What do you say?

Among the many social situations that make me uncomfortable, one of the worst is when someone I know, especially someone I care about, loses someone they love.

Because what do you say? What do you say that adequately conveys how deeply sorry you are for their loss, but doesn't sound like it's about you? Because that's my concern - that when someone loses someone they love, I put myself in their shoes, and feel sorry because I imagine how I would feel if I had lost someone I love. It brings alive my fears of losing the people I love. All of which makes my condolences just sound trite and selfish.

When I was 16, a classmate lost her father. A little over a year ago,my godfather lost his father. And I was at as much of a loss for words as I remembered being at 16. I asked on twitter, that fountain of support and suggestions, and got some responses. All very valid responses, but none of them made it any easier to send that email or make that phone call.

Then a fortnight ago, a professor at school who I am fairly close to lost his mother. And I started wondering again. What do you say?

I sent him an email, since I'm not in the US right now. And he replied too. But I was still left feeling that the email I sent was utterly trite and pointless.

And all of this is still about me. It's my discomfort with not knowing what to say, my inability to convey how I feel. Maybe it doesn't seem trite. Maybe it does mean something to the person I'm writing to. But I never quite know that.

On what counts as humour, being disappointed in strangers, and remembering my own advice

After a disastrous morning at work, I logged onto Facebook this afternoon to read this post by @daddy_san, which was the first I heard of the Daniel Tosh episode. Having duly tweeted it, I then looked at my Twitter timeline, and spent the next half hour or so in increasing levels of bafflement, disappointment, and fury.

I've said before, and I'll say it again, to me, "rape jokes" are not funny. I have never been sexually abused. I've been eve teased, and on one or two occasions, been very, very frightened about what might happen next. But no, I haven't been raped. Yet it's a topic I feel strongly about, and I'm known to get on my soapbox about it and the way it's discussed. And cracking "jokes" about it is something I have never understood.

So when I read those tweets this afternoon, I was upset - I suppose that's the best way to put it. I follow several Indian stand-up comedians on twitter, a large number of whom were going on and on about how Tosh's joke was a "stupid joke", or a "shitty comeback". But almost all of them insisted that there's nothing wrong with making "better" jokes about rape.

And then others, mainly women but some men too, started expressing their anger and disgust over what these comedians were saying. And then folks defending "rape jokes" got upset over the reactions they were getting. And the whole timeline turned into a battlefield for a while. I didn't say much beyond one or two generic tweets, which as someone said in an equally generic manner, was no more than tut-tutting, really. But I wasn't sure how to articulate what I wanted to say, so I didn't. At the time.

Now, some hours later, I don't know why I was disappointed. I don't know any of these men personally. I've followed them on twitter for some time now, and exchanged a few tweets with one or two of them. But by and large, I'm pretty sure they don't know I exist, and I don't think of them beyond the moments when I see their tweets appear on my timeline. But I think at that moment, seeing them, in one voice, defend "rape jokes", and insist that it was simply the quality of that joke that was poor, made me feel like there really is no hope for changing the mentality of how women are perceived and how rape victims are treated.

And then I went out for dinner with some colleagues, got thoroughly annoyed by one of them, sat through the evening with a migraine pounding my head, and eventually blocked out their voices and started thinking. And remembered something I had written on @tantanoo's blog more than a year ago:

I tend to get outraged if jokes are cracked over rape, or violence against women, or issues like that – because these are issues I feel fairly strongly about. It’s a completely personal sentiment.
But I don’t think my outrage has ever led to an unfollow or even debate – because there would have been other occasions, where similar jokes by the same people on a different issue may have been equally “inappropriate” but I have still giggled. Would be rather hypocritical of me to object now, simply because one is an issue close to my heart and the other isn’t.
Everyone has issues they get outraged over. Everyone has jokes which they will stretch till every bit of funny-ness in it vanishes. People need to chill, is all.
My two cents. :)

I didn't unfollow anyone today. I didn't engage in a debate with anyone either. I sat there, infuriated, and decided to go off Twitter till I calmed down. And then remembered that I need to chill a bit.

I came back to my room, logged back onto Twitter, and saw this post. I see her point about using humor to cope with a situation, and points to her for being able to do so. It's not something I think I would be capable of. 

So maybe jokes about rape are funny to some people. I still don't see it, but maybe they are. I also don't think the comedians defending the "sub-category of humour" that rape is part of were using it in the sense of being a coping mechanism, but maybe that isn't as important.

I tweeted a few days ago that either I'm not following people who perpetually outrage, or people now see outrage in everything. Every other day, I seem to see people cribbing about how other people are outraging over something that doesn't deserve the outrage. Well, today, I was part of the outrage. And I'm still not convinced that outrage wasn't deserved. But I do think we could have all done without it. I know I could have.

where I go into outrage mode again

Exams always did make the blogger in me come out. Allow me to outrage for a while.

