Cranberry Sauce

…..And there's nothing wrong with me This is how I'm supposed to be In a land of make believe That don't believe in me….. “Malls: Where people make believe, where escape from reality is cool, where individual identities are conveniently camouflaged in social swarms” – this is what I texted a dear friend last evening. I was at a mall with my family. It was a Sunday evening. I wondered whether the place was reminiscent more of a Virar local at peak rush or a toddler fancy dress competition. There seemed to be an odd, unspoken mutual need for all those people to be there – maybe to reassure each other of their existence. By themselves, they felt like lost strangers, but together they represented the majority of purposeful rationalism. We went to the furniture and lifestyle store(y), then to the apparels outlet – a shame-inducing collection of what the definition of fashion (and hence society) is today, inspired of course by our own dons and divas of the film “industry”, ...

What are we here for again? Moreover, where did that vision of whatever we are supposed to do go that we started updating and watching Google Talk messages? The society today is becoming weaker by the day. Weaker in the sense that we depend on each other more with every passing moment, and the depravation from human contact even for a couple of minutes is beginning to become a dark, scary prospect that nobody seems to want to explore. Whether its going together for classes, or to eat or to play a game or sport or finish an assignment, the world is being pulled, literally, to doing it with each other. Even in their most alone moments, people today are chatting on Gtalk or abusing each other on DC. I admit that my life and observations are limited to BITS-Pilani, Goa ONLY as of now, but isn’t the same applicable elsewhere too? We are getting more and more used to being in the comfort of other people (when a bit of introspection would reveal it is not a comfortable state of being at all)....