Ben10 Vs. Barbie

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The twain meet on earth to produce little alien boys and little alien girls, whom neither can understand. Right from the time they can walk and talk, these little boys and girls show clear signs that they are as different as chalk and cheese and when put together in the same room, contrary to the laws of physics, don’t attract, but try to repel each other back to where they originally came from.

So, when I get together a bunch of 3 year old boys and girls for an organised play-date at my girl dominated household, there are bound to be a few revelations. There is initial awkwardness and silence when the visiting boys realise the room is pink and filled with pastel coloured stuffed clones of every animal species imaginable and delicate Barbie dolls in a variety of avatars and colours. (There is even a brown toned Barbie in Indian bridal costume). There are no cars or guns, which is what I presume little boys play with.

But kids are resourceful creatures. Within 15 minutes, the Indian bride Aishwarya and the American Princess Elina are seen racing each other on the polished marble floor and engaging in revoltingly un-barbie- like acts such hand to hand combat, guerrilla attacks and somersaults, much to the horror of the girls present. Beauty and Jasmine, two other elegant Barbies have now mutated into Ben10 warriors with a mission to save planet earth from alien life forms in the guise of cuddly teddy bears, fluffy puppies and cute bunnies.

When the mission ends, Beauty has one arm less and Jasmine has exactly three strands of hair left on her head. Sarah the bear’s gut has been wrenched out and Esmerelda’s pink hair dryer wielding hand is now a mean machine gun toting one.

The girls manage to salvage the last of the surviving dolls, Belle and Rose, from the evil grip of the boys and have retreated to an imaginary kitchen to engage in tamer activities such as cake baking and dough kneading. Sarah’s gaping gut will be nursed back to health by my doctor daughter, while her hairdresser friend will make fervent attempts to restore Jasmine’s coiffures to its original glory.

Where did these stereotypes emerge from? Surely the cake baking wasn’t picked up from me as I haven’t as much as touched a baking dish in all my years of motherhood. (It is another story that even pre-mixed cakes turn out to be disasters at my touch!) As for those Ben10 warriors, I am certain their fathers had little to do with their sons' trigger happiness. One is an artist and the other a straight-laced banker, which is about as non-violent as professions get!

Maybe the answer lies buried somewhere deep in the craters of Mars and Venus or some unknown planet where little kids originally came from.

 

The Circle of Life

I wrote a post on the tension and drama that unfolds when my parents take a flight out of my house. I usually call them paranoid, over-cautious and needlessly edgy, among other things.

Now in order to complete the picture I need to put on record what usually happens when I take a flight with my family, i.e. husband and kids.

6 30 am:

Me - Wake up kids! We have a flight to catch!
Them - The flight is only at 9 30. The airport is only ½ hour away! Don't be paranoid! (rings an uneasily familiar bell)

6.45 : Another attempt to wake up kids

7.00 : The laborious process of rising and shining commences

7.30 : Debate on the merits and demerits of jacket A vs jacket B ensues between kid A and kid B. It doesn’t matter that we are going to a place where the heat makes jackets redundant.

8.00 : Books, toys, puzzles, travel games and numerous other things that have never seen the light of day in our house are packed in the hope of seeing the light of day in another city.

8.15 The last of the stuffed toys still remaining in the kids’ shelf is stuffed into the already overflowing suitcase.

Did I mention it is a 1 week holiday? Seeing their empty room and the size of their suitcase, one would never guess.

8.30 : Merits of drinking milk vs. threat of being left behind are weighed before milk is drunk

8.35 : All set to go. Door is finally shut. Oops, one large suitcase is still inside

8.40 : Suitcase is successfully retrieved, along with 1 kid, who we guiltily realized had also been left inside.

8.45 : We are ready to depart, finally!

Did I mention the flight was at 9.30  ?

Whether or not we made it to that flight is irrelevant. The obvious take-out from this story is that no flight in my life has ever been and will ever be uneventful.

The less obvious but more important take-out is my realisation that what goes around comes around this quickly.

I thought I had reached that 'know-it-all' stage in life which allows me to go around telling my parents what do and how to do it. But what I had no way of knowing is that my children would beat me at my own game, some 30 years too soon.

