Sad.

It's a very sad thing. (Yes, this is going to be one of my socially responsible posts, with deeply meaningful messages for the youth of this country, so those of you who just want to read nonsense, go here...) Coming back to the point, there is a very disturbing trend, call it a fad if you will, spreading alarmingly among the pre-college teens of our country, and it stokes up a mixture of astonishment and consternation that something could be so addicting.

No, it's not drugs. Or cigarettes or booze. Those will come only in college. No, it's this simple "social network service", launched on January 22, 2004, developed by a Google employee as an independent project. This Google employee is a Turkish software engineer. And he has a strange name. No, not Keyser Soze of The Usual Suspects fame. But someone who's had just as much an impact on so many people's lives staying just as anonymous. Yes, his name is Orkut Büyükkökten.

(Disclaimer: ESPNStar wishes to advice that the athletes in the following program have had professional training and none of the actions seen should be imitated at home)

(Actual Disclaimer: This post is not a call-to-arms against Orkut. I myself have spent many a lazy night going through scrapbooks, reading in delight the "Hey, I see that the third letter in our second names is the same... wanna be friends?" or the "Hola, buenos dias! Como esta este manana..." or the Scrap conversations like, "You online?". "Yes". "Cool". "Yes". "What doing?". "Nothing". "Wanna be friends?". End of conversation.)

So anyway, this Keyser, I mean, Orkut, has invaded the lives of people at levels that you would not have thought possible. School kids, in the age group 15 and above, are on Orkut, writing detailed "About Me" or whatever that column is called and scrapping each other like crazy. In all honesty, I will accept that I did not know About Me till I was 19. (SURELY you didn't expect that I'd admit I STILL don't!) So how in the world can those 15 year-olds know??? And this scrap-crap. It's some kind of a race, as kids see it. Hey, I got to 300 scraps before YOU did. Wow, what an achievement, and at such a tender age too! The kids are just growing smarter by the day...

It's been barely two years since the inception of Orkut. And I suddenly feel like I'm from a different generation when compared to the Orkut-savvy school-goers of today. I mean, 2004, I hadn't passed out of school either. And yet, I did not even know the concept of Orkut, or that you could do a "How was Physics?" or "When is Maths?" scrap in the middle of the friggin Board Exams! COME ON, people, you're gonna meet your classmates for the next exam anyway, or at the end of it all for the Big Lunch or Dinner or whatever. Surely your curiosity is not SO insatiable that you really HAVE to know how the Physics paper was for the person that you met barely an hour ago in the exam hall...

A valid question in this context would be How do parents let their kids stay Online so long anyway??? Agreed that it does not take Rocket Physics to put a "Maths was easy" scrap, but ten to twenty scraps a day would surely require the investment of a considerable amount of time... that too online. Don't parents notice at all? Or is it the classic both-parents-working-leaving-no-time-for-child case? In that case, well, someone needs to talk to THEM!

I'm not against the whole concept of the "taking a break between studies" thing. I know that Boards is a pretty big thing, in fact, the FIRST big thing in a person's life, if I may. I know that it needs people to be calm, relaxed, not go overboard about the seriousness of the whole thing. I know staring at 150 pages of NCERT's rambling about Azo-Dyes and Chemistry in Everyday Life can be terribly monotonous. I know all this because I watched Titanic in Tamil, the day before the first exam, Physics. I daresay I did satisfactorily in the Boards nevertheless.

What I DO feel srongly about, is the WAY these "breaks" are being spent. I don't remember what I did (yeah the Titanic, of course) during the multitude of breaks that I gave myself between studies. I have a very short attention time, barely an hour. After that, my eyes will unfocus and I'll just blankly stare at the book. And so I would... yes, I would go out with my tennis-ball and bowl it at my house's gate. Or I would switch on the TV and watch the Swat Kats take on the Metalli Kats. Or I would pull out an old Tinkle Digest from my bookshelf and curl up with a Lay's Magic Masala. But the point is, these are all necessarily just half-an-hour activities. The bowling will tire you out, Swat Kats will get over in 30 minutes and if you read a Tinkle for more than 20 minutes, BOY, you must be slow. So once the break is done, you're back with your Chemistry. Orkut, on the other hand, does NOT tire you out, does NOT get over in 30 minutes and does NOT have a "Tinkle tells you Why" section...

I know it's their lives and they can do anything they want with it. I know that they are all informed, educated, nearly-adults who know what they are doing and going to do. I know they will all (HOPEFULLY) clear the Boards with flying colours.

But it's just a sad thing to see a 10th Class kid, scrapping a 12th Class kid, "Hey, My Math just got over. Was easy. When is yours?", instead of going up to his Mom, all smiles, and saying "Mom, I did my Math very well" and the Mom beaming with pride, with a hint of a tear at the edge of her eye, that her child is so clever...