No Introduction, never mind, a smile is what it takes !

Back again with another mind voice, yup, I always had this in mind, and what better way than writing it out in my blog, my online diary!
I am a shy person, trust me, I am one! I always wait for someone to acknowledge me in a crowd, to start a conversation. I am very bad in starting a conversation and very boring in carrying it forward. Holding my mom's hand and travelling to any place was fun. But moving out from the comfort zone of family and meeting new people is always tough, more so when you are an introvert. Years back, I happened to attend a family function first time without my parents.That was after a gap of nearly 3 or 4 years, that I was attending a function(10th, 12th you are not  supposed to attend any functions ) I was able to recognize few of our distant relatives, but they weren't able to recognize me. I tried smiling, but then I couldn't, I felt like saying hi and introducing myself, but then I couldn't do that. How I wished my mom was with me, to make me feel comfortable. All she needed to do was say this is my daughter, but now it is a very big task for me!  I waited for long for someone in the family to introduce me to those relatives, but then none did that! Finally an old lady who was watching me for a long time, asked me ' Are you ..? " I was very happy that she recognized me finally. I wanted to talk more.She asked me if my mom was there, when I said no, she just said 'oh' and seemed to show no interest in talking with a teen later! This was the beginning of many such functions that I had to attend without parents, and things only got worse from then. Many a times, had to meet all new faces, all new characters and strike a conversation.I always envied some of my friends and cousins who could do that with ease. Things started improving only when I changed my approach. Instead of entering the place and waiting for some known people, I started entering places with a huge close up smile. Most of the time, people when they see someone smiling at them, automatically reciprocate, and that worked for me! No introduction,  no close circle, doesn't matter as long as you know to smile even at a stranger! 

Chasing the Mirage!

When I was around 10 years,our family went to Delhi for a vacation. On a sunny day we were travelling in an ambassador car when I first saw a shadow in the long distance. My car never reached it, how much ever distance the driver covered, the shadow seemed to be at some distance. I gave up my hope of reaching the shadow and finally asked my parents why our car could never reach the shadow at a distance. It was only then I got to know that it was a mirage, a shadow that never existed!
Looking back, I wonder how many times have I run behind something, which never really existed or which wasn't worth the run! While in 10th, the goal was to run for a seat in first group, and in 12th, it was for an engineering seat, then for a job, marriage, kids , and finally for a peaceful life. Running behind the mirage how many times have we lost the path to a better today! While in school, I had this habit of talking only in English language with my teachers and classmates, thanks to my first teacher who appreciated my language skills when I joined the school. This small appreciation and the subsequent ones later from different people made me a person to stand out from the rest of the crowd. Just to keep my language skills intact, I lost my student life. Those days in a government aided school,nobody preferred a friend who always spoke in a foreign language all the time. I could hardly communicate with any other classmates and most of the time ended up speaking to teachers! What was the reason? The feeling that if  I spoke native language I would lose my spoken English and I wouldn't be able to survive in the future. But what about the others who are in good position today? Well they learnt the language, lived their student life, and used the language as a communication tool whenever required. Live your present life, think about the future. I did the exact opposite, lived for the future and now thinking about the past! I just chased a mirage! 

Fake appreciations better than honest feedback!

I was at my friend's place for a function. While we were having a serious conversation her cousin came in and asked ,"How do I look?". Both I and my friend looked at her. The cousin had heavy make up and was wearing jewelry that didn't  suit her. I was about to say her that, my friend interrupted me and said, "Awesome, fabulous, you look great",I looked at my friend, she just smiled and nodded her head. The cousin seemed pretty happy, and she left the room. I couldn't resist asking her why she just lied! My friend as always smiled at me and said, "My cousin would have definitely taken feedback from others as well , I simply do not want to be the wrong person!  The wrong person? Seriously? Giving a honest feedback makes you the wrong person? I couldn't stop thinking about this incidence even after many months.I wondered how many times have I been the wrong person? Most of the time I might have ended up being the wrong person for the simple reason that I always gave honest feedback. Thinking hard ,I  realized that people prefer getting fake appreciations than any critical feedback! By giving what we call honest feedback we also become the "Bad or wrong person".Gradually people start avoiding us, for nobody likes criticisms. If I were them, I am not sure if I would take the criticism in the right spirit either. As another friend of mine once said it right, we do not belong to the honest feedback generation. You like or you don't like it, fake it with a smile!! This is how you end up being politically correct!

  

Befriend and Unfriend -- A button away!

Few months back, just like any other day, I logged into Facebook while I was working on my laptop. I suddenly saw a  post of a  friend with a tag of a person A I knew very well. I was little curious to see the post as in the recent past I hadn't seen any post from person A. When I clicked on the profile of person A, I discovered that I was no longer a friend of  person A! Phew! What , how and why?? Off late I hadn't paid much attention to person A's post or update, but still wondered what have I done wrong to be unfriended!!! Why did person A unfriend me, do I really deserve a snub like this ? Did I hurt person A in any way? Or did I do that myself by clicking any wrong button? Too many questions arose and I couldn't refrain myself from logging into other social media sites like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. to check if person A was still connected to me.  I found it too embarrassing and my ego was hurt very much.  I had done this to too many , and little did I realize that they would have felt the same when I first accepted their request and then did the same unfriend.

Late realizations do happen and it then struck me that friends in Facebook are never real friends. Friends of friends become your friends just because you share something in common- a school, a college, a workplace, or even a family! The algorithm does it all for you and you just expand your network. A person who doesn't have even  5 real friends has a friend list of 500.  Posting and being active is again a social pressure. You wish your friends and like their updates. But when they don't reciprocate, you end up thinking why they didn't. Next, how many of us post a picture without any image editing work? how many of us post something in original? How many of us use it to showcase our sense of pride in achieving something? and how many of us just use it as tool to stay connected? Social media is just an illusion that shows us something that does not exist like a mirage. 100 likes for a photo or a status doesn't mean that you are awesome or what you did is extremely important for the mankind!, yet we post and expect the likes! We expect people to send us requests and then we decide whether to accept them as friends or not, we add some, reject some to boost our ego. I have seen people exiting groups , just to show to the world, that they are extremely important to the group and people must listen to them for them to be in the group.  It doesn't take much of a time to remove you from the same group, but people chose not to!