The Tragedy of Being Single

 

See most men in my age (including me) don’t want to marry or settle down is they don’t wanna miss the chance of sharing a Jacuzzi with naked supermodels, flying off to Bahamas on a whim and hooking up with random strangers, having drug-fueled-bringing-the-house-down parties and retaining their freedom. The only problem is; that this is not happening to the most of us, and will probably not happen, ever. Most of us get home from office at 8, eat Maggi or whatever is in offer in the nearest mess, jerk off and go to sleep. And weekends are spent in either sleeping (alone), watching whatever movie you can get tickets of and sharing a drink with the same old friends in the same old place with the same old jokes. To every man or woman who has Joey, Barney Stinson or the Sex and the city girls as their idol ; are you really living like them?

.

Ya I think by now you know what I’m getting at. The tragedy unmatched by Oresteia, Othello or Doctor Faustus, the great tragedy of being single.

And I’m not even going to mention the lack of sex in my argument.

See even when you are single you are not free, so that argument goes right out of the window, you are supposed to match so many expectations, including your own, you boss’s, your friends’, your mom’s and a lot of other people.

When you are single or rather unmarried in this case your boss expects you to stay till late, come early, take no leaves, work on weekends and go to the farthest corners of the world in a moment’s notice. Whenever you raise the slightest objection he always greets you with this line “Arey ghar pe jaake karna kya hai? Kaunsa daer se jaaoge to biwi naaraaz ho jaegi?” Or “Abhi to bachelor ho yaar, abhi to career pe focus karna chahiye, baad mae settle ho jaane ke baad aadmi nahi kar paata kuch”. So much for your personal life. While you married colleagues always get away with excuses like ‘My wife’s brother is getting married’ or ‘My daughter is unwell’ or plain old work-life balance, with a sly smile and a smirk at you.

Anybody who has house hunted in a non-student , non-IT centric locality will know how big a pain being unmarried is. This goes for girls as well, though maybe in a lesser degree. The board ‘Families Only’, ‘Bachelors not allowed’ can be seen practically on the face of every landlord. Like getting married is some kind of character certificate. I really want to shout sometimes that Dawood Ibrahim is married too, so was Charles Manson, and Osama had more than one wife! And to add to that I won’t have children who will cry at night, ring your doorbell and run, break your glass with balls or sketch on the walls. I won’t have wedding at my house where bad quality music is played for days nor will I have Jaagrans which will keep you up at night. I don’t think that occasional loud music or vomit in the stairs is so difficult to deal with. But this is what it is. Married people will get better houses and for less.

Leave houses and landlords, even pubs and discs turn you away. Like being single is a crime. Or single people are not supposed to have a drink, listen to some music and enjoy. They want you to conjure up a girl just for entering inside, which might be your reason to enter in the first place.

On top of that your married or committed friends, whenever they are away from their spouses want you to share your wild sex stories, your adventures and hear your iron resolution to stay single forever. Even if you are having fun or not it is impossible to match that kind of expectation unless you are a Rock Star. The truth that being single sometimes sucks or you might be actually be thinking on settling down is met with such absolute resistance and lectures like you said you wanted blow up the parliament.

And on the opposite extreme your mom constantly keeps reminding you that marriage is such a good idea. So if you want the recipe of Palak Paneer it is prefixed with ‘If you were married you wouldn’t need it in the first place” or if you tell her that you got a raise then the Congratulations is suffixed with “Now I think you should get married”. This goes double for girls.

Whenever two guys or two girls enter a fancy restaurant they are met with stares like they have tails hanging out. And when you want to make a reservation for hotel or resort people automatically assume you must be travelling with wife, any difference causes weird silence or clarification and re-clarifications. And after that you are either branded homosexual, terrorists, freaks or all three. A bunch of guys can have more fun in a resort than a couple ever can, except on the bed maybe.

You don’t have a default partner to go the movies only you wanna watch, concert of an artist only you have heard of and for shopping trips where you are the only one who wants to buy something. Your spouse, if he/she exists in naturally dragged along and doesn’t even make a fuss, or at least not too much.

