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!’