• Rape jokes are not funny. Calling a cricketer a "rapist" who "raped" the opposing team with his match-winning performance is not witty. Creating and sharing a picture of the vastraharan showing Malinga as Draupadi and Kohli as Dushasana is not amusing. It is lame and pathetic and disgusting, and tells me you're an asshole.
• Why is sharing stories from Gujarat 2002 being labelled as "spreading hate"? You hold your candle marches and "never forget" campaigns every year for those who dies in 26/11; why are you so resistant to remember those who were killed ten years ago in Gujarat? I'm appalled by some of the reactions Dilip D'Souza got when he shared some experiences for his visit to Gujarat in 2002 (Which, if you haven't read, you should. It's horrific, you will not want to, but you should. here:  https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23DDGujDiary)
• Why do Indians have this "kisi ko nahi batana" attitude all the time? I've always seen it at exam time, right from my college days. It took me a long time to realize that unlike me, who never studied and therefore meant it when I said "maine kuch nahi kiya", everyone else had finished the course twice over and were "revising" when they said the same thing. And it's hilarious how the Indian folks here in B-school do the same thing. And not just about studies. I asked a classmate if he's running for club president for the Indian student club, for Pete's sake. He said no. And when the platforms came out, there it was, his name, right up at the top. Why do people have to be so devious?
• Also, while I'm at it, Indian dudes in Amreeka trying to hit on women when they're drunk is both hilarious and embarrassing to watch.

There. I'm done outraging for now. I suppose I should get back to Corporate Finance. Sigh.

The world of G+

I'm feeling left out of the entire Google Plus conversation, so here's my two paisa worth on the new social networking must-have.

• The way I see it, G+ seems to be the opposite of Twitter. You follow people who want to hear from on twitter; on G+, you add people you want to share with to your circles. Isn't that sorta in-your-face?
• Facebook is where I keep in touch with people I know IRL, and those online folks who I've connected with beyond twitter and blogs. G+ hasn't caught on with a wider audience yet, so at the moment, most of the people suggested to me are online folks. Doesn't help, because I haven't connected with those many! So my circles are fairly empty at the moment.
• A lot of it so far seems to be sharing of articles and posts that people are finding interesting. Why do I need another site to do that? I have twitter, GReader, and occasionally, even Facebook. Anything I want to share with the world is adequately shared through these three sites. I don't need another.
• And my biggest pet peeve: the big USP of G+ was supposed to be the idea of sharing specific things to specific circles. I just shared my first article on G+, and it asked me which circles I wanted to share it with. Here's why that doesn't make sense to me. I may have a circle called College friends, but from the 30-odd people I went to college with, today I'm close to less than people. So I may not want to share with all the 30, no? On Facebook, I have lists similar to circles anyway - School, College, Work, and now B-school. I also have three lists called Severely Restricted, Limited Profile, and Kinda Limited. One gets to see my wall, but nothing of what I post. One gets to see some links that I post, but rarely my status updates, and none of my photos. And the third gets to see most of my status updates and links, but very few of my photos. (I'm a little paranoid, yes.) It doesn't matter where I know you from, it's how well I know that defines what I share with you. So yes, while I could make a Circle saying "People I like and want to share my whole life with" on G+, it's easier to keep people out than bring them in.

Does that make sense?

I do realise that for people who are very active in the whole Social Media, Social Collaboration, and that kind of stuff, will get excited by G+. Google Wave was also made for such people, and was actually a very cool thing - just way ahead of its time, which failed, in my opinion, because the wider audience had no use for it.

I'm part of the wider audience, I think, because any talk of optimizing social media just bores me to death. I'm on the sites I am for interesting stuff to read, and some nice conversations. And I'm very happy with my twitter conversations, thank you. The anonymity I pretend to cling to there comforts me. I don't need a second site for these conversations, especially one where I have to tell the whole world who I am.

Outrage, yet again

Some time back, my friend Puneet had blogged about how Indians aren't really seen as Asians in the eyes of the world. It was an interesting perspective, and she had shared this fabulous site which attempts to prove that we are, in fact, eligible to be called Asians.

What stayed with me, however, was this comment that she received on her post:

hehehe... I guess thats what you call an irony then. I'm Indian, but nobody ever considers me to be Indian, however hard I try to be because I'm from the North East where most of us look "oriental" (or should I say "Asian" acc to your post context).

I guess we can conclude that the ignorance you find over there in the West, is pretty much abundant here within India too :) Nice post.

It's true, innit? I was once asked by the security guard at a client site about my "Nepali" colleague - she's Sikkimese.

Why am I bringing this up today, after more than a year? Because once again, I find myself worked up over something, and I'm too passive-aggressive to do anything other than blog about it.

This tweet popped up on my timeline a couple of hours ago:

Tell me when you figure it out!!! RT @b50 How the heck do sardaars land up with hot chicks?