I need to take urgent lessons from my parents on the fine art of tolerating impetuous and reckless children. After all, they have had over 35 years of experience at it, haven't they?

The kid who never learns

I have a disciplined, retired Government servant for a father who extends that discipline to all walks of life – be it drinking his morning cuppa at 6 am sharp everyday, maintaining a record of telephone bills paid for the last 15 years, or something as mundane as taking a flight.

I, on the other hand am a reckless being, and a particularly reckless traveller - mishaps and misadventures of every kind have a personal bonding with me. Talk of missed flights, wrong trains, wrong dates, expired passports – name it and I have been there, done that.

What happens when said disciplined father and his wife spend a few days at reckless daughter’s place? The tension in the air is palpable most of the time and reaches volcanic proportions as stay draws to a close.

The preparation for their departure usually starts two days before the actual journey, about the same time I think about booking tickets, if I am travelling. Clothes are packed. Clothes for the journey are set aside. Speculation on what food might be served on the flight and whether it will be palatable or not constitutes a substantial part of the day’s conversation.

The atmosphere on the morning of the journey is nothing short of a mini-event. The lights are on at 4 30 am. (It doesn’t matter that flight is only at 11am). Sooner or later, willy-nilly, the entire household is up. Endless cups of coffee have already been consumed by 6 am. Breakfast is consumed at 7 am, as there needs be a decent gap between this and the meal on board.

At 7 15 they are all set to leave

‘But the flight is only at 11 and the airport is ½ hour away’ I try to reason

‘We don’t mind being a tad early’ comes the firm reply

‘ You are not early. You are paranoid’ I bite

‘We are not like you. We don’t like missing flights’ comes the stinging response.

Oh! A raw nerve has been touched. Small fight ensues, but I should know that is not about to alter decision. The sequence of events that follow :
1. 6.30 - Bags are out of the room.
2. 6.45 - Bags reach the front door.
3. 7.00 - Disciplined government servant and his compliant wife reach the front door.
Between 7.00 and 7.15
4. Tickets that have been re-checked are re-re-checked.
5. Bags that are locked are unlocked and relocked for better safety.
6. Kids that have been kissed are rekissed.
7. Last minute advice that was previously doled out is re-doled out.
8. Finally, there is just enough time for a quick last minute fight.

Now they have to be let go, for everyone’s sanity.I shut the door after them, only to realise that the tickets after the nth recheck are left behind on the dining table, thanks to my last minute fight!

Sprinting skills (non-existent so far) are put to test before tickets are somehow reached to the over-cautious travellers. Whew!

Parents reach the airport as intended -  2 hours early.

Parents happy.

Me fuming : why do they prefer airport lounges to the comfort of my home?

Kid wondering (aloud ) :Why do you always fight with your parents when they are here? And then why do you cry after they leave? If you fight so much, shouldn’t you be happy when they leave?

Its because some relationships are beyond logic and reason...And some children, however grown up, will never learn...

The Homecoming

I returned for a long overdue holiday to the city I still inadvertently call home, although it’s been 15 years since I spent more than 2 days at a time there. This time I was on a holiday with no agenda and was all set to go on a trip down memory lane. I was curious to find out if my favourite haunts from the past had managed to hold their own in a decade that had put India on the global map for all the right reasons.

The first thing I notice about Chennai is the number of flyovers that have sprung up all over the city, each having brought along with it a slew of new vehicles and fresh traffic jams - yet another city has fallen prey to the perils of progress and development, I presume.

The next thing I notice is the familiar sight of the larger than life cut outs of movie stars and politicians all over the city. It is a sight so uniquely Chennai, and one that never fails to bring a smile to my face, just as it never fails to baffle a first time visitor. It is a comforting reminder that over the years, Madras may have become Chennai, but some things would just never change. Thalaivar, Amma, Superstar, Kalaignar, Thalapathy and numerous other ordinary mortals with extraordinary titles would jostle and find their place amidst the flyovers and sea of vehicles.

