Someday, today will be nostalgia

The Oxford dictionary’s definition of friendship reads like this - a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations. Of course, one may safely presume this was before the advent of facebook and orkut. Scour your friend's list and you chance upon everyone from bosses, exes, current squeezes, colleagues, siblings, parents and grandparents. While social networking has played a part in redefining friendship, it does pose problems from time to time. In one single move, facebook offered parents what they were seeking all their lives - being friends with their children. Remember how corny it sounded when someone went around parroting ‘my dad’s like my friend’? How their premonition has come true. It  sometimes  also  turns friendships into an ego battle. You talk, you chat, you gossip, but wait for each other to send a friend request. And those guys who tell you to add them on facebook. Do I look bereft of all co...

Some 20 years back, I returned home to find thermocol strewn all over the living room. Unbeknownst to me, a new way of life was in the offing, one that had more than 2 channels and where lifeguards with red swimsuits saved the day. To relive that feeling, think back to a time when you scurried back from school to catch Small Wonder and Wonder Years and a little later, Home improvement and It’s a man’s world. And you wondered how children in America were kissing mouth to mouth with such aplomb. Before we were enslaved by social networking, television time was not easy to come by. In my case, it was simply the case of too many people vying for one solitary device. Grandma never veered off from sun tv. My sister never veered off from bold and the beautiful and santa barbara. In between all of this, I was supposed to find space, even though I didn’t understand what the heck I was supposed to be watching. And then Baywatch washed everything over. Of course you’ve been there. Of...