And I'm sorry, but I did not find this anything other than very, very poor taste. I unfollowed the originator of that tweet a long time back, so whether this was meant as a joke, or it was sour grapes, or what, I don't know, nor do I wish to know. What it came across, however, to me at least, is terribly racist - for lack of a better word.

There are snobs, and there are snobs

I can be a snob of the first order, but something I really don't get is following people on twitter for the singular purpose of retweeting them and mocking them.

Calling someone an orkutiya or a bulb, because their idea of expressing themselves is different from yours? Because their English isn't as articulate as yours? Heck, my English is quite decent, but I'm atrocious in both Bengali and Hindi, so what do I have to be so proud of?

Following celebrities on twitter, and then spending your time coming up witty one-liners to mock them? Really? I have the utmost respect for most of these people I follow on twitter - they're intelligent, well-read, and outrageously funny most of the time. But it infuriates me when they judge people they don't know or have never met simply on the basis of their ability (or lack of it) to articulate decently in a tweet.

A lot of people cribbed about Aisha, and not purely because of its terrible script or the utterly flat and annoying personality they gave to the eponymous character (which, to be fair, was exactly how it was in the book, so you can't really blame the makers of the movie). No, a lot of people actually cribbed about what snobs Aisha and her friend Pinky were. (Like, hello, have you ever been to urban India? South Delhi, or even South Bombay from what I hear?)

My point is, people criticized, or even mocked the utter snobbishness displayed by the characters in that movie. But you, who retweets a guy because his opinions aren't completely in tune with yours, or mocks the guy who tweeted his admiration for that celebrity who may not be so great in your eyes. How different are you?

Friends?

This popped up in my Google Reader's Shared items this morning.

I've always cribbed about Facebook's and Twitter's terminology - there's got to be a more applicable nomenclature given the nature of these sites, and the people I interact with on them.

The irony here, however? The two people who shared this post? I have no idea who they are. They somehow follow my Shared items, and so I follow theirs. And Reader tells me the post was shared by "two friends".

Sweet indeed.
NB: I'd forgotten how prolific (by my standards) my blogging becomes just before an exam. And yes, I know I really should be banned from blogging on a Sunday morning.

Boundaries

This morning, I got into office to see a mail from a colleague, marked to almost everyone in the office, informing us that she had deleted us from her Facebook account. Her reason was straightforward and simple: she wants to delink her personal and professional lives.

With the onslaught of social media/social networking/whatever you choose to call it, these lines have got increasingly blurred in the past few years. Everyone's blogging, tweeting, uploading photos on Facebook, adding connections on LinkedIn, to the point where virtual friends have begun taking precedence over real-life friends, and there really is no boundary between the personal and professional spaces.

I so far haven't really gone one way or the other. I have colleagues on my Facebook list, but there are those who get to see stuff and those who are on Limited profile. My blogs are listed on LinkedIn, but twitter isn't linked, and I'm contemplating removing the blogs too. In fact, my other blog, which was started essentially to crib about my job, never really took off, because paranoia about clients coming across the damn thing stopped me from putting almost anything I wanted to.

Even when I started this blog, or joined twitter for that matter, the original intention was to keep my real name completely out of it. Since almost all my readers in the initial stages (and even now, for that matter) were people who knew me in the real world, however, their addressing me by my name in the comments pretty much gave it away.

I know people who are very comfortable with having no distinction between their personal and professional lives, and in fact use one to further the other. Which I have no issues with; it's just I would never be completely comfortable doing that.

And my respect for my colleague has gone up tremendously for having it in her to tell us outright how she feels about it and that she intends to remove us from her list.

Thoughts of the Day

a) I am clearly following the wrong people on twitter.

b) I get the maximum tweetable/bloggable thoughts when I'm travelling and have absolutely no access to the Internet.

c) At least the Jet and IA in-flight magazines have things worth reading. Kingfisher, on the other hand, persists in distributing that God-awful Hi! magazine. WHY would I want to stare at picture of people who seem to have nothing better to do than pose for photos in clothes and accessories that a, I can't afford, and b, look downright weird and uncomfortable half the time?

d) Why do things seem to happen when I go to Bangalore?!? Last time I was there, the CM of Andhra Pradesh disappeared. Today, a train with more than a 1000 passengers got hijacked and was held hostage for 5 hours. And yet, all the twitterati of India seems to be talking about is iPhones and some Fashion Week that seems to be on.

My rant against twitter really is due, innit?

Also, an open letter à la India Uncut:

Dear man in the hotel room in the Radisson,

When your room is directly in front of a flyover, it would be truly appreciated if you didn't stand in front of your television in your underwear with your curtains wide open. It wasn't a particularly pleasant sight in my half-asleep state.

Thank you.

Things I have wanted to blog about...

...in the past few months, but haven't:

• Twitter
• The Hindu Adoption Law
• The Delhi Metro Construction
• My travels
• My hair
• My dog
• The fire in my house, five days after I commented on this post