I hail an auto rickshaw to take me around my old haunts, but not before I am forced into a mutually abusive altercation in fluid Tamil (enough to make a truck driver swoon). The autos in this city don’t carry meters any more and the fare is based completely on the auto driver’s audacity and/or the passenger’s desperation level.

My three wheeled transportation for the day takes me past my favourite video cassette renting parlour but I notice with a tinge of sadness that the place is now selling mobile phones and accessories. Further down the road, my friendly neighbourhood grocery store of 25 years has been replaced with a steel and glass structure, bearing the familiar red and yellow signage of a national supermarket chain. This chain alone is responsible for wiping out half the mom and pop stores from the map of urban India. Everything about this place is templated – the layout, the display, the uniformed staff with their mechanical greeting and impersonal plastic smile.

I recall with nostalgia my friendly grocer, who, in the good old days knew not only me, my brother and my dog by first name, but also what brand of soap we bought, how many kgs of rice we consumed or even which teen age boy fancied me. I saw him then as an overtly curious painful intrusion on my privacy, but realise now that what we were getting back then was personalised service at its best and a dose of free gossip for those interested.

I passed the post-office, a huge landmark then, but now a desolate structure, visited only by retired people collecting their pension. It was just another run-down green building next to the swanky new mall, the newest attraction in the neighbourhood. As I moved on, I couldn't help but wonder how the postal department managed to stay afloat and pay salaries in these times.

I notice there are more internet browsing centres in Chennai than commuters on a peak hour Mumbai local. Pizza joints and swanky coffee shops had sprouted like mushrooms on a rainy day all over the city. Thankfully, the traditional udipi hotels and tiffin bhavans were doing sell-out business too. The humble Tamilian has decided to eat and spend with a never seen before vengeance. In fact, he was no longer willing to even make his own idli batter at home, a chore that used to consume 6/7th of a tamil housewife’s life in those days. Today the batter is out-sourced from the convenience store across the road and all the spare time is spent watching back-to-back soaps on any of the 20 different Tamil channels, or better still in the gleaming malls that lures families in with the promise of fun, food, films and fashion for one and all.

As I soak in the sights, sounds and smells of an i-age chennai, I am interrupted by a text message from my newly-tech-enabled mother, wanting to know if I would be home for dinner, because dad was going to order Pizzas, coke and brownies to celebrate our little family reunion. Wow! Whatever happened to the good ol days, when celebration meant that the usual meal of sambar and curd rice was finished off with home made payasam. After dinner, my father reminds me that we are scheduled to chat with my NRI brother on Skype, the internet-phone that enables us to make long distance calls for a lark. I must confess, never having using anything but graham bell’s invention for communication, I felt like someone from The Flintstones in front of my tech-talking jargon spewing parents.

I came to Madras wanting to catch up from where I had left off, but the Madras of my childhood is history. It exists no more. The genie has been let out of the proverbial bottle and has taken the entire city including my parental home into its vicious grip!

I had a lot of preparation to do before my next trip home!

Phone Stalkers

Remember the time when telephones were considered a luxury ? When there was an 8 year waiting period for the telephone connection? Those were the days when the communication needs of the entire upper middle class neighbourhood I grew up in were well taken care of by 4 phone owning households and one public phone at the street corner.

We have come a long way since then baby.

Today, between 2 adults, 2 kids and the domestic help, we have 5 phones in the house and at any given point in time, one of them is ringing. The ring tone is no longer the simple ‘tring tring’. Mine resonates to the tune of ‘Hakuna Matata’ as that’s what pleases my 3 year old. The domestic help has a different Hindi song for each category of caller -my knowledge of Hindi songs has widened thanks to her constantly ringing phone. Many a time I have been caught humming along with it. The telephone is the single greatest leveller of Modern India.

I have now reached a stage where I feel insecure, unwanted and unimportant if the phone remains silent even for a short period of time. But in all honesty, 90% of the calls I receive in a day are those I can live without.

A sample of my callers, my ‘phone stalkers’ as I call them :

1. Twice a week, I get a call from an insurance company soliciting me to insure my worthy life with one of their 200 existing products or one that can be custom-made to suit my requirements.