Be it the flight, train or bus you are always moved to the other seat as people come in and say “Oh we both are together” or “Bhaaisahab aap B-2 pe seat number 16 pe jaa sakte hai kya, wo actually hamari 2 seat us dibbe mae aa gayi hai”. And it is not even a request, it is like somebody read you the Indian Penal Code clause 19 sub section 2b which states all single people are hereby banished to the least desired seat in any mode of transportation. Don’t even try to argue that you purposely booked the Side Upper Berth or you came early especially for the window seat otherwise you will be met with bickering, awkward stares and general disapproval by everyone around you, even by people who have nothing to do with is. Even when you argue with a married couple every passer-by assumes you must have done something nasty and top of that you are not even apologizing.

And the biggest torture is going out for drinks or an outing with an all couples group. Especially after the initial 10 minutes of pleasantries and cheers are over and everyone recedes to their respective corners.

I have to cut short my description of the horrors of the singles camp at this point as I gotta go out with the boys for dinner. Adios.

Eplilogue – They are many single people out there, some willingly and many un-willingly, and note that I said single and not unmarried. And both men and women. Most of them want to pair up; it is after all our naturally desired state. But despite wishing otherwise most of them are stuck in rut. And I have no clue why. At least in India you can blame the social structure a bit, lack of places for singles to mingle, stigma about women approaching first and the likes. Other places I don’t know what. Many of my friends, guys and girls have resigned themselves to the fate of arranged marriage and all of them want to find someone they love. But they are not able to. My only advice to them is take a few chances, I know I need to. But still, something somewhere is pretty fucked up in this world

Idiot's guide to writing a book

Pre Script - Previous Image Removed as some copyright issues cropped up. Plus the guy had the decency to ask politely.

"The greatest trick Chetan Bhagat ever pulled was convincing the world that he can write. And like that, poof. Everyone's an author.... " – Prajith VM

Do you suck at your current job? Or that you like to blabber so much but nobody wants to listen? To much free time at hand but a slow internet connection? Maybe you wanna appear intellectual to a lot of people and finally finally get some respect. Or just plain want to get laid?

If the answer is yes to any of these, you need my advice. And the advice is to write a book. Yes you heard me right. Write a book. No no, don’t worry if you don’t have a story in your head, haven’t written a leave letter without googling leave letters before and can never be sure whether that was a ‘quite a show’ or ‘quiet a show’. That all can be taken care of. Basic necessities are that you should have done what most people in this country have done; done graduation from a college and work at a corporation, and of course have Microsoft Word installed in your computer with spelling and grammar suggestions on.

Of course it is going to be lengthy process, I mean writing a 100 page book even with a big ass font can be quite pain staking, and might take weeks to finish, but the place where you should be spending your anyways-worthless time is promoting your book. If J. R. R. Tolkien had spent 10 years promoting his book rather than writing it, he certainly would have died richer.

And the trick to this whole thing is writing something which your target audience can identify with. And who is your target market? Here being an MBA helps, no wonder they are churning out books faster than you can say “What the fuck! Another one?” But if you are from IIT, or been there, or appeared for it entrance exam or at least can spell it it’s a sure thing then. Then you too can add it in your book title or sub title or whatever like Love story of an IITian, Girls of IIT, Missed IIT kissed Russia and the likes, because once a Mr. C. B. wrote a bestselling novel about IIT guys and that has become a standard formula ever since, and we will stick to that formula now.

So the first thing is having a protagonist with whom everyone can identify with he’s your garden variety every-man a normal boy who has average looks, average money and slightly above average IQ and was a Ghissu in his whole academic life, not that their lives makes exciting stories but they are the people who are going to read your book, the really cool kids are out there having fun, they don’t give a shit about your book or anyone else’s for that matter. So this totally average guy (read Underdog) who’s life’s high points were eating Ratanlal’s hot samosas, scoring the highest in maths, mom’s secret recipe Paav-Bhaaji and scooter ride with friends is going to have something extraordinary happen to him. 

