranquilizing. The amber-colored sun like a big fireball slowly getting swallowed by the vastness of the sea. The sound of waves like some melodious music, the occasional chirping of the birds adding to the effect. The rising waves were touching my legs at a regular interval like some natural therapy. I was bothered about the fact that why none of my problems were bothering me, how come life was so peaceful suddenly, I did not have any idea how I reached this amazingly beautiful place. I was practicing mindfulness at its best, completely living in the present, no thoughts of past or present. Then I saw her outline darkened by the sun rays coming from the opposite side but her body, her hair, her hands, everything about her was so deeply engraved in my mind that I could recollect her from anywhere.

"She can’t be here, she is miles away from me, in a different city, happy with her husband", I told myself. 

"This person is someone else, my mind is hallucinating, my mind justifying the position of being my greatest enemy is playing a trick on me.  My mind who can’t stand me being happy even for some minutes, my jealous wicked evil mind who after failing to bring any regrets of past or any worries of future bringing the image of many of my sorrow in front of me to win this contest.", I started cursing my mind mentally. The figure started coming close, she was wearing the same shiny red dress she wore in the college farewell party. Crazy coincidence, after all that happened between us, the drama and the bitter parting away, no conversations not even the formal birthday wishes exchanged from last 10 years and yet I found her slowly approaching me in the same dress she looked the most spectacular once. A part of me who craved her so much was becoming heavy again, I forcefully brought all the negative thoughts back in mind to end this mental coup.

Life has changed so much since we last talked. From my menial job which was too small for us and from my unknown college, I got into a high paying job after doing my MBA from a fancy college. She got married in between, she didn’t invite me and I was glad I was not asked to come because had I gone there, either I would have surely created some drama to vent out my frustration or I would have gotten lost between the thoughts of self-pity and why life is so unfair to me. We were still friends on social media though, that is how I got to know about her marriage, I rarely talked to our common friends, I didn’t want even a shade of her involvement in my new life. A life I created for myself, where I am successful, powerful, and happy at least superficially and not the helpless me which she made me once. She was not very active on social media ever and after her marriage, she didn’t post anything. I didn’t care, though once in a while I did use to go to her profile to check if there is anything new.

But I sensed her presence that day. As they say, the world is a small place. That day was 31^st December and I was enjoying my vacations in Thailand, a popular tourist spot, many Indians go there these days. As they say, the ambitious middle class of India has shifted from Goa to Thailand. I thought maybe she had come here with her husband. A coincidence, a painful one. I didn’t know if there is an antonym of serendipity, but if there is one, I was going through it. Her outline was becoming clearer and clearer with every passing second. This was definitely her, I was convinced now. For countless times during my college, I had wondered at her physical beauty. The way her hair moved with a passing breeze amplifying her beauty so much that she looked almost like an angel who had come from some other world. How can anyone born on this planet be so beautiful?

As I was getting deeper and deeper into the thoughts with my past and present getting one again without any visible boundaries and I was losing sense and the memory of what all happened in the last 10 years, there was a sudden halt. I was suddenly brought back in the present. Do you remember when you are having a very clear dream and then someone wakes you and you get back to your senses pretty quickly while still retaining the thoughts of your dream? I suddenly remembered that it was 31^st December 2019, I was in Thailand and she was not here.

Was I hallucinating? But it felt so real.

I have always wondered whenever I read the stories of people going through schizophrenia and other mental condition, how it feels to imagine a person. I guess I experienced it that day. The subconscious mind is indeed a complicated yet magical thing, it can bring back someone in front of your eyes, someone of whom you rarely think about these days. I threw the remaining beer into the trash, maybe the nature vibes with the alcohol had made me lose touch with reality for a while.

