living life

living life

The delight in Europe has a great deal to do with clean air, non-interfering people, healthy food, great shopping centres, winter style for women etc. But one of the most important elements, lest it be forgotten, is that most of them are 'walking cities'. Almost every city in Europe has pedestrian walks and cyclist's lane along side the main road. 'Walking cities' are easy to cover on foot, usually there is a single centre' located in every city, well connected by roads and efficient public transport systems, therefore the sprawl of the city as such is hardly much.

On the other hand in the US, especially cities like New York, the ditances between two parts are vast, but these are covered by a very efficient Metro system, that is running 24/7 come sleet, come snow storms, thankgiving or christmas. This is also true for all buses which run on schedule and make it easy for those waiting to time themselves accordingly. In New York, there exists a single swipe card which works for both bus rides and metro rides. These can be purchased for a nominal price every month/every week/annual depending upon your needs.

Recently, Chennai, India, saw the visit of Enrique Penelosa-former Bogota Mayor, who works for the institute for transportation Development and Policy. According to him, "the single biggest difference between the ifrastructure of an advanced state and a backward nation is its footpaths and not its highways. The quality of footpaths determine the quality of life in a city."

Delhi,does not have too many footpaths yet there are numerous pedestrians. There are no cyclist lanes. The roads are spacious, but they seem to be shrinking everyday, there are separate bus lanes but very often the private bus systems do not keep to them. Yet, one can see stupendous efforts to make Delhi dependant on public transport, the metro construction is going on 24/7 to meet the challenge of the commonwealth games, the numerous highways/flyovers are designed with the aim of reducing bottlenecks in key areas and wherever new rodas are being built-a pedestrian lane is being provided for. Infact, some parts of Delhi have also started the Swipe card system for buses aswell. New Delhi cannot hope to become a 'walking city'-its impossible to imagine anyone walking from South/East Delhi to the Centre(Connaught Place). However, greener spaces, parks,an efficient and reliable transport system and more sidewalks, will help both Delhites and foreigners explore parts of this gorgeous city and hopefully make it a delightful experience aswell.

Facebook Rehablitation:
I’ve been out of it. I’ve been clean for a month now. All Facebook users will sooner or later have to go through a process of rehabilitation. When I started Facebooking two years ago, I was hooked. It was addictive. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to see who wrote what on my wall, how many requests I had, how many people found me, how many did I find? The thirst was insatiable. All my friends belonged to the information age, I’d lost touch with so many from school, who was upto what? There was so much to catch up on. Plus, those absolutely interesting quizzes: ofcourse I wanted to know ‘how I was going to die?’, ‘Which FRIENDS character did I represent?’, What was my IQ?’, ‘What did my friends on my list think of me?’, how many compared with me’ and the list is endless. Within a month, my ‘blank’ profile, was so colourful with those little icons of all the quizzes I had taken. The possibilities seemed endless, I could send hugs’ and kisses’ and drinks’ to my friends. I could join a cause(Feed a child, Plant a tree) and pretend to make a difference? There was a time when I would pose for hours to get the ‘right’ angle for my profile picture. I was reading so many books, I wanted this ‘little world’ of mine to know, I was reviewing films, music, putting up posts subscriptions, all up for public display, so that ‘my friends’ could see what I was upto. Everyone around me was Facebooking 24/7. The frenzy unbeatable.
One fine day, I met up with a long lost girlfriend, another FB addict. The dinner and drinks was interrupted by long silences. I suddenly realized, I already knew all that I had to. I knew where she was working, I knew where she’d graduated from, the kind of TV serials she watched, so much so, I even knew her dog had bitten someone that day-her status read ‘Bosco bit a hermit today, naughty boy!’. So what was left to relieve these silences- nothing, Nada, Niente.
During my quarter life crisis, I sat down and started deleting from my list of friends, in my vengeance I deleted 175 friends. Well they were not friends-just people who come and go. Those who boast of 500 and above friends are faking it, and they are all on FB. You cannot pass it off as effective networking either. You make friends that you don’t even remember, let alone say hi to most times. The distractions are too many, and nothing is more true about “the interrupted life” than FB itself.
Its interrupted, because that’s how this web technology functions. Nobody who is online is involved with a single task. It’s numerous activities at once; from booking your flight tickets, to making online transfers, to writing important emails, to purchasing that new book, to googling about the latest release of your favourite band to responding to FB wall posts, twitter feeds, to publishing your own blog. Its an incredible load of multi-tasking, and each demanding vastly different thought processes at once. So where is the priority, where is the real involvement? Is it really possible to chat about your unrequited love and write about international diplomacy?
Among those I know who quit’, some were bored, few felt that FB was stalking their privacy, they spent hours doing nothing constructive: browsing first through a friend’s photograph, then one where he/ she is tagged and then the ‘Next’ which is of people you have never met, people you will never meet, sometimes you just keep clicking ‘Next’, because you are no longer in control, its easy, pictures of unknown people who look so involved with the moment. I had lost my discretion.
Everything I had joined FB for was done, it was over, I no longer wanted people to know what I was reading, what I was watching, what I was listening to: that’s me, all me, and you’ll have to meet me to know that. I had also found everyone I needed to, there was nobody left to be found, I lost many, and I am grateful I could do that.
I lost FB a month ago, rather it lost me. My searches are more organized, less wasteful and yeah those that I want to keep in touch with don’t match up to a 100 or even a 50, they are just a handful, but they are the ones I want to be in touch with, the ones I lose and find all over again.
According to Inside Facebook(http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/07/01/is-orkut-in-trouble-facebook-just-doubled-in-brazil-and-india/), Facebook exploded in May and June 2009, doubling from 1.6 million to 3.2 million monthly active users in India. While this is true, the Exodus has started in the Parent country (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30FOB-medium-t.html?_r=1). While I am predicting the above for FB users in India, it would be interesting to read alternatives: to where the FB phenomenon is headed?