How is that? By meeting his dream girl. How he meets her is what sets the tone of the book. So after a struggle he enters starry eyed into a new world which like what is promised to every kid in India (get good marks in your 10^th class then you are set for life, get into a good college then you are set for life, get into a good MBA college then you are set for life, get a good job then you are set for life, get in your boss’s good book and so on….) holds infinite joy and the one thing what every boy long for, yes it’s what you think it is, a girl. Now your readers have done nothing more than asking a girl for notes, or scrapping them “Hi can we be frands?” and so would your protagonist be, he either runs into the girl by chance like she is looking for a maths tutor or gets a puncture, or wants to photocopy and nobody there to help but the photocopying whiz kid or the best is she is crying on the stairs after her good looking, rich and muscled but evil boy friend broke her heart and she is looking for a shoulder to cry on;  or she talks to him first, that’s another of their fantasies. And they hit it off instantly. Slight variations can take place depending on where your novel is set in, though it has to be in the sacred three; the engineering college, the MBA college or the office where the protagonist enters the dog eat dog corporate life for the first time. Don’t try to write something like ‘Love in the times of Cholera’ or having the American civil war as the backdrop, it’s fall down on its face.

Also important is how you would describe her. You can’t write she was a stunner with 36 Ds or she had dragon tattoo over her butt crack which peeked every time she bent over! No! It has to be something your mom would approve of, maybe a few struggles after but approves of. So it must go something like she had pretty eyes  and with hair falling over face she looked like an angel, or she looked very cute and pretty in her olive green t shirt and dark blue slight flared jeans (you need to add superfluous details like that to appear a real writer). You need to add in a couple of friends, losers like him but good natured and trust worthy and having a few personality quirks for comic effect. Doesn’t need to be realistic, just whatever tickles the funny bone of the average guy, it could be anything like the guy who does to Mandir every Tuesday on his cycle or the South Indian who doesn’t know chamatkaar from balatkaar. But all this is frivolous, joists to the BIG THING!

And the big thing is ….. …. SEX. Oh yes the grand daddy of internet searches, the king of movie interests and the Holy Roman Emperor of Book Sales. And why? Two words. Sex Sells. You need to have that. You can get a little creative here, no no don’t worry not really. Only about which flaw or rather spice she has which leads to sex, like maybe she goes overboard with vodka martinis or maybe she wants comfort sex after something tragic happened to her or she is plain vanilla nympho who sneaks in your room at midnight to do it. This is where you need to get descriptive, you can skip the details like which parts of anatomy went where or how you fumbled as it was your first time (which in reality everybody does, really) but you can say that it was magical or you like having sex in confined places. In case the boy gets the girl in the very end then you can throw in a couple of Cougars who lures the boy to have the big bang with them, and albeit being tempted the boy keeps his chastity. Of course the boy was not playing the whole charade for getting into her pants so the whole thing has to be unplanned and at the spur of the moment, like in the back of the car or on the roof while her parents are watching TV.

And the final touch is the antagonist. Yes like all formulaic stories this too needs a villain, he can be your austere HOD wanting to flunk you for dating her daughter, or your prurient boss who also has eyes on the office hottie who just magically fell for you or the seven evil exes or the plain old conservative would be father-in-law who doesn’t want you to marry her daughter because you are not of the same caste, religion, financial status or part of India. And he needs need to defeat him with his wit and thorough and enduring good nature (because he doesn’t have anything else), or his knowledge of how to deliver a baby with a vacuum cleaner. So that in the end Aal Izz Well. For comic effect keep adding delirious monologues about them in the narrative like “he looked like a cross between an orangutan and an ox with the brain of a mouse, his moustache was like a fig tree over which the crows shit” Or “seeing her hand in the Aniket’s hand my heart felt like it was dipped in oil in McDonalds fry their fries only it was being heated by the fires of hell and the lava of mount doom”. Your moronic readers will confuse these with wisecracks and being imaginative.

Add a few trite and contrived settings, a little baloney and few over simplified suggestions for giving the finger to the man, to appeal the anti authoritarian readers (or rather their delusions of being anti-authoritarian or at least their never ending fantasy of having the balls to say no to their boss or professors once in their life)

Almost as an afterthought, if you think that being a good author you need to have heavy words in your novel or you just want to differentiate yourself from the LS (low society) pulp fiction routinely occurring in the book stalls of the railways stations you can put in an Ill conceived and totally unrelated poems like:

In the morning I can’t see the light

Love for her is so big a fight

If she can give me hug that is tight

My life will be alright

No need to sweat, there are plenty of half wit poets all around whose poems or prose (you don’t need to even know the difference between those two) you can use and add them as special thanks. Or even better you can run the thesaurus on every word of your paragraph once in a while so that a paragraph like this can appear –

Her ethereal beauty shimmered in the iris of my heart’s eye for a fleeting moment but in the very moment I ambianced the full measure of my ardor ad infinitum for my lady. Even the angels crooned an enchanting tone for the entity known as me and everything in world abated. There was no febrifuge for this fervor and I knew I was going to scale any knoll for her as our souls minueted and my heart retorted to the pavlovian and my our eyes entered into an eternal shibboleth.