The next 3 days were horrible, I was haunted by her thoughts again and again. As if I had never moved on as if I never accepted my fate. I went through a series of mental states. From self-pity to cursing her for my misery, from laughing at her new mediocre life to imagining the ‘what if…’ . I came back to Hyderabad on 4^th January and I felt relieved immediately. Although I hated my job and the fact that I put in 14-16 hours a day. I knew my job will be my savior now. I would get busy juggling stuff, firefighting , and bitching about the toxic work culture of my company. I would forget her soon. It happened exactly the way I thought. The villains of my present took the place of her thoughts and I forgot about her completely.

I woke up with a very dried throat, cold sweat coming from the side of my head and a mind spinning furiously. I had a terrible nightmare. I have had nightmares before. But none of them felt so real, and none of them had such lasting memory after waking up and none of them made me almost shit my pants while replaying them in my mind. I was back to the same beach, same setting, and the same scene. She was coming near me. I was having the same chain of thoughts like that day and a strong déjà vu. Like I was not sure whether this is real or not and if it is real, it felt like it is happening again. But this time she didn’t vanish, she keeps on coming close to me. She came almost at a 1 foot distance to me and then she asked:

“Miss me?”

I was startled by the question. It’s been 10 years, why did she want to have a confirmation on whether I still think about her or not. I made my mind that I will say very rudely that I neither miss her nor do I feel anything about her. She didn’t exist in my mental landscape anymore. I made eye contact. Her facial features were slowly changing. They were becoming very aggressive. The eyes were getting bigger, some lines coming at the temple, she stood so tall and her stance was so aggressive as if she was ready to attack me. Her face was slowly turning red, violent red as if reflecting some deep-buried anger.

Do you remember the scene from Bhool Bhulaiya where Vidya Balan argues with Akshay Kumar near a temple and Akshay notices her change of expression, I felt the same. Her pupil became enlarged and now all I can see was pitch black color. I was transfixed, I couldn't move, she was looking directly into my eyes and I couldn’t run. I couldn’t do anything. I was trembling. She put a hand on my shoulder, I had never felt an icy touch like that, then she came 2 inches away from my face, looked directly into my eyes, I was able to see my frightened face in the reflection of those dark voids, and then she asked again in a very disturbing high pitch echoed voice.

“Miss me”?

I woke up after this. The clock pronounced 3:03 AM, the hour of the devil as they say. It took me a while to become normal again. My heart was racing like an engine, my breaths were heavy, uneven, and very fast. The sweating never stopped. I went to the kitchen and had some water. During the whole journey from my bedroom to the kitchen, I felt like I was being watched, someone was there, lurking in the dark corners of my house. It is said that whenever we feel we are being watched, we are being watched, as evolution developed our senses to work effectively, especially in darkness to save us from any predator attack. I was not sure whether my senses are working overtime or my miserable life has finally broken my mental sanity and I was hallucinating a lot.

I discussed the dream the next day with my best friend. As expected, he laughed it off. He teased me saying that even after all these years, I was not able to move on from her. I searched for the meaning of the dream in google also. All I got was some random shit about unfulfilled needs and desires, blocked expectations and stress. In short, no solution at all. A part of me wanted to visit a counsellor or psychotherapist for some professional help. But then I thought maybe I was overthinking it. There was one random hallucination and then a random dream, maybe the former was the cause of the later, just a random emotional phase. I should not give much heed to this. I felt loneliness was getting to me now and I should think about getting married. For the first time in my life, I felt lonely and sad about me being lonely. For the first time in life, I craved for some companionship.

The next few days went normally. I usually sleep the entire noon on Sundays. My life has made me an introvert lately. I have stopped going out with people. I just don’t like being with others or maybe I interact so much with people during my work week, it’s better to stay alone on Sunday. I ordered a heavy brunch and then watched a movie and fell asleep. I woke up when it was late, it had become quite dark. There was no light turn on in the house and no light coming from outside also. Usually, my room is decently illuminated by the lights coming from outside. Perhaps a power cut I thought. It took some time for my eyes to get adjusted in the darkness and get some vision. Suddenly my mouth went dry and I got goosebumps all over my body as if electricity is flowing through my veins. In the dimly lit corner where some blue light was struggling for its existence. She was standing, in the same red dress and with the same dark black eyes watching me intently and angrily as if she was trying to pierce my whole body through her gaze.