2. On Sunday afternoons, when the entire house is at peace, a certain bank calls me, tempting me to take a documentation-free, hassle-free, (but unfortunately not interest- free) personal loan from them (can loans and troubles be anything but personal?).

3. Else, the call is about yet another unbelievable offer from a credit card company that wants me to spend more than I currently am, just when my last bill makes me think that is impossible and has me seriously considering a lifetime of austerity.

4. And then there are the calls from those high-end departmental stores requesting me to visit them for their bi-annual sales (maybe they are aware I would never buy their over-priced products at their normal rates) or that spa I visited over a year ago in another city that calls me religiously every month to remind me that it’s about time I paid them a visit to rejuvenate my tired body and soul.

5. My very own phone company calls me almost on a daily basis, suggesting that I change my plan as the current one is sub-optimal (translation : ‘you are not using your phone as much as we want you to, so please choose this new plan that will double your bill ).

Not all calls are a nuisance though. I am grateful for the call from the car company that reminds me that my vehicle is due for service. But what I dislike is the phone call the morning after asking me how my experience at the service centre was. The ill-timed call comes precisely at the moment I am reviewing their two-page ‘itemised bill’ that has fleeced me of a sizeable portion of my monthly earning and has me fuming over why parts that I didn’t even know existed in my car till that minute have been replaced, while the noisy A/c that I specifically complained about continues to drone.

Sometimes I long to throw my phone(s) away. Go back to the days of trunk calls, STD booths and snail mails; the simple days when I could escape into oblivion and be truly untraceable; when a bank meant a brick and mortar structure that I visited whenever I had a need, and took a loan strictly if and only if I needed one, and not because some nameless faceless peddler relentlessly stalked me on the phone!

'Age'itation

Its nearly dawn and we are just back home after a rocking time at dear friend GK’s 40th birthday party. He is a cheerful, exuberant old guy and has invited everyone he knows, has ever spoken to, smiled at and been in the same lift with, to bring in his birthday.

We all have different ways of reacting to the magic figure 40. Clearly GK was celebrating the fact that he has touched this landmark and chose to share his joy with his entire world (probably the best way to deal with it).

Some we know are in denial. They are perennially 3 years away from their 40th.

Some others start the backward spiral just before touching 40. Their clothes and behaviour get progressively younger, a la Shah Rukh Khan in ridiculously tight t shirts mouthing ‘yo’ and ‘cool’ in his avatar as a college student in a Karan Johar flick.

And then there are those who are seen strictly in the company older, fatter and balder people, so that they themselves look younger in comparison.

To each his own.

But you sure know you are past your prime when:

1. You celebrate your birthday at home with a movie, chilled milk(trust me, it is great for acidity) and bottle of pills for company

2. Your annual health check-ups are no longer just annual. Between you and your friends, you have most of the documented ailments in the medical world

3. Your receive compliments such as ‘you don’t look a day over 42’ or ‘this is how I would like to look 10 years from now’

4. If you are woman, your husband has stopped gifting diamonds and pearls. This time it is ‘La Prairie intensive night repair cream’ that promises to defy the ageing process and restore lost confidence. When did I lose it for it to be restored?

5. You have difficult choices to make before your next birthday - its between botox shots, blepharoplasty (trust me, it is a real word – it helps remove eye bags), brow lift and face lift.

6. You child is talking about crushes and heartbreaks with you, no longer about tooth-fairies and Santa. Where was I when she grew up. Probably too busy trying to fight ageing.

7. You are considered experienced and worldly wise by your cousin who has two children of his own? What! How much younger does he think he is? has he forgotten we sat on the same mango tree and threw rotten mangoes at our grandmother’s balding neighbour not too many years ago

8. You find discotheques noisy and cannot identify even a single song.

9. If you do (manage to identify a song), then it must be retro night – when they play music that you till that minute thought was current and trendy.

10. You are in Goa on new year’s eve and haven’t been to a single beach party. You are having champagne and caviar instead with a few close friends at the exclusive private dining area of a 5star hotel.