And Voila! You have a novel for yourself. Now go to R. Publications and prepare for book signings, launch ceremonies and criticism from assholes like me! 

I too had a love story

"Not everyone in the world has the fate to cherish the fullest form of love.
Some are born,  just to experience the abbreviation of it "

Ravinder Singh from I too had a love story.

Dedicated to the memory of the girl whom I loved but could not marry

Tere jaane ka asar kuch aisa hua mujh par,
tujhe dhoondate dhoondate maine khud ko pa liya.

Like him I also want to thank her for bringing out the writer in me. Without it I might have never know what existed in me or could exist.As a 21 year old happy-go- lucky boy I was too filled up with love for her and life in general. It is she who I made me hollow inside, which gave me a chance to fill me with something else.

I don't know how my life would have been and now after 5 years I don't care either. But what I do know because she left me I saw things in this world which I didn't know existed. And I want to thank her for it, because for better or worse I am what she made me into, a monster or a man.

In the misty peaks of love true bliss is found.
But in its deepest chasms of sorrow I found myself.

Pity Us Men - 2

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,
and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, You shall not eat of it",
cursed is the ground because of you;
in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.”

These are first words of god to Man when he banished him from Eden and forever damned him and guess what they start with? ‘Because you have listened to your wife’. Like all the troubles in the world the one in paradise also started because of a woman. It’s a conspiracy of biblical proportions and thousands of years into it we have just started scratching the surface. Devil is considered the greatest trickster and the biggest trick he could play to convince the world he didn’t exist. Well the master trickster is someone else who hid in plain sight and never let the man know what she played on him.

By now you should have guessed who I mean. Yes the woman, the female of the species the one who made a pact with the talking snake and got us (men) out of heaven and onto earth and built it brick by brick against us. If this startles you, you are one of them too, who didn’t see how the whole world is designed against men. Here is but a short glimpse of it –

• All the things I like are either outlawed, termed immoral or too disgusting like Porn, Booze, Mindless shooting and Girls wrestling each other in mud while romance, flowers and chocolates gondola rides in moonlight are termed as refinement and high culture.
• There are no designated compartments for me in trains, no seats exclusively for me, nothing in terms of reservation.
• In all my 26 years of my life I never been groped, felt up or even whistled at in public. This is very damaging for my self-worth.
• I have to go through the mental torture of rehearsing 500 times what I am going to say to the pretty girl to even have a remote chance of starting something with her, she can just smile from a distance.
• Arriving naked in the room is never going to pick my girlfriend’s bad mood.
• I don’t get to say “nothing” while the girl pleads for thousandth time what’s wrong.
• My life’s ambition could never be to dress up, do an interior designing course, get married and live a life of luxury and tranquility.
• Batting my eyelids never got any work done, ever.
• I am always the stag and never the crowd in a disc.
• If I slap a girl in public the best case scenario is everyone will term me women- beating – savage who should be locked up, instead of the whole mob joining in to beat her.
• There are no men’s nights
• I don’t think we even have an international men’s day.
• My decision on what to wear for office always comes down to wearing a striped shirt or a solid
• Crying doesn’t win all arguments.
• Catching an oversexed man is considered a liability instead of a jackpot.
• Being drunk out of my senses gets me thrown out of a bar instead of girls queuing up to take me home or wherever.
• There will be no drive by companies to hire more men.
• Getting in with my top button undone is gonna screw me in the interview instead.
• I don’t get to say “it’s not my job” for paying the telephone bill.
• Hugging others guys and giggling stupidly is never a turn on.
• In fact being stupid is never a turn on.
• I get punched by people who don’t like me instead of them not talking to me.
• My friends will shoot me in the head if I spent the entire day looking for a jeans and came back with a pair of shoes.
• Nobody fights among themselves to take me into their team.
• I get no credit for knowing how to change a flat tire and to cook.
• Saying I just want a casual relationship will not have girls falling all over themselves to court me
•  I don’t remember what my girlfriend said 2 months ago, let alone successfully use it in a fight.
• And she doesn’t have to remember the first time we shared the same food, first time my dog licked her, the first time she bought me a gift and first time I bought her a gift and on and on.
• I get the answer as ‘Yes’ whenever I ask ‘Do I look fat in this?’
• Nobody says you are looking fabulous and hot and what not every time I upload a pic on Facebook
• And don’t even get me started on the likes and comments on random status updates!!\
• When I call strangers I get the response as ‘how did you get this no?’ instead of ‘yes, how can I help you’
• My boss tries to talk business even while I’m peeing. 
• I wouldn’t be evacuated first if I was on the Titanic.
• But worst of all it’s been a month and nobody has noticed my new shoes …. Aarghh…. 

