Hotel California

Once upon a time I had an Orkut account. It had some four thousand odd scraps, three hundred something friends, a fan count of 95 (yes, I was about to hit a century!), and some eighty odd photos of me standing in front of various Gothic buildings all across Europe. Then one fine day, I deleted it. And the reasons? Well, there are no reasons. Who needs reasons after a weekend visit to Amsterdam only to discover that the scrap count hasn't increased while you were "mushrooming" away to happiness!

And did it make me feel good? Man, I felt liberated. I had found liberation in self-destruction. And what better way to self-destruct than killing your own virtual self?

As the soul of my Orkut Avataar rested in peace, I had started living life in it's actuality, discovering the adventures that lay on "the other side" (and by the other side I DO NOT refer to FaRcebook!!), when about a fortnight ago, I happenned to graduate from B-School (now how I manged to do that is yet another interesting but slightly long story which you might soon find at news stands, titled: 4 Point Someone: What NOT to do at a premier B-School.)

That is when the peer pressure started applying itself. How to keep in touch with old batchmates? How to keep old promises? How to know who switched jobs? who got promoted? who bought a new car? and which one? who got engaged? who broke up? who cheated on whom? who.....? who....? who......?

And I succumbed.

Last week I created a new Orkut account.

And Rao was able to capture the essence of it all very aptly in my scrapbook: "Welcome back to the DARK SIDE my son.....it's just like the hotel california..u can check in any time u like...but u can never leave!!"

Tyler Durden said:

" The things we own, end up owning us!"

I say, the things we own, end up owning us, but the things we want to own, end up owning us all the more....