I remember an incident, when my mother ran into her school buddy from her home town in the busy streets of Mumbai. It was nothing short of euphoria for them when they came to know they both have been in this city for 4-5 years, and to think they met only now! And it was through her I got to know of all about my mother’s childhood escapades and I realized where I got my freak genes from!
And then I realized this would never happen to me! People of my generation would always know where most of our friends and friends’ friends are all the time and with the ‘checking in’ thing, we have the option to know where they are at any moment of the day. (Seriously, I know a guy who checks in into each and every place he ever sets his foot in, the railway stations, gym, home - every place, every day. If I ever want to run into him by accident I would know where to go, only I can’t act surprised at having run into him. He can just say “How come it is a surprise, I just checked in here?” OK, I am digressing here; this could very well be another post.)
Moreover, when you know so-and-so is in your town and you haven’t made the effort to meet up, it gets kind of awkward when you meet by accident; there have been times, when people have asked me “How come you didn’t call, you knew we were in Chennai, right? We did update it on Facebook” I had nothing to say to them except that a phone works both ways and that too was something I came up with after they left. Yes, I can be dismal at times!
All this makes me wonder do we need to know where everybody is every time? I even know who among my friends and cousins will be there at the Metallica concert this month, if I decide to go. If only they would keep updating their exact position at the palace grounds on the D day, I can go about greeting all of them in turn and make it a family affair!
My future children wouldn’t have to try hard to find out about their mother anytime; they would just have to check my Facebook profile! And my, what they wouldn’t find there! I can only hope they would have moved on to something else and Facebook is not so cool anymore!