The Cowboy and the Rose

I see her with the corner of my eye

As her love hands her, her martini dry

I take a swig and blink to check if it’s real

My love whispers me to go easy on the rye

Maybe she saw me drinking but not my thirst

We act like two strangers turning into dust

She is at this gala, glowing, maybe Our love

 Has weathered, maybe she’s just on her first.

She is still as pretty, that she knows

Her beauty still deserves a song, a poem, a prose.

But what she doesn’t know when separated

to wither and die is the fate of the rose.

The shoot, ugly and stubbed will still linger on

Like the weary cowboy wandering for an aeon.

Before picking the flower, he didn’t know

That every rose has its thorn.

We are, like all who became one,

now two halves. The truth she’s trying to shun.

We broke up and she moved away and on

Both our found new loves, none one won.

You will die and I will roam dusty and worn

Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song

The Tragedy of being 26+ MBA in an Indian IT company

I read some guy named Frankie’s (Siddesh Agashe) blog about TheTragedy of being 25+ in an Indian BSchool. I found it funny like many others; it has become quite a rage in fact. Though I couldn’t picture myself in the category he talked about I knew a lot of guys like that. I myself was in the awkward no-man zone in between the cool kids and seen-it-know-it-alls. I was 23 when I joined the B School but with no work ex (Due to my taking a year off once after school and one after engineering for…. Aah never mind). So I was not fun enough to have fun with cool kids and the work-ex people never came to me for advice or career or any other intellectual discussions. But then it had it pros too, I was not labled Uncle or Bade Bhaiya and I wasn’t counted in non serious, you-don’t-deserve-to-be-in-a-B-School crowd, in fact people used to criticize college’s policy to take non work-ex right on my face, when I used to go “Hey!” they used to say “Abey matlab tu nahi yaar”. So I wasn’t worried about receding hairline but a bulging waistline nevertheless, I wasn’t considering this an extension of my DU days but hadn’t worked either. So all in all a straddle position between these groups, so I didn’t give this post much thought just smiled though it and got it over with. 

THEN IT HIT ME LIKE A TON OF BRICKS!

I am that guy, only not in a BSchool but in an IT company and then I realized the tragedy of being a 26+ MBA passout in an IT company!

I’m guessing like most people when I came into an IT company I had the following dreams –

•  Fancy title like Consultant or Business Analyst. High quality work
• Not starting the day with 14 gaalis and boss waving the paper with target written on in my face. And have to nothing to look forward to except Sun, Sweat and Dirt.
• A/C Office, sophisticated people to talk to, Glitzy campuses, Metropolitan cities
• Not being at the bottom of the food chain
• And most importantly – Girls!

But as they say, be careful what you wish for.