Miss Me?

She asked again. My paralysis returned. It was real, it was happening, it was the reality, it was no dream. She started walking towards me while maintaining eye contact. She kept on asking “miss me” in a tone that was frightening. She came very close. I saw her illuminated by that blue light in the room. Her dress was tattered, her face was rough, dry, and splitting from many places developing cracks like dry clay. Her hairs were very dry and scattered everywhere. She had come to punish me. Punish me for no faults of mine, it was her decision to reject me, it was her decision to move on from me, it was her decision to kick me out of her life. What was she punishing me for?

“What do you want from me?” I screamed with all my might.

She touched her head with my head as we used to do during college. Then she smiled. It was a very creepy smile and then I had no memory. I opened my eyes and I was on my bed. I checked my phone, it was 9 PM. The room was well illuminated as always. I slept for like a good 7 hours. My whole body felt tired. Was it a dream again? It couldn’t be. It felt so real this time. I was pretty sure it happened but then I thought maybe my mind was playing games with me again? I was very confused. Should I discuss this with my mother, but then she will get unnecessarily worried. I thought of talking to her directly. That seemed to be the best solution. Thousands of thoughts were running parallelly in my mind.

“Just drop a hi, do a casual chat, nothing serious. This will calm my mind. Her ice-cold single word replies will convince my brain that she is alive and still the same. It will move on. These thoughts will go away.”

I didn’t have her phone number. We didn’t have any common WhatsApp groups also. So the only place of communicating was Facebook, the medium where our love story started, it felt like a poetic justice that I was to reach out to her on Facebook for a much-needed closure. It is true I hated her for a while. Who wouldn’t? After all those tall claims of how much she wanted me and needed me in her life, after those flirting, after spending so much time together, after expressing our feelings for each other, after so much future planning, being kicked out unceremoniously like that.

I had hard feelings for a long time but then I moved on. I had bigger and better villains in my life to give me a hard time and I forgot about her. She became a blurry image in my head till that unfortunate day of 31^st December 2019. I opened my Facebook and surprisingly she was online. Generally, she keeps her messenger offline. I opened the window. I thought on what I would write. I never used to write ‘HI’ to her before, so it would be really awkward to write it now. Suddenly the window flashed that she is typing. Again, too many coincidences for a day.

“What she has to say to me?” My mind created 100s of scenarios.

“But at least, she is here, she is real, she is alive, there will be a normal conversation and this ordeal will end. Maybe I will share the dream with her and we can have a good laugh on that, like the old days. We can have normal conversations, we don’t despise each other anymore.”

It seemed like she was typing a really long paragraph, no message came even after 5 minutes yet it kept on displaying the typing message. I became frustrated after a while. Maybe it’s a technical glitch, they used to happen a lot during early 2010 but haven’t seen anything like that lately. I visited her profile. She had last put a post 5 years back. She was not tagged in any photo for the last 3 years. I kept on browsing her older post and saw a message she had shared. I knew that post was about me when she had put it. It was a subtle jibe, aimed at me, where she portrayed me as a villain, as a sadist, as a jealous and immature person who ruined our relation. My mind filled with rage. I closed my laptop. I didn’t care what she was typing or what she wanted to say. I even forgot my own purpose of talking to her. I felt intense anger. I punched the wall with all my mind and felt the sharp pain on my knuckles. Self-destruction is not always rewarding.

