In a mad mad world

This is something so frustrating and i don't know who to vent my anger on...so as it should be, i am writing a post. For those in a mood to soak up some gyaan, and regurgitate it to me later...please stay away.

It so happened that i found out only today(i know i am a bit slow on technology and things like that) that now if you need to sign up for a new gmail account you have to furbish a mobile number...or else they wont give you an account(no no, dont believe me, try it out yourself). And on top of it, they have the guts to say they will give only a limited number of ids per mobile number. what the hell! if i need mail ids i need them, and if someone is being so snide about it of course i would rather shift to some other service provider.

its such a huge invasion on my privacy that i feel schocked even to react. and it freaks me out...i mean gmail has got it all interlinked...it has my mails, the friends i have, its linked to my orkut account, picassa and my blog. all this is njo unnerving till the time i know its only a virtual identity...giving a phone number means stamping it into my real world...which i dont like in anyway...the real and the virtual are different, and they cant and they are no supposed to meet.

for the heck, someone can misuse a mobile number...and giving it out means firmly existing in some database...and watching some weird english movies has made me believe its so easy to wreak havoc in anybody's life by simply cracking a password. what next? there will be police verifiction i a person creates a virtual personification...and so much incursion on my privacy for what? try reasoning it out for me.

what the F***K

i find it better to pay for something than have ads displaying on my personal page...i am waiting to shift to a webpage from blogger soon...if only i could have a day's time to finalise all the details. gmail is only providing a service...if at all it should make people pay for it, that makes sense for me and i dont mind. but i am very dissapointed by this medium. anyways of late i have been thinking books are the best way to express...so instead of spamming the cyber space may be i should focus more on writing a book and have it published. i will have less chance of someone indenting my privacy then. i don't know about anybody else, but i really am quite scared of the all knowing google.

i am even planning to shift to using yahoo mail again...however clumsy and disorganized and ugly the interface is...or maybe some other service that doesn't cost me my identity.

its a mad mad world we live in...after i die, the only place i want to be exist is in someones' memories, and not in google search. as one entity, may be fading out but definitely not in terabytes and gigabytes storage space online.

Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology. - John Tudor

delhi...a bygone era

How some people leave a lasting imprint on your life, irrespective of the time they spent with you! How effortlessly they simply touch a moment and it gets imbibed in your very soul...for eternity. One is supposed to wipe away memories if they start to poison the present life but what can be done if its not so easy...if its next to impossible.

A bite of a forgone fruit brings back several memories of my beloved city, Delhi...it brings alive the summers, the sun, the dust, the smell of parched earth...it brings the joy of the first rains, the shared cup of coffee, the long walks on moonlit lonely roads with only fm radio for company.

A picture of purani delhi or india gate or qutab minar brings alive those pangs and I ache to go back to Delhi...I want to saunter on lonely roads, drive on roads leading to forgotten tombs, forts, mosques...feel the whiff of pakodas mixed with the smell of wet earth. Dusk cloaked in mist, airplanes over the highway, some friends to laugh with...some friends to bitch along...a song to sing at the top of my voice.

Unfurl a dupatta over the highest natural point...sit in the gentle waft of alternating hot and cold air, hear the peacock call, watch the parrots fly across the sky coloured by setting sun. Have biryani at tefla, sip the coffee at ganga dhaba...smile to see some memories walking along the road. walk down the length and breadth of the bylanes of JNU...watch longingly at the classrooms i will never be able to enter.

For me Delhi is alive as the best memories of my college days...the most tension free days i ever lived, the most happinesses i could buy in minumum pocket money...the most beautifull journeys that ever happened to me over a bus pass of DTC.

The thousands of times I have chatted with complete strangers, the rarest of times i have spent in a group i absolutely hated...the sidey policemen i came across in sojourns.

And burn and ache and long...
How I miss Delhi!