Socialising...

...has been the most abused term if you ask me. I can hear 'man is a social animal, humans have been socialising for many thousands of years, culture was built and destroyed because of socialising' and all that blah. It is the avatar it has taken now that really baffles me. Add to it the word media.

Instead of childhood friends, friends of childhood friends, school friends, college friends and my sister's friend's sister, we now have a wide plethora to abstain from mixing with. At least we used to know the above mentioned people. Not any more (or for the past decade). We now boast of groups.

And what groups they are indeed. School group, same batch group, same section group, close friends from classes 5,8,10,12 groups, last benchers, sitting near the window group, teacher's pets and pests, neighborhood group, same street group, same milkman group, college group, same group group, cutting college and going to movies group, cousins group, distant cousin group,  extended family group, fighting with mother-in-law group, kids' school groups, kids' separate sections group, close friends from school mothers group, office group, project 1 group, active members of project 1 group, water cooler group, apartment group, apartment block A first floor group, apartment same househelp group, running group, running women only group, running women only and unable to reduce weight group and the list extends to the 'ordering food from the same mami' group and is still non-exhaustive.

And how many people do I actually know? I have just enough fingers and toes to count!

Put me in a physical group of ten and I would talk the least and not be heard most of the time. So after a few weeks of trying I became a silent observer on social media (many years back) and then quit Facebook and none of my 500 plus friends noticed! I was a little active on Orkut (remember the time?) because I knew the people I connected with and after migrating to Facebook forgot most of the faces.

I have dutifully created accounts on Orkut, Twitter, FB, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google duo, telegram, Snapchat, hike and my friend's cousin's beta version but was so overwhelmed at the password reset emails I would get, that after checking the accounts five times an hour I finally said the grapes are sour and hung my social media boots and wear them when no one is looking.

People share anything from photos from their childhood - many of them with their eyes closed, sitting near a well and most of them being badly re-shot black and white photos-to the digitally captured and edited latest ones of their climbing Machu pichu or snorkeling in Thailand. And photos of their pets, friends of pets to information ranging from birthdays to the fact that their second cousin's chitappa's friend was the brain behind Pondy bazaar's latest look. The strangest part is that all these messages get a standard wow, super and thumbs up smiley responses.

On the road I get very confused when I see people. Most of the times I seem to know them and smile foolishly only to realise a second later that they don't know me because I belong to the the 'I see but never reply' group. I would have seen their photos  somewhere somehow and every other day but as I am virtually non-existent, they don't know me. One day I was running for my life as I tried to pet a dog which I recognised from one of the gazillion WhatsApp photos. Since both the mutt and I hadn't liked or friended each other both the dog and the owner (who seemed vaguely familiar-was it my cousin's wife's schoolmate, or her athai.. I don't know) chased me until I completed a week's running in that hour.

When I was in school, if I happened to smile at a school senior who didn't know me, I had to spend days covering my face with my thin long plaits (my school uniform was pinafore otherwise a duppata would have been most helpful) just so that I don't get laughed at by her friends who would generally laugh at anything that sounded junior to them.

Now no such problem. I don't see people face to face. I leave a comment and no one notices. Someone posts a beautiful picture and if I comment on that over phone (talk that is) after three hours they would feign ignorance or wonder at my stupidity of talking about old stuff.

That doesn't mean I don't check messages and look at photos. But having drawn a line and moving in circles within that space, I can only imagine that I know everyone and everything. Quite like Vivekh's "Enakku comissionara theriyum..." dialogue
.

"I am rarely on social media" I would boast to my friends. 'Even when I was active on FB I have never downloaded the app not have I activated WhatsApp notifications" I would regale the miniscule amount of persons I vocally get in touch with. I don't mind this kind of publicity. One, there is no public in the city to listen to me, two, who actually checks what I do.

Except of course the all knowing better half. So much so that he tells the kids one day, "Don't ever ask Amma 'What', she will zap you".