It felt like the real her was as evil as that hallucinating haunting version of her. After all, what she did to me, she still considered me as the villain. I suffered daily because of her and now I was the oppressor and she was the victim. It took me a while to calm down. I took some deep breathes. I opened my Jack Daniels and gulped it down neat like they show in the movies. It burnt my throat, but I felt better after a while. I made a civilized peg after that, then one more peg and then again. I played some old melancholy music. I didn’t know when I passed out into deep sleep fully drunk and out of senses. When I woke up, my laptop was on and a song was being played. It was her favorite song. Youtube was also playing games now I thought. I reached the laptop to shut it, I saw the screen, Facebook was still open, and her chat window was also open with 2 words written after our last chat there 10 years back.

“Miss me?”

I had reached a stage beyond fear now. Partly because I was not sure whether it was a dream or it was another of hallucination and party I was curious now what is happening. I replied this time with a rude block lettered NO. As soon I entered the text, I received a video call from her. I turned it on. I saw not her pretty face but the same disfigured haunted face. She tilted her neck, took a breath, and then she said something that made shook me so much that I dropped my laptop from my hand.

She said, “I will make sure, you will miss me”!

It was 3 Am in the night. I was so scared, I just left my home. I went to a nearby 24*7 café just because I wanted to be surrounded by people. Whether I should visit a psychiatrist or a priest I was not sure now. I needed to talk to people about this. I stayed away even from my mobile because I was scared she will contact me from there. I had 4 coffees in the café and I stayed there till 6 AM. I put my usual “not feeling well, can’t come to the office” message to my boss. I started scrolling my contact list to find the best person to talk to. My fingers stopped at the name of a common friend. She might still be in touch with her. I had no idea what to say to her also. She also used to be a good friend but we hadn’t talked for the last 4 years except exchanging likes on social media posts. Should I discuss the events with her? Should I ask her to do a conference call to resolve everything? I had no idea what I will achieve from this call, but I felt a great instinct to call her.

I checked my Facebook on my mobile. There were no conversations of last night. It just displayed our old messages years ago. A part of me was expecting this.

I called the common friend immediately knowing she would be asleep at this time. She was not a morning person. She responded after a long time still very deep in the sleep. I hadn’t even thought of a good excuse by that time on why I was calling her so early. But she sensed the trembling of my voice and asked me what is wrong. She was always a sweetheart when it comes to helping people. I explained to her what I was going through in a single breath. There was a long pause afterward, I thought the phone is disconnected.

She said my name in such a grave tone that it shook me. She then asked me the date of my first such a bizarre experience. I told her that it was 31^st Dec 2019. She paused again but I could hear her breathing. She told me that my ex-girlfriend died on the same day in a car accident. The moment she uttered those word, I got a FB messenger notification from her account with the same 2 dreaded words.

“Miss Me”

Trivialisation of Mental Health

I was writing on the topic of mental health before the unfortunate case of Sushant Singh and as everyone has suddenly become an expert into the field of mental health and depression, I modified the content accordingly. The topic of mental health is very close to my heart. Many of my poems and blog posts have revolved solely around motivation, positivity and the spirit of carrying on. Like all the wise sounds right now, I also use to think few years back, that all you need is positivity, will power and a strong character. You need to hang on and fight back. Motivation is enough to sail you through any storm. But after going through some very dark phases in my life recently, I have challenged all my earlier notions on this topic.

Let us get some facts straight and by facts, I mean facts, not perspective or opinion. Depression is a mental illness. It is not a phase where you are down because you failed in a test, or missed your train, or broke your mobile screen and you can get cheered by eating an ice cream. It is not something you can be talked out against.

Are you tensed? Don’t be!!

Are you worried? Stop worrying!

Are you stressed? Take a chill pill!

It doesn’t work like that. It is not a weakness of character. It is not a temporary hormonal imbalance. It gets much deeper than that. It’s not something that you can get done with by reading a self-help book and watching a feel good movie.

When I read these chest thumping posts of middle class self-obsessed public that how they never quit, how they were strong, how they struggled yet they enjoy their life. I can only laugh on the reality that people are not even aware of what depression does to a person. They never faced it. They are comparing their momentary sadness to a mental illness. If only we were made aware of depression and mental health in school or college or through a widespread awareness campaign like that done for AIDS, COVID etc perhaps people would have been more sensitive and educated on the topic.

