Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai....

Friends are like umbrellas. They save us from being soaked when life pours itself upon us. Friends, some of whom we flaunt akin to expensive art collected over the years, valuable for our social status, but we don’t know a thing about them. Some others, we meet very rarely, almost as elusive as sunshine during rains. Lastly, there are those who stick by us like our shadows, making themselves visible when the sun burns overhead and happily fading away while we comfort ourselves in the shades of our happiness!

Friends are thus as dispensable as the breath we take; reminding us of their importance every living second of our lives, in their absence we’d truly be dead.

Capitalist & entrepreneurially fertile minds have increasingly found ways to monetize this emerging need for socialisation, affiliation and addiction to social belongingness. All of us need witnesses to our lives, nobody wants to die unnoticed. We all want to archive our lives, want to preserve it for posterity and subconsciously hope someone would find it interesting enough to revisit it while we are gone. All of us are born to tell stories, we are born to listen to them.

This has created an entire psychological ecosystem whereby we ‘share’, ‘connect’ and ‘express’ ourselves to everything and everyone around us. This craving of over 800 million people has found great manifestation through Facebook. A platform which helps us chronicle our thoughts, emotions and feelings all at the same time, while enabling us to get instant feedback on it from people who matter to us. This fills a deep psychological lacuna which has existed for centuries together – ‘Our need to express ourselves and to know how people react to our expressions.’

Facebook and its IPO will be as significant a breakthrough in the history of mankind if not more significant than us landing on the moon. Come to think of it, this is the first time the human feelings, emotions and thoughts are going to be valued. Facebook’s plan to raise $5 Billion through stock sale will dwarf the $1.7 Billion raised by Google Inc. in 2004 or the $1 Billion recently raised by the gaming firm Zynga.

This is not the only mind boggling number, a peek into the draft IPO filings reveal staggering valuations Facebook is asking for. Analysts suggest Facebook could be $75-100 Billion Company. That’s 100 times the company’s annual earnings and 27 times its revenue at the higher end of its valuation. Interestingly, it translates into $125 per user. That is what my life, emotions, thoughts and feelings are going to fetch Facebook as on date, just because I chose to share my life with the world through them.

While it may seem totally out of sync with the peer Google Inc’s current Price to Earning Ratio of 20, Google too entered the market with an IPO price that was 218 times its earnings and more importantly it lived upto the hype. We now await more miracles of this capitalist day and age which will monetize more of us in times to come and show us the true value of what we’ve always considered the intangibles.

Hope now you know why, “Har ek friend zaroori hota hai!”

Google Life

A few contemplative conversations and random observations, off late, have stirred up these thoughts in my mind. Ever since we’re born, we’re always on this perpetual quest. The quest of love, laughter and that of a fulfilling life.

As a child we want to be thrown up in the air, just so that someone lovingly holds us before we crash land into the ground. We want to be fed, and be fed well, or else we cry, *(Yea we all learn the art of emotional blackmail fairly early on in our lives). We also constantly want the attention. We want people to play with us, notice how amazing our dimples look when we smile. We want them to buy us the best presents when they come for our crazy birthday parties. We want them to sing and clap really loud for us just before they’ve deserved a small piece of their cake.

When we grow older, we crave for recognition. We crave for someone to like our new haircut, love our new bag, and go crazy over the new pair of denims we picked up. We also want someone to love our choice of restaurants, movies, music, women / men. We want them to go gaga over the latest gizmo we flaunt. We give in to the temptation of asking out the hottest girl / guy in our group, just so that if she / he happened to say yes to us, it would be an achievement which could potentially undermine the impact of man landing on the moon!!! And even if we are actually the lucky ones whom God has bestowed upon the gift of a boyfriend / girlfriend, why do we ensure that we try and exhibit our love for each other multiplied by at least a hundred, when we are amongst our other, not so lucky “single” friends?

As, professionals we take it upon ourselves, to plan the most exotic sounding holidays, not because we really want to go to those places, but just because they make us feel like Rocky Balboa amidst all the lesser mortals around us who we call ‘colleagues’. We want to get our hands onto the latest PDA phone so that awesomeness is exhibited in full throttle at work, even if it means that half our salary is guzzled up by this blackberry which is indeed going to make your life go sour.

Let’s admit it. We all have done one or all of the above things, at least once in our lifetimes. But have we asked ourselves as to why exactly did we feel the need to do it?

Impersonal contemplation is the secret of true perspective. Upon truthful introspection, I have come to realise that we humans are the most insecure creations of the Supreme. We have an innate insecurity of acceptance, the fear of rejection. We fear failure at all levels. We therefore want to do everything conceivable to never fail, and when we realise that this might not be possible, we immediately start focusing on developing ways which would help us hide our failures, or at least camouflage them amongst our successes.

We love our cocoons. It takes a while before we let someone in. Especially when our cocoon is so full of things, good and bad that we often run out of place to let someone in. We unknowingly tread the path of irreversible damage, when we fail to make that little space for our real selves in our own cocoons.

In these times of simplistic relationships, instant gratification and immediate responses to all conceivable queries, how we wish we could just Google some answers to life. How we wish it could throw up just perfectly logical solutions to problems of life which prima facie look so insurmountable. Ah, some people call “Religion / Faith” the Google of life, it is expected to throw up results every time you punch in your query, rooted through the medium of the most overworked professional I know of, “GOD”

Some others turn to weirder things like “Vagabondism” – conveniently adopting the “Que Sera Sera” approach, as if to imply that what happens to them is in reality not really of their own doing, it’s happening to them, because God wants it that way, and they, are least bothered.

And then there are some, who are the worst form of control freaks. They want to control everything, including their own destinies. And if that doesn’t quite happen as per their plan, they’re willing to pick up a fight, at the drop of a hat. God and Fate are usually their preferred opponents.

I however, chose to look within. I think I’m my own Google. My own Wikipedia. Whatever there is to know, I know it, just that I’m yet to have full cognizance of it. And I really have no problems in waiting till He thinks the time is right for me to know of it. Instead of looking outwards for answers, I’d rather listen to my own self. This way, I negate the chance of blaming someone else for things that don’t really go right for me, nor do I share credit for all the successes! The next time, you have a life issue that you think you need answers for, I suggest, instead of taking advice from all the ‘gyaanis’ willing to offer help, look within. Just Google life, I’m sure, you’re the best search engine for yourself.