AurKuchh(Orkut) nahi chahiye mujhe

Now communication is a basic human necessity apart from roti, kapda aur makan (and zeenat aman). Researchers say humans can handle prolonged thirst and hunger but would go mad if left with no one to share their thoughts. From smoke signals to pigeons, from teligrams to emails, from Alex Bell to Anil Ambani, communications have come a long way.





Now social networking is empowering people to reach across boundaries and share their life with others. Any internet user worth his clicks has to have an orkut account (more so if you are Portugese, Brazilian or of Indian sub continent). Owned by Google and named at its creator: Orkut Büyükkökten (Please do not try to memorize the spelling or pronounce it and worst make dirty puns of the name. Move ahead with the post) it has captured imagination of a sizable number of users (To sound informed and kool visit the wiki page).

The users range from college/school friends who meet daily and go home to scrap to an old acquaintance in your alma mater to some random guy who saw you activity in an orkut community and lo behold half of humanity wants to be friends with you especially if you are hot looking female with a profile pic as your own.

Now Orkut has got two great features. Scrapbook and Message Inbox. Like a true engineer (I have a piece of paper that says so) I would explain you communication mechanism with diagrams and professional looking ones at that.

Scrapbook: It is like the wall in front of your house where friends can park their car in whatever manner they can and whenever they can and rest of the neighborhood knows who has payed you the visit. That is fine but it also allows:

• Stangers to relieve themselves of nature's call even if you put obnoxious warnings ("Yahaan peshab karna mana hai", "Dekho gadha m&$# raha hai")

• Promote their business ("Ek moje pe do joote free free, bhayankar chhoot, aaj hi aye.....")

• Protesters to put messages and slogans ("Dilli chalo", "XYZ ko apna mat daan karen")

• Cheesy advertisements ("___ rogi mile ya likhe Dr. Ashok/Hakeem Usmani ko")

Well the last ones are found on walls near railway tracks just outside city limits. Forget the stranges here is a sample scrapbook conversation with parenthesized thoughts of the scrap writer.

Fig 1

Message Inbox: Now in an innovative streak orkut people have extended the basic tenets of 'right to speech' to 'right to shout at the top of your voice in some one's ear and then give a loud burp too'. Fig 2

The barrage of mails pouring hard at your inbox satiates all your desires for communication and even if you are naive enough to start deleting the messages one after another, clicking as furiously as you can you know it is an attempt in vain, you will end up in Sisyphus' infinite loop.

Wait I just got pinged for some hot (scathing) profile pic, ttly dude (and dudettes)

Note: In Fig 2. The un-parenthesized parts are actual messages and parenthesized one's are the readers reaction. Do share your interesting experiences with orkut