You can read some chest thumping self-praising statements of many Bollywood personalities also on how they too struggled, but they carry on, they fought the darkness and made a way. Well, good for you, congratulations, but stop comparing what you did to someone who took an extreme step. All your fairy tales stories are as good as Sushant’s character trying to console his son to not give up on life, be strong and it’s ok to be a looser. It’s not like he has not heard of all these positive stories. It’s not like he doesn’t know that failure is temporary. Go through his past interviews, he was much wiser than that. But what most people don’t realize is depression for a prolonged period make a person hopeless.

And depression is not limited to sadness or failure also. It has many reasons. I have seen people getting depress after achieving success because now they don’t know what they want to do in life. They had achieved what they want to achieve and now they find no purpose of life. Deepika Padukone was quite open about her depression, was she suffering from failure that time? Chester Bennington, Kurt Cobain, Robin Williams there are many examples of people who lost the will to live despite making a great career and achieving great success.

I am not questioning the good will and good intention of people when they say suicide is not an option. But I am questioning their lack of awareness on the matter when they think that a person who is depressed thinks with same logical clarity and rationality which they are having right now. Sushant Singh who took the extreme step of taking his life was a much different person than the Sushant Singh who was consoling his son in the movie Chicchore. Depression changes your thought process, your decision making ability, and your conventions of life. Within few weeks, you are a different person. You are a person who are not able to answer the questions that helps you propel forward in life. The treatment is a long term process of regular therapy, medication and having a strong support system. Few whatsapp forwards and jokes can’t cure it.

Most of us, the common people, have struggled in life. We have fought for grades in school, ended up not getting the college we wanted, struggled in job and yet we carried on in life. It’s good that we fought and we are happy. But that doesn’t give us any right to glamourize and glorify our struggle and demean and insult those who were not able to cope up with adversities of life.

“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet”

I used to do that a lot earlier. Telling people that they have no right to be sad or unhappy because people are living far worse. Telling them we should be happy that we are in good college and we have great opportunities and thus we should be happy and cheerful all the time as life could always be much worse. I used to tell that to myself also a lot of time. The first thing that my professor told us in our class of managerial counselling was, don’t try to console or cheer up anyone by telling them the adversities of other. Never ever do the mistake of comparing someone’s pain with someone else’ pain and make them feel bad about themselves that how dare they thought to be unhappy when they have so much good in the life.

It doesn’t work that way. Everyone’s pain is unique and so is their ability to cope up with it. You can’t ridicule a person to be weak, to be sad, and to be emotionally hurt. You can’t do chest thumping regularly just because you fought back with life.

 I see many Bollywood personalities now indirectly taking a jibe at Sushant saying he was very successful, Bollywood has so many struggler, he was not grateful for opportunities he god. That is exactly what is wrong with the society, to stop feeling sorry for a person just because he was successful. Just because he was better than other, the society takes away the right to be unhappy, sad or hurt from that person. That is the reason why people won’t talk openly about their unhappiness. If any celebrity comes forward that they are unhappy and depress, just look at the comments of people on that thread, they ridicule and insult them, they laugh on them, they say that look at that famous pretentious douche, living life craved by millions yet complaining. We struggle so much and he lives in his bunglow, he has no right to be depressed.

 The society has taken away the right to talk about the unhappiness from people and then we write posts on opening up and talking up and vent out your feelings. You will find so many people uploading the status of reach out to us now, open up and talk. Again, I do not doubt their good gesture. But, to be very honest, a person who is depressed or feeling low, won’t come forward in most cases. They lose the will to reach out to others and ask for help. If you want to help, the onus is on you to find out those who are sad. Deep dive into those fake smileys and laughing gestures and emotionless ‘haha’ written and identify whether the people around you, the people you care about are going through some problems or not. That trust, that rapport, that ease of sharing has to be build first and then only a person will come forward and share and may be it will be a great help to the society. But any depressed person will avoid sharing his/her feeling to a stranger.