11. While sipping champagne all you can talk about is the parties and wild binges from your past.

12. You have started reading self help and inspirational books and recommending them to friends too

13. You see your friend’s grown up kid and say precisely the kind of things that made you cringe as a child:  ‘Oh dear! Children grow up so fast!’ Or ‘ Do you remember me? the last time I saw you u were this small and crawling all over my carpet ’

And the kid thinks ‘Yeah! The last time I saw you still had some hair left and you were not popping out of your clothes like this’

As for me, I still have some time before I hit this landmark (really!) . And my recommendation to those of you who are close is to stop thinking and go after all those things you wanted by the time you turned 40, with a vengeance. So,

• Go get that big car you can’t bear to see in your neighbour’s garage
• Go for that expensive hair weaving treatment that you so badly want (and need!)
• Join that salsa class before your joints stop cooperating
• Get that painful tattoo (well...if that’s what you really want!)
• Trek up to the Himalayas (ok, got a bit carried away with this one...its best to keep the list objective and manageable; Those BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOALS, taught in management school are for companies , not people pushing 40s)

And till you cross off all those things from your list, keep postponing your 40th. No one will know.

Celebrating womanhood

It is international woman’s day today (the remaining 364 are for the men).

It is the day I receive SMSs and emails from women friends all over congratulating me on being a successful fellow woman. I am told to celebrate the occasion by forwarding the sms/email to 7 other women I like. (now if these women liked me, there is a high chance of them liking me less after I send them the chain mail)

Today a lot is said about me and my clan:

I am a woman of substance

I am the better half

I am the fairer sex (doesn’t matter that husband is three shades lighter than me, today I am allowed to be anything I want)

I am a diva

I am a ‘Yummy mummy’ (one more to join the long list of phrases like 'paradigm shift', 'page-3-person', 'middle class values' and 'quality time' that I keep hearing often but never quite understand)

Usually I rubbish special days like mother’s day and friend’s day as a conspiracy wrought by savvy marketers to make more money, but this time I feel like playing along. A spa session, followed by lunch with other ‘yummy mummies’, culminating in a chick flick directed by a fellow chick seemed like a good way to celebrate womanhood, even at the cost of indulging a few exploitative marketers.

‘Today you have a new mom; used to be called Dad till this minute’’ I announce to the kids as I get ready to leave for my official day of decadence.
4 of the 6 yummy mummies are able to make it.

We debate on where to eat – one is on a see-food diet, meaning she only sees the food, doesn’t eat; another is on a see-food diet of a different kind, she eats everything she sees. The third eats only organic food and the last is on a fast today to appease her favourite god (I'm not telling you which one of these I am). It is nearly tea-time before we arrive at a decision on where to lunch. No wonder we are given just one day to celebrate!

Lunchtime conversation is about the men and kids we have been trying so hard to get away from.

Spa session turns out to be an expensive indulgence.

Chick flick turns out to be a drag.

Kid calls to say I was missed sorely because mom-of-the-day has not been of much help with the science project, has served milk in breakable cup (that was tested and declared broken), has forgotton to carry a water bottle to the play-park and has almost forgotten one kid while returning. Old mom is wanted back asap.

My day turns out ok. But thankfully, for everyone’s sake, tomorrow we will be back to men’s day and the world will be normal again.

Urban truths

S is back from an English exam at school.

'How did it go sweetie?' I ask

'Good' (that could mean anything ranging from ‘not great’ to ‘slightly better than terrible’)

'What went wrong?'  (I assume it was slightly better than terrible)

'Today we had to write an essay on ‘A visit at the bookfair’' S says with disappointment

‘What was the problem with that?’ I ask

‘Mom I have never been to a book fair’ she stuns me.

(What!) ’Didn’t you have choice?’ I ask after regaining composure

‘Yes, I did; the other topic was ‘My train journey’. (Another one that would have stumped her).

I realised my daughter, like most of her city-slicker friends, would have been at her expressive best had she been given topics such as visit to the mall, visit to a birthday party, my experiences at a slumber party(I didn’t know what that meant till mine got invited to one), trip to a foreign country, visit to a gizmo shop or a day with my computer.

She even stood a fair chance with ‘The rise and fall of the Berlin wall’ or the ‘Culture and traditions of ancient Gaul’ But tell her to write about a book fair, she draws a blank!

