All in good faith!

So here i visit a temple and see these big charts put up along with a Nariyal ki maala. The names on the charts read: Enjoy Group (8th maal), Tiger Group, Rapture Group, Only Friends Group (mind you!), New Generation Group (just anachronistic) and some such others.

Quite an enthusiastic bunch eh? Yeah these are the same ones who dance wildly (but in good faith!) in front of a wall of speakers that is fitted in a vehicle carrying a decorated pandal. No, they are not drunk! How can you even think of that? So what if they dance like they are inebriated, or leer at the chicks who pass by, or treat the boys along with these girls with contempt! No, it is just in good faith!

So the procession goes across moving at a pace that matches the rate at which the Harry Potter movies are released, sound which matches the inside of a very loud multiplex, and spirits which match a new years party. No, I don't mean they are drunk, they are just in good spirits faith! Then they reach the Mandir and donate the maala and move on. Probably to the nearest bar / tharra joint depending on the political support. (Come on now, they do so much hard work, don't they deserve this?)

Civic sense? What is that? They just know hic... hic... sense! All in very good faith!

PS: Check out this awesome post by one StupidusMaximus. Very good read!

About Love

This piece is really touching -

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."

By Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

And why to Tweet?

Most of us are on Facebook. Most of us update our status regularly. Some of us do it to present a funny line, some to follow others who are writing about recent topics (like all those Rajnikanth jokes), some to tell others that "This is what i am doing right now, and i would just like to make you feel bad" (Like, I am in LA and going to have this weekend party in Vegas, I am sipping a Margarita on a weekday, I got this, I got that... Also, i love animals and help me protect them while i go hunt for my Gucci leather handbags).

And then there are some who update status messages more than once a day, hoping to elicit some response, hoping to hit certain spots. There are also some highly cryptic updates and you expect to stir some kinda of responses... And this is where Twitter can help you.

Twitter, mind you, is not a Social Networking website. It is a Social Broadcasting platform, a much over-used term for it being 'micro-blogging'. Here, loads of people throng, follow you, respond to you, put you on lists, black-lists, make fun of you, join you in making fun of others and beyond all this, converse with you. Unknown folks, hiding behind a handle and a DP. That is the amazing part of Twitter.

On Twitter, you can say anything and everything that you want (No holds barred till a point though!), crack all sorts of jokes and keep mum. If someone likes it they will respond. There is no 'like' button, mind you, that will feed your ego. There are different set of comments. You can take your rants to Twitter instead of FB! (Rant less though because people still read!)

Once you form a small community (metaphorically speaking) on Twitter, you would know what it is all about. You associate handles with people. Ok, @so and so is a pun master, @so and so cracks very good jokes about current affairs, @so and so gets me the latest news (not breaking news mind you) even before they hit the newspapers! and so on! It is fun, entertaining and addictive at first and later fizzes out to a controllable degree.

It is very good if you follow the right people, and not just follow pretty people!

Well then what was the point of this post? Excitement that my Tweet got published on the second last page of the oh so widely read Pune Mirror? (I bet hardly few go beyond Watsa's column!) Angst about people updating their status often on Facebook? Confess that i am pretty much addicted to both Facebook and Twitter?

No. I just wanted to tell folks to try Twitter. At first, read what people write. Then write. Then you are on your own!

Symbols...

A festive season just gave way for a breather till the next one. Dassehra did make me think of some things. This was a FB status I had put up:

I think Raavana was and is a misunderstood soul... Just like Duryodhana from the other epic... They have become a symbol of hate, a hate that should have been directed at our own infected soul.

That made me think whether Symbols of Hate are probably more pure than the Symbols of Love. But then, what is more complicated? Hate or Love? What is more underrated? What is overrated? (I know some opinions about this already!)

And why do we require these symbols? Just to convince our self, consciously or subconsciously that the effigy or the Symbol trapped in the effigy is not what is within us when we hate?

Who knows... Who really knows...