Why people don’t open up is also an interesting subject? There are always trust issue, we are told to be strong and move on in life from the beginning and also people in general don’t like people who complaint. If you share that you are not happy with your college, with your job, with your life in general. The society will tag you with the title of being cribber. Look, he is cribbing again, earning lakhs per month and yet unhappy, yet complaining, yet suffocating, spreading negativity as usual. There is so much stigma attach with people sharing why they are feeling bad about life in general, the posts of open up and talk in hindsight when someone has taken an extreme step appears super hypocritical to me. Confining yourself in your solitude is a slow process, an extrovert person doesn’t suddenly becomes a loner, and often people are careless to identify these symptoms.

I am not expert in this field. But I still feel that the people who have power are still not taking this topic seriously. On paper, you see companies organizing random workshops, inviting guests, doing some standalone activities. It’s a good step that at least something is being started. I have no idea whether schools and colleges are also doing something about it or not, having a subject on mental health in school will be of great help for the next generation. But, as long as we live in a society where performers are rewarded and strugglers are ridiculed, when that manager gets promotion who tortured his employees to achieve targets damaging their mental health to a large extent, teachers and professors bullying the students, office bullies, groupies etc exist and the system doesn’t have enough checks and control measures to help the needy and punish the offenders. All this awareness will remain a temporary social media movement and die its natural death.

Empathy, sensitivity, compassion, forgiveness, maturity, companionship there are many words which are now confined to fictional novels and movies now. The world needs more healing, I can just hope the world will look forward to stop running for a while and fix the damaged ones.

Social Media Distancing

Disclaimer: This post is not going to be one of those goody good neutral posts that I usually write to avoid any controversy. Some of the opinions I am going to share here might not go well with everyone. You may not like what I have referred as incorrect behavior and that is perfectly fine but still read it with an open mind and be respectful if you defer in opinion for a fruitful discussion ahead.

The fact that I have to write a disclaimer ahead of the post in itself shows what is wrong with current social media and the way people have become on it. Mature discussions are replaced by taunts, jibes and sarcasm; there is hardly any scope left for a good discussion appreciating the difference in the opinion or trying to dig deep why certain opinions have been formed. People have stopped thinking on why others are thinking the way they are and if you think they are not thinking correctly, how to change their thinking rather everything has been limited to insulting adjectives, stereotypes, name calling and demeaning others.

Social Media has become such an integral part of our life now that it is tough to imagine a life without such platforms. Let’s rewind our clock a bit, to a time when there was no social media. Perhaps the mid 2000, I am sure now most will agree that it was a good time. Google was still there, so you can pretty much search out whatever you wanted to know. The main source of your knowledge were still books, print media and electronic media. People were just becoming aware of Wikipedia, answer yahoo was still there as a good alternative. Then came Orkut, our first step into the world of social media.

Then came Facebook and Twitter in late 2000, people started moving away from Orkut quickly. Earlier days of Facebook were still limited to playing games like Farmville, Mafia Wars etc. I was never active on Twitter, not even today, so I have not much idea of how life progressed there. We copied our SMS culture on Facebook, so earlier status were full of small jokes, random copy paste comment competition, tagging people in random pics ( good ice breaker for early college goers to get close to their crushes ), some motivational shit ( we love to do it no matter what platform), so overall nothing very serious was going on there.

The 1^st big social media moment of the country. The Anna Hazare movement. Social Media was suddenly abuzz with intense hatred for the corrupt system. There were big discussions on the current state of country. Everyone started sharing their opinion and it became a large platform for mass discussion. It became common to indulge in a comment war of 100+ comments with a stranger on someone else’s wall or a random page. But still, everyone were relatively were respectful. The focus was on the discussion not on personal jibes and remarks. It used to be a fun time back then, as you could indeed learn a lot from others and discuss respectfully.