Train journey? Another blank. I don’t remember the last train journey we took as a family. There is no place we want to visit that is less than 2 hours by flight, or more than 5 hours by car from Bombay, so a train is virtually redundant in our lives.

Coming to think of it, there are many other ‘classic essay topics’ that would draw a blank from these kids – ‘A visit to my native place’ would be one (but in all fairness, our native place is a small town in the hinterlands of Tamilnadu where no one from our family currently lives. Even the ancestral home has been auctioned off).

‘My garden’, ‘Visit to a post office’ and ‘A letter to my grandmother’ would be others.

Right until this moment I was very proud of my achievements as a mom. I read to my kids every night, buy them encyclopaedias, ration their TV viewing to an hour per week, make them watch classics like ‘Sound of Music’, make sure they know the Ramayan, I even take them to the friendly neighbourhood bookstore often enough...

Yes,the bookstore, where the stocking pattern is 60% toys and 40% books. Children’s classics are usually relegated to the missable top or bottom racks. The ones at eye level are stories about princesses and fairies or beautifully packaged Disney books, most of which come with a free DVD, just in case the kid doesn’t want to read the book version.

I felt like a complete failure right now. It was time for some urgent course correction.

I know what my project for the coming weekend would be. I will hunt down that book fair in Bombay, even if it in the remotest corner of the city’s boondocks and spend a day with my kids there.

And come summer, native Tamilnadu is where you will find us (Sorry kids, that holiday in the Alps is not going to happen anytime soon)

‘But we will be spending 2/5ths of the holiday in the commute’

‘Nobody we know lives there, what will we do for....’

Sorry, I am not about to be bought with logic or facts. My mind is made and I stand by it (for once!)

This summer is going to be all about building character, as Calvin’s dad might have said.

If not, it will still be worth the grades in the next English exam.

Madvertising

I remember reading somewhere that only sex and Shah Rukh Khan sell in India, and not necessarily in that order. I know of at least one marketer in recent times who must have read the same article and put it into practice as well. Maybe SRK was unaffordable or out of the country at the time, so our marketer opts for the next best choice to hawk his wares.

The brief to the ad agency must have been rather brief, something to the effect of ‘Make my brand stand out in the clutter and use sex to drive home the main message'

Not a bad thought, considering the target audience is cricket watching Indian male. At the same time it is one that throws out all the conventional lessons on communication strategy, brand promise, creative cut through etc. learnt in b-school and the early years in marketing. All of these suddenly blur into irrelevance.

Product category in question : Cement (going by the execution, the ad could have been for anything ranging from sun-block cream to cars to deodorant)

Brand name : Fails to get cemented to my mind in the first few attempts, despite best intentions at staying focussed.

Execution : Simple and direct . In fact it was so direct that it hit me like a moving train the first time I saw it. It still has the same effect, except now I choose to turn away whenever the ad is aired. Being a  non-cricket-watching non-male, it doesn’t take me too much will-power to do so.

Storyline : A red swim suit clad anorexic and/or bulimic model who bears a striking resemblance to every other anorexic/bulimic beauty pageant aspirant/participant /winner, emerges out of a beautiful but non-descript body of water that could have been Mauritius, Phukhet, Bali or our very own Andaman islands. Not that it matters. The defining elements here are water, girl and swimsuit.

As the camera pans in for a close up of said model, the voice over mutters something like‘there is something special about this one’.

If you dont focus (difficult under current circumstances for target audience) you will never realise they are referring to the cement here.

REACTIONS FROM THE CRICKET WATCHING TARGET AUDIENCE

Post ad : Tsk-Tsk! How objectionable! How could they undervalue women thus? Why do women allow themselves to be reduced to passive beings and mere objects of sexual fantasy? Did the cement maker expect us (men) to fall for this?

During ad : Silent, open mouthed state of suspended wonderment

MOOT POINTS

1.  Will they watch the ad again :  Definitely
(every time it is aired, which is once every 15 minutes, or once every wicket/four/six/over change whichever is sooner.)

