Searching...

It needs just a click to be a friend — at least to show your intention to become friend with someone. We even may not know the person, we may have never met, never talked... yet we are friends. At least i've several "friends" on Facebook who i'm yet to meet face to face. But i know who s/he is, what s/he does for a living, the last city s/he visited, the food s/he loves and what nots... Facebook reminded me the other day of a 10-year friendship with a person who i did not forget but never bothered to check the names of kids the couple have! The reason is simple: no Facebook update from their end. It's easy to be friends and easier to forget.

But our school hostels did not teach life as such. There, friends were everything. When i was shivering with fever, my roommates used to give me paracetamol or bring food home before informing the warden. Before exams, we did exchange notes unlike millions of children taught otherwise by parents these days. We used to debate on issues ranging from science to society — far more in depth than that we do on social media now. The concept of friend, for me, was indeed not necessarily not "in need". I'm sure you also have same experience in your childhood. 

Has social media robbed me, and you, of what could have been more social connect? Do i really need 1,300 and odd friends who are on my Facebook list? I've seen people, especially millennials, fighting over how many friends are on their list. Go through your friend list once: check when you last had a hearty laughter with him/her. Well, i'm repeating the same cliche — social media friendship — that is being researched for quite some time now. I may not have needed to utter a single word but a dream last night took me to a different world, when i used to share my afternoons with Arnab.

Like many of us on Facebook, i also looked for Arnab by filling in the blank on "search". Lots of results with same name and last name. But the face is hardly similar to that decades ago. Can i forget, or remember at all, the face of a primary school friend? I am remotely in touch with only one of my primary school classmate but no clues of Arnab. Thoughts, particularly the sub-conscious ones, have a spontaneity not like the mundane reality of life where you go to office, do your job, come back home to spend very little time with family. Amid such thoughts, sometimes we all are reminded of the long-lost friend, in reality or in dream.

Kill it

1.

CBP immigration check done. We were waiting for our suitcases at conveyor belt downstairs with hundred others. Bored, after an 11-hour flight, i started fiddling with my iPhone, looking for Wi-Fi. No sooner the belt had started popping out luggage than messages began dropping ping-ping-ping... One text simply left me speechless: “***** is no more. Committed suicide last night.”

This is not the message to welcome you abroad; this is not the text you hope to hear from a dear friend about another from the same group that used to come back home together after office for years; this can neither be an info nor a news though he, like me and the other friend, was a journalist throughout his life, and death. No news is good news, i thought so.

2.

Apart from liking occasional posts and pictures on the social media, we were not much in touch — a common trait of most of us in these screen-controlled days. The last time we met was some 15 months ago when i had gone to my old office to meet former colleagues as i was shifting base. We met briefly, wishing each other with a word: “Rest is on Facebook!”

And, Facebook indeed is cruel. Its messenger said the other day: “ He killed self.” Messenger of news; messenger of death. “ Reason yet to be known clearly...” — another messenger to keep me abreast of the latest. I could not continue the conversation with our common colleague. Another journalist; depressed; stressed; found a couple of days after death.

3.

Do you know ***** jumped to his death? When? Why? Possibly depressed. But why? Maybe in fear of losing his job. Job? Is that all in life? Can’t one secure one’s life without job? He could well be without a job; he was an artist. An acclaimed artist of his generation. Got his Master’s degree from my university, still the best institute in the country to pick up nuances of fine arts.

Arts never teaches anyone to look at life as finite; its all pervasive force takes you beyond the darkness of death to another life. Was he looking for that life? Is he happy now not to struggle with the crowd to reach office; not to open his paintbrush for a quick illustration for our paper; not to enjoy a puff with colleagues on the pavement teeming with commuters rushing for the Metro?

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We could not save them. I could not. No one could. They were all great individuals yet did not know how to avoid suicide; how to cope with mental health; how to live this LIFE. They all wrote or did illustration about death, suicide, depression, maybe even mental health, for years; yet, they chose a different life — a different death. Could they talk to their close friends or relatives? Or, even psychologists? At times, we all feel depressed for various reasons but depression is not chakravyuh. There are ways to come out; let’s learn that. I just don’t want any of my friends choose such an extreme. Live and let live. Kill that thought; kill the negative vibes; kill it before it kills you.