dead at the funeral.

it happened right there.

after the super heavy post of last week, i thought i should go lighter this time. may be something not involving explosions genocidal idiots and such. but then only time will tell if i can let that happen. (this is like the recap section that so many day time televison series have)

(title track)
(silly adverts of soaps, perfumes, insurance companies and their likes)
(and finally the plot fades in from black)
we were at a funeral this week. a friends father had just passed on. (or as they say 'expired' here) but this incident has nothing to do with the death, or the funeral, or even the friend. its just to tell you that this was the kind of place that almost screams out meaning less discussions to keep the place from going explosively silent.

so there we were, talking about our worldly stories, exchanging stories of holidays, work, and others, the newly weds talking of the recently gone valantines day, and how they had the coziest little dinner, or how work ruined their weekend but they still managed to do something valantiny, and the always evident married ones preaching to us singles as to how awesome married life is and how we should get married the minute we can. (at this point i always imagine that they suddenly turn into these preacher like clothes, the white cassocked, balding bearded men and very nun like clothed women without the bald or the beard, preaching/sermoning us to get god/religion or what ever it is that they are selling). thus wading from meaningless conversations to meaningless conversations we waited for the decent time to leave.

one such topic we walked by was the existence of a digital life, social networking, mafia wars, farmville and such. and people ridiculed the obsession that others had and how when we were kids we had such games we played offline and on LAN. and how even seniors today have gotten on to these trivial pursuits. then like any other conversation between friends fingers were pointed on how that person did things the same way as those described earlier. when it comes to anything remotely on the internet, i am generally the one to be pointed to. not because i am good at anything there, but because of my dependence on all things digital. my phone, ipod, macbook all of these things that i shall shamelessly acknowledge that i cannot do without. what if started to emerge, what if i woke up one day, my laptop wouldnt boot, my phone died, m ipod wont play, my email addresses erased, and everything that i did on the internet just basically vanished. (this blog included, but no one mentioned that because i am sure no one reads it) and so on and like every other time, it would end in if that happened i would kill myself. and they all somehow enjoy that ending. something about, now i know this man is mortal. his life can be in our hands, its not diabolical, its just natural that people dont like to know that there are people whose weakness these people dont know.

(commercial break. bad adverts and such. go grab your popcorn, or change the channels now, cos the tone of this series is about to get preachy)

but then i started wondering, dont we all have such things? for some its their little blinking screens, for some it is their online persona, for some it is their money, they pride, for some it is their loved ones. everyone has a set of things, that enable them to get by without which you would find it difficult to function. if that thing, is your digital persona so be it.

the argument they have against it, is that its not real because i cannot touch it. and because i can go to all those places without leaving my chair, those places dont exist either. i think that is a sad assumption to make. the internet, and therefore all things that happen on it are real. the places, the people the things that these people do in those places . second life is not an extension of you on the internet, it is you online. the mind does things that the body just cannot catch up with. so when you lose something online, when your associations with it are purely that of the mind, you would tend to lose it.

imagine if your house got bombed. would you understand if someone killed themselves over it then? (i know i promised not to talk of bombs and death, but this is just to show you why someone would kill themselves over lost facebook pages)

we are ok with people jumping off buildings over lost jobs. but we are not willing to accept that there are some who would do everything they do, online... and if they lose it they almost lose it all. in this day and age? wake up neandrathal and smell the instant coffee!
(fade to black....)
to be continued...

(meaning less white noise between two badly made series.)