2. Will they remember the brand name : Probably not

3. Will they buy the brand when the family is in need of cement :  Quite unlikely, unless the civil contractor found an emotional connect with either model or brand; and

MOST DEFINITELY NOT if the wife has any say in the brand of cement!

FaceBook

Conversation overheard in a salon between two women sitting across each other:

Woman 1: Hi! I'm Manisha (names imagined )
Woman 2: Hi Manisha! Nice meeting you. I'm Preeti. You have kids?

Woman 1: Yes, 1 daughter. What about you?

Woman 2 : Lucky you, I have 2 boys!
(fairly common comment from moms of two boys who assume that all little girls do is to dress up in pretty pink and lace, carry pink dolls and have fake tea parties with other pink frilly dressed little girls. For all these moms, I send an open invitation to spend a day with my little girl and her friends)

Woman 2 continues: Well, Manisha, are you on facebook?

Woman 1: Oh yes! I'm quite active. Can I send you a friend request?
(I have a feeling collecting friends is her hobby, like collecting stamps used to be in my childhood; even there I applied more discretion than our lady seems to be applying here)

Woman 2: Thanks, please do. I'm just getting started with this FB thing
(this one is a novice, but she shows promise of getting there soon)

Moving on to a scene at the play park. Two 6 year old kids swinging side by side.

Kid 1 : I wish I could get a FB id of my own. My mom says I can’t get one till I'm ten.
(What! 10! At that age kids should be thinking of stomping in puddles, chasing pigeons in the park and learning to cycle. Why would they want to be on a social networking site )

You know my mom has 311 friends on FB.

Kid 2 : That’s nothing. My mom has 439!
(this particular mom has a profile for her dog, maid, driver, and has all of them on her list of friends, in addition to her daughter, daughter’s friends and their friend’s friends).

It appears that one’s social standing today is solely determined by the number of friends one has on FB.

If people weren’t facebooking, they were talking about their facebooking. I needed relief. I jump at the offer when a new friend I made invites me to her place for some ice-breaking over coffee on a muggy monsoon evening.

Coffee, food and animated conversation was already underway when I reached. I figured the animated conversation was about what each one was in their previous birth:

Guest 1 : You know, I found out I was Cleopatra in my previous birth.
(my question is did she still think she was Cleopatra, because that would explain the dress three sizes too small and stilettos that hurt my varicose veins by simply being in the same room as her. )

Guest 2 : Oh! I was Marilyn Monroe. And you would never guess what Annie was.
(What, the pope? Because each was outdoing the other)

By now my curiosity has got the better of me and I am desperate to find out a little bit about my own past. Maybe I was the Helen of Troy, or Florence Nightingale (Anything to help me earn a little more respect / authority at home).

I ask for details of this psychic who has given all these people the gyan on their previous avatars. To my dismay, it turns out the psychic is none other than the latest FB quiz. You answer 5 random questions like your favourite colour, least favourite food, movie you enjoy... and FB tells you what you were in your last. There I was! Caught once again in the manic world of FBookers.

Animated conversation continues. Everyone present seemed to know what the other had done that weekend, where they spent the last holiday, if their children had had a haircut or husband had missed a flight. ‘Must be a very close knit group of friends’, I thought. I was wrong. It turned out their lives were open books, thanks to FB status updates and photo updates. New friend even clicked a few pics of this get together to go up on her FB page the next day.

I hate to admit, but later that night, I did take the previous birth quiz. I wouldn’t have been able to get a good night’s sleep without knowing my past. I found out to my dismay that I was a RABBIT. There goes my sleep...for the rest of the week! I resolved not to breathe a word of this to anyone, especially new friend.

Annoyed and wide awake, what better way to kill time than to take a few more FB quizzes? Maybe my luck would turn. Many different quizzes later, I found out I was Cinderella, the planet Mars, the colour yellow, the ice cream vanilla and my celebrity twin was someone I didn’t know.

‘Ok, this is it...one last quiz and no more’ I promise myself.

‘What will be your last words when you die?’ flashes on the screen

Ok, I didn’t need to take that one, I know my last words would definitely be ...‘I will destroy FB and face book quizzes if it is the last thing I do!’