Now that I am here, this is no different than being 25+ in an Indian B School. In fact it is like walking into Amity or Lovely Professional University, only 5 years too late and already having a masters degree.  And then –

• All the girls you like will be already be 4 years younger to you and walking with 2 guys her age, at best they will ignore you or give you the ‘why is that old creep looking at me?’ look.
• All the girls your age would already be either married or engaged. They will happily wear their Chudiyans, Manglasutra and Sindoor which is their way of saying “back the f*** off from me”.
• You will laugh at mails which say that there is some dancing competition/Antakshri/Mimicry competition happening. But when your manager asks so have you been taking part in any activities or any initiatives you will cut a sorry figure.
• You will look down upon the software engineers, saying “in saalon kee to zindagi code likhte likhte nikal jayegi, accha hua main bach gaya”. Then you will be given even a worse job where terms like UTA, PTT, MLAP will keep hitting you and finally you will have to run to some software engineer for help.
• When you meet another IT guy he will ask what do you do, you will smirk and say “Oh I’m a SAP consultant” or “Oh I’m an Business Analyst for Banking & Capital Markets” when he will ask you whether you use Secure socket Layer in R/3 structure with ECC 6 version for SAP or do you recommend a database transaction mechanism which guarantees ACID properties in order to ensure data integrity despite concurrent user accesses (concurrency control) for banks, you will pull the face like Pamela Anderson asked you for Teerth Yatra  .
• You will pull out your fake accent when the Technology leads calls you and say “Hi this is Ankit, glad to be talking to you Narayan” mentally picturing a dark, dumb, merely an engineer with bad ‘communication skills’.  Further you will try to dazzle him with how you calculated the Security Market Line, Treynor ratio and Alpha in your MBA and then go mute when he asks if you have worked in a JAVA environment or you do know how to migrate objects in SAP using BAP or IDOCs.

Now that I have written I think I am already going into depression. I need a drink, or a girl, or at least a project.

Idiot's guide to Living a fabulous life on Facebook

You, yes you. Are you an ugly geek with a knack of putting people of with your talk or are you a self righteous bitch with an eating disorder? Do you secretly hate, loathe and despise yourself and everyone around you. Do you don’t want seem to seen as a loser by the people around you? Do you want everyone to envy your pathetic life? Do you had all these problems and more and didn’t know who to ask. Don’t despair, help is here, following these simple advice even a good-for-nothing slob like you can make a few people jealous. You too can have a fabulous life that turns people green or at least on Facebook.

And the key to all this is Facebook. Yes Facebook the site where you logon once in a while to find that you have no notifications and to look at pictures of good looking girls/guys. If you don’t have a huge number of friends on FB already start adding people immediately, don’t worry about knowing them, with your social skills the names of all your friends could be very well written on a page that you had in front of you to doodle on a two hour long phone call. Plus your friends already know what kind of a fucktard you are, so don’t worry about them. The real meat is in the acquaintances, the people who know you but hardly know you. So keep adding everyone who you faintly recognize and pray that the other person is stupid enough to approve your request. The guy who sat in the bus near you once or the girl whom you lech at across your floor in the office are all green zones. After your circle of acquaintances is complete you go right along to Phase-2.

Now the task is to create an interesting persona. The days of “Hi sexy babes I want to be frands with you so add me” or “I’m a cute sweet girl who wants to be friends with all the smart and nice guys and gals” are over. Nor a picture of Hrithik Roshan or a little girl holding a flower will do as a profile pic. The picture has to be you, but again ‘you’ here is a very fluid concept here. You are butt ugly, not even you will like looking at yourself, and you know that you don’t have a good angle. So the trick is to show yourself without really showing yourself. For guys take a photo of yourself wearing a dark helmet sitting on a borrowed bike, girls take a photo of your bare leg with some jewellery on it or perhaps your hands with Mehandi on it. For girls the more skin the better it is, for guys the reverse is true. Do some R&D on what are the in books, movies and TV shows these days, here not being a complete moron certainly helps. Add books like Motorcycle Diaries or The Ferrari Years for guys and Grapes of Wrath and the Postman always Rings Twice for girls should do it, add a few TV shows like FRIENDS or HIMYM which everyone with half a brain can like and few movies like Black Swan, The Bicycle Thief, Lost in Translation which shows that only you have a good taste but you are also deep. The final touch is liking a number of senseless pages like Dunhill, Lamborghini and Johnnie Walker or Prada, Jimmy Choo and PETA depending on your gender. Now the foundation is laid. Time for Action!

