And all thats gone with time...gone with the wind

I have lost the innocence that I see in the eyes of my six month old daughter. The effortless smile when you see someone - acquaintance or stranger. Now when I meet a person there are some mental calculations that take place automatically between my two ears, which tells me how I should react.

I do not have to sit for periodic examinations, which brought butterflies in my stomach. The thing that gets closest to this is the yearly and half-yearly appraisals with your manager. But everybody knows what you are going to hear from him and what you have to say.

These days I do not get the luxury of two months of summer holiday or a month of Christmas and New Year holidays anymore. Weekend is what I look forward to. If there is a long weekend, what more do I want?

I used to look forward to the summer afternoons during the holidays to play chess with my brother. These days I am too tired and exhausted after office hours to play a decent game of chess with anyone. The idiot box is what I switch on once I return home from office; sometimes I watch "Discovery", "National Geographic Channel" or "Fox History Channel" if I want my grey and white matter to do a bit of activities.

I do not get the excitement of having a pair of new shoes or a new t-shirt. I can walk into any shop or mall and purchase one for myself. If I have money in my bank account,its good. If I don't, I swipe my credit card.

I do not have to look forward to the examination results date.

I no longer look forward to the smell of new books and new uniform at the beginning of each academic year. Honestly, I stay away from books these days. You Tube, TED Talks, Discovery and National Geographic Channels are where I gain knowledge from.

I no longer look forward to spend time with my grandparents. They are no more.

I do not look forward to the evening when my friends from the locality used to gather and we used to play badminton or cricket. These days, evenings are spent to earn money, more money and even more money...in offices, like couched potatoes. From air-conditioned (read: closed) offices, I could not even to catch a glimpse of the setting orange sun or get the fresh natural air.

I no longer look forward to visit the yummy Chinese Restaurants. There are around 50 Chinese restaurants in 5 km radius from my house...but do not recollect the last time I had lunch or dinner there.

Before joining Cranfield, I was looking forward to attending it...live a dream. Now that I have lived it, I can only look back and re-live it.

When I was small I used to wonder, when I will grow up, start earning and not have to ask my parents for everything I need. Today, I earn, but not sure whether I buy all the things that I want to.

In the loving memory of...

There was this thought of fine doing rounds in my head for quite some time. This thought about networking sites. After 30-40 years when this generation of orkut and facebook users will be either be dead or in the twilight zone of their life, what happens to these networking sites?
Lets say, if I am alive at 80, I will have 400 "friends" in my friend list and among them 380 are dead. I open my Facebook account...there will be pictures previously uploaded, there will be scraps that we shared for the past few years or decades. There will be every proof about the person in flesh and blood. What the networking sites will not tell is that the person is no more. I shudder to think that day.

Networking sites for this generation will then become more of an obituary site rather than a networking site...it will become the "soft-copy of the grave-yard".

One of my dear cousins died yesterday...she is there in my orkut friend list...she is no more in this world. She exists in the virtual world, but ceases to exist in the physical one.

1 down from my friend list.

May her soul rest in peace. GOD bless her!