Afterwards social media was pretty much involved in many sensitive events. The nirbhaya case, the downfall of UPA government, Middle East wars, major terrorist attacks etc. BJP was little quick to realize the potential of social media and they created a strong army for it, to promote its ideology, to aggregate the dissatisfaction and anger against the policy paralysis and corruption of UPA 2, to connect more with a tech savvy upcoming voter on issues. Just as Nokia failed to see the potential of android, congress missed the early days of connecting to this digital crowd.

I was very active on social media since the early days. I wasted countless precious hours on playing mafia wars and other games. I used it as a writing platform, there was a time when I used to post like 3-4 posts a day. I used to indulge in lots of political discussions. I used to have some extreme views back then which matured up slowly as I travelled to places, talked to people coming from different background and read a lot. But still, it was fun discussing issues in those early days because even when you were sticking to an extreme view, you get to learn a lot in terms of history, facts, information and even behaviour.

I don’t exactly know when it becomes really toxic but perhaps it happened around mid 2010. By then, most political parties have well-structured IT cells and well financed agents to spread their ideologies. Common public is too innocent to see through the information being fed to them. The algorithm is very simple, it shows what you want to see, and once you show inclination towards a particular thought, it will show you so much content around it that your inclination will become an extremely polarized thought, a bias that you won’t be able to get away with, a hardcore ideology that you have become a follower of unintentionally.

It’s hard to identify the truth anymore. The headlines are misleading and the contents are colored. As I write this post, one page is discussing how India triumphed in pressuring China and defended its border while other page is discussing how the present government failed to save our country and China has taken away our land. Both the sides have strong followership with only a few voice of dissent which are crushed with quite cruelty. The scope of discussion is over. You either believe in this or that and any other opinion will be crushed mercilessly.

Similar case is observed on people’s post and statuses. Earlier, there used to be mature discussions even on the comment thread. Now people write with strong conventions, either you believe them or you don’t. Earlier the posts were written with the intention of inviting the dissenting voices to have a good discussion. Now the posts are written for those 5-6 likes and 2-3 comments of admiration from people who believe what you believe. People have teamed up and they bully those who differs. People have stopped commenting because they fear they will be ganged, cyber bullied and virtually harassed. The tags are there to be fired from the launchers. Be it closet Sanghi, chaddi, blind bhakt or liberandu, anti nationalist, fake leftist or whatever, its’ out there, you know who to label what and within the first 1 or 2 comments it will come around. End of discussion, you are sanghi so you think like that or since you have posted this comment you are leftist. Discussion over.

I sometimes wonder whether people can’t see their own hypocrisy or they have just learnt to live with it and ignores it. For example, the practice of selectively ignoring the mistakes of party of your choice and selective opposing the party you hate. People who are anti BJP love to make fun of UP, Gujarat and highlight the bad things happening there and promote Kerala, WB. People who are pro BJP then will counter with the bad things happening in Kerala, WB and overall what you see on your feed is the entire toxic news happening in country with no one discussing the good which a state like Orissa is able to achieve in tough times.

The cost of these tagging and extremism is paid by the neutral person who just wants to speak once in a while. A neutral person doesn’t blindly prefer a government or a person nor does he hate one. He judges by work and that’s where he fails. If you praise current central government for something you think it is good then the very moment all the anti government people will come and bombard you with tags like chaddi, bhakt, uneducated, illatred, messenger of hatred and what not. Similarly, if you oppose the present government you are garlanded with adjectives like anti national, fake hindu, coward etc. Since you don’t follow either the pro or anti-gang, you don’t have any support system that will team up to save or support you, you get beaten by both regularly.