The whole plan stems from basic human insecurity. Everyone thinks that everyone else has better looks, a better partner, a better job, a better car, all in all a better life. What do they say about green grass on the side? You know your life sucks but the others don’t and that’s what you have to do to them, show them how much fun you are having and what they are missing out on. And the key to it is regular status updates and uploading photos. You know that the five minutes in shower thinking about your old English teacher or stuffing your face with chocolate pastries is the high point of your day, but other don’t have to know that. For example, got drenched in the rain while coming back from office? Write: ”Had an awesome bike ride in the rain” as your status update. Met your classmates in the canteen after a weekend while cribbing over the same food for years? Write: Neha and Sonia it was so good seeing you after so long. And the Aaloo Puri, Yummm… Love you darlings”. The MD himself came down to jack you for being the biggest shit magnet in his company write: “Very busy day. Meeting with MD today”. Got drunk in the cheapest bar (Raj Lakshmi Bar) near you while making a fool of yourself? Write: Crazy night with friends. Beer at RLB Rocks!!” Stuck at home with nothing to do except to watch the 19^th Re-Run of Alice in Wonderland? Write: “Tim Burton you are a magician. Never have I seen such a ethereal combination.” Got dragged to a boring cultural program by your parents? Write: “Watched a great performance of Bharatnatyam in the Grand Auditorium, never realized India is so blessed with culture before tonight”

Cryptic or leading status messages are also welcome. Something like “All set to rock. Weekend here I come” works well even if you have nothing to look forward except doing your laundry on the weekend. And we all know how important relationships are for women so keep hinting towards your mystery man with status updates like “Missing you so much, wish you were here L ….” You don’t have to mention that you meant your dog.

Now comes the tricky part, the photos. You have to be regular uploading those but you still have to be aware of the quality or people will soon find out what a twat you really are. For guys the modus operandi is like this, first get off your lazy ass, go out, you don’t really have to do something, just pose for photos. Going out with a big group is always advisable, people’s tolerance for stupidity is high in a crowd, plus someone in the group will do something make sure to pose exactly like he did. Sit in the raft with the safety gear and get a photo and then get the hell out as you know you are scared shitless, can’t drink even a beer without puking guts all over the next guy? Shouldn’t stop you from posing with a beer. And remember always be ready to jump in front of the camera every time anyone is getting their picture taken regardless of whether they want you in or not. And if there are girls in that group it is Manna from heaven, make sure to be included in the girl’s group photos, nothing gets the envy quotient up like a seeing another guy with 8 girls around him. For overkill ask every girl one by one to have a photo with you, of course it is creepy but you have never had a chance with them anyway. Easier way would be to just happen to be around when she was getting her photo clicked and just slide in saying “Hey we don’t have a photo together, do we?” And then start grinning like an idiot looking towards the camera without waiting for her answer.  For women some part can even be done indoors, just hug or roll around with your friends or soft toys. Or get a makeover and then pose around your house in every angle you can think of, some guys who are even more desperate than you are going to praise it, then keep replying thanks to everyone personally even to the people who just clicked ‘like’, that’ll increase the number of comments making it top news. Go to the mall and hoard all your friend’s shopping bags and get a photo taken, make a caption “Day out in the mall with the girls, shopped till I drop”, even though all you bought was a bottle of cheap fairness cream. Pose around with every new dress or accessory that you bought and write “Gifted by a special someone ;-)”, which is not entirely untrue, you are special, even your teacher had the same opinion when she wanted to send you to special school. Remember when showing skin more is less, then get random  off topic discussion going on them so that they stay in news, even better is to put up with a caption “OMG I look so fat in this” then some idiot will say “No, not at all, you look fabulous sweetie”. I hope you get the drift.

Keep going like this and soon you would have won enough admirers to garner an iota of self-confidence and make your pitiful life a little better.But remember when in doubt don’t do it, or at least copy from someone else, not many people will know that “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt“ was by Mark Twain and not you. And be careful not to actually become friends with your friends of Facebook, because only "on the Internet nobody knows you are a dog".

And when all this works for you remember to send me some money, I’m bankrupt after my Pattaya Trip.

P.S. - Find more guides for Idiot's like you here - B Schoolers, Living among guys, Manipulate and abuse people 

Coming Soon - James Bong: The Spy Who Scrapped Me