Same goes for issues like feminism, reservation, capitalist model and many other topics. The situation is grim because there is so much information asymmetry. You see sponsored biased pages waiting for a particular event to happen to push their agenda which makes people thoughts extreme. Misleading headings are common because they know how small attention span of people are and how lazy many are to read their content or watch the video they are quoting. Manipulative and selective content to further provoke people has become a norm. Also, there are many content related pages and websites with immature writers who will write 1 thing on one day and totally opposite thing on other day. Because they also know, if they put extreme posts, they will get more likes and comments thus increasing their visibility organically. Hatred has been used quite an effective advertising tools by many pages.

The main problem here is earlier people used to read and then form an opinion. Now people have an opinion and they just post and push their narrative accordingly. An elephant is killed mercilessly by a cracker filled pineapple. Rather than discussing the event and its root cause, everyone starts pushing their own agenda. Kerala haters started belittling and insulting Kerala, vegetarians started highlighting hypocrisy of non-vegetarians, then you have the opposite arguments and in a while everything becomes a huge mess. There are classic example like Rohtak sisters where the social media sensationalism resulted in ruining the life of innocent ones. Social Media has in general its own set of rules for who is the victim and who is the oppressor and without even looking at an event objectively, sentence is announced.

People tend to ignore that there may be good things in life too. Some policeman are bad, they do horrible things. But many are not, many have and are doing good things also. The cruel face of police beating citizens were published and talked far more than the kind face where police helped the migrant workers and nearby villagers. Like the famous dialogue of Rockstar,”negative bikta hai”. Social media pages of popular newspapers and content sites have learnt this quite well that they will get far more reach by publishing negative news than the positive ones.

The fact is most of the problems that are being discussed lately on social media persisted from a long time. It is not like they randomly popped up 2-3 years back. As much as it pains to see the painful events happening around the globe, they were happening since a long time. Writing a post, making your DP black and then moving on won’t change it. Although, I still support your right to feel emotional at times, all of us do, still just limiting your pain to social media is not the kind of behaviour that will change the root cause of the issue.

Also, there is a new trend of calling out the silent ones. There are many who are not as vocal as others on social media. Many people haven’t even put a single post for years. So the new trend of shaming the silent have begun. According to the narrative either you are supporter to dictatorship or a coward Hindu, spineless crowd during a fascism or spineless majority in the era of radicalization. People have already declared that their version, their ideology, what they are thinking is right and those who stay silent are worse than even those who are speaking against. That is funny to me, the bullying has shifted from the opponents to the silent ones also. And again, like the neutral person, the silent ones are getting shamed by both the ends.

One of my friend once said that he doesn’t use social media much because it doesn’t assure everyone has ears but it has given mouth to everyone. So every person is free to speak, free to spread hate, free to fight, free to insult, it has empowered the timid ones to become a vocal troll on this platform. Interestingly, many of my friends have deactivated their social media account. They say they can’t bear the stupidity and toxicity anymore. To me, it is a very extreme step.

I advocate for social media distancing. In a pandemic like corona, you have to stay inside most of the time yet you have to come out once in a while for essential work and take necessary measures. Same goes here, instead of abandoning it completely the better thing will be to follow distancing. You have to take some hard steps, you have to confuse the algorithm to ensure it doesn’t make your thoughts extreme. You have to sensitize your thoughts by cross checking whatever the headings you are reading that is provoking you. You have to stay away from vulnerable areas.

Unlike some pages, unfollow some people even unfriend if you feel so, stay away from discussions where you know there won’t be any output coming, don’t try to pick up unnecessary fights, use it constructively, pick only those sources which helps you, be it only the funny pages or people who posts objective and neutral content. Post your own thoughts and indulge in discussions with only those who are worth investing your time are. There are still many good things happening out because of social media. Issues which might have died out turns a mega news, many needy ones do get help, it even reminds you about the birthdays you would have easily forgotten. I won't have a platform to publish this post if there was no Facebook. I do suggest time to time social media detox to all and then spending some time to fix the sources from which news are coming. There will always be noise in the system, there will always be toxicity, but I believe with some maturity we can still turn this virtual platform into the la la land we came to escape from realities of life rather than another replica of the toxicity we live in.