Crops That Do Virtually Nothing

It’s a quarter to midnight, the teacher haven’t completed her answer script correction which she is supposed to submit next day morning and she is stressed beyond anything the word “STRESSED” can describe with an additional pressure to harvest her virtual firm or they blacken into wilted stalks!!

Over the years as a teacher and as a social being I saw the teenagers delay all their work to sit in front of the console of their virtual world of respective games. I had seen boys spending all their free time in playing football or fighting battles on the computer and making the worst use of valuable time. But there is an obvious lack of logical thinking when adults especially professionals mostly defer their work and assignments to harvest virtual crops that do virtually nothing, except earn a well deserved “XP”. The parents and guardians, especially moms who all these years have scolded their wards for wasting time on the consoles are a victim of the latest threat. Most interestingly FarmVille is mostly played among the age group of 24-45. This section of the populace was never in gaming and 2/3rd of them are the women who were never in virtual games before. The farm brought the women folk across the globe to the huge virtual gaming world.

Funny thing is, with all its detrimental effects, people just can’t stop playing FarmVille. With a membership of 11 million daily players, this game has become an epidemic that is even worse than the swine-flu hype. Predictably, I find FarmVille as a killer: it brutally kills all free time, social life and devastates the success of professionals & scholars everywhere. It takes an unprecedented amount of time to harvest, plow, sow and repeat and repeat and repeat. The worst of all is the stress the player takes all through the day behind their mind of successfully managing time and the worries of its failure.

But what this popular Facebook application has done is actually pretty smart. It has managed to tap into the potential inherent in our constant procrastination to bring this trait called “TIME MANAGEMENT” back into our daily lives (and subsequently addict the player and destroy all hope of a social life and make the worst use of time). The way FarmVille forces the player to calculate their time so that crops will always be grown the next day, plan into the future so there will always be a computer around when the cabbages are grown and commit to a specific time is innovative and even somewhat useful. Even another significant change that I noticed among the addicts (they call themselves as “dedicated”) is their perspective towards the plants in and around has changed. They are more caring and considerate with the flora now. The developers at San Francisco's Zynga team definitely deserves applaud for the attitude change they brought among their users.

Not only does the strategy of time management force FarmVille players to stick to a mental schedule, in order to succeed, but maybe these skills can be improved in real life through habit and association. FarmVille is the way to a bright future, but it’s not just a dark abyss of wasted time. It could actually have beneficial effects.

The churn rate for social games is high — two to three months for most titles. A good chunk of players — 25% to 33% — play a particular game two to three months before moving on. By comparison, only about 5% are defined as active users who play a title for more than a year but it will be really beneficial if any percentage of the huge 60 million monthly crowd is benefited in any way, though I only find the STRESS involved in it, but the players claim it to be an escape from city life; it's their relaxation but at the same time the majority admit that “I lose sleep at night, worrying about my farm.”

Hey folks, we have a lot more good to do other than harvest virtual crops that do virtually nothing.

Wake Up India

“WAKE UP INDIA.
IT’S TIME TO NOT GO TO WORK.
IT’S TIME TO GET PEOPLE TO WORK FOR YOU.
DON’T BE AN ENGINEER JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A DEGREE IN ENGINEERING. DO WHAT YOU THINK YOU’RE GOOD AT. AND YOU WILL BE GOOD AT WHAT YOU THINK. START SOMETHING THAT’S YOUR OWN. WHERE YOU CAN’T BE SACKED. AND CERTAINLY CAN’T QUIT. START SOMETHING FOR AS LITTLE AS TEN THOUSAND. YOU DON’T NEED MUCH MORE THAN THAT. YOU DON’T NEED REFERENCES, POLITICIANS OR THE POLICE . ALL YOU NEED IS YOU. START. AND THEN TEN THOUSAND COULD BECOME THIRTY BILLION.IT’S TRUE. YOU CAN DO IT. YOU WHO’S READING THIS AD. YOU, SIMPLE, REGULAR GUY. LIKE IT HAPPENED ONCE, TO A SIMPLE REGULAR GUY. WAKE UP INDIA AND START DREAMING.”

- Today's Ecomomics Times Advt regarding The Economic Times AWARDS.

I too believed it in and I had always dreamt big, as big beyond possibility but failed. May be I started from the wrong place with wrong people.

Still Dreams don’t die.

I salute you all.

I feel so sorry for her. In this freezing cold crack of dawn, she gets up half-an hour before I do and prepares herself for the school. If time permits she can have a sip of tea and a couple of biscuits and rushes to the bus stand about a mile away. Most of the days when I am in the town I drop her on my motorcycle. But when I am off for some business trip, it turns out to be pathetic. When I think of the situation I do not know how does she manage all and pull her to the bus stand on time.

I think women can do it. Had it been with us men, we would be argumentative more than working and being on time and day after day we would be there with a hell lot of excuses. She pulls on all with ease and after that the whole day in school with piled up work and practically with no break she has her smile on face.

The day does not end for her so quick. The kids wait for her for tuition and then of course the household chore is there. Sorry dear, I try to help but I cannot. I keep admiring her instead.

Women in Indian middle class society are a mystery in themselves. Look around, you get to see so many good examples of balancing their home with their professional life and at the same time catering to all the quarters of social life. They keep pace with time and turn out to be the most modern of all. They are the pillar of our family, of our society and of the nation. They are the mother and architect of modern India.

I salute each and every women of India.

Leaving, My Siliguri

“Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson. I have realized that failure, whether of personal, professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.” - Robin Sharma

True, very true, I had always believed in it. I am leaving my Siliguri, the wonderful valleys and mountains, the rivers and rivulets, the morning sun and its warmth, the dew and its moist, the sweet stay with my best friend and a whole world around the place with my dreams. The dreams of whom I talked so much here. To pursue another dream, hopeful that is larger than what I am leaving behind. A new chapter to begin. Hope it comes true.

I was tired fighting for ten long years in this region with this futuristic profession. It was very tough. I couldn’t stand for another decade with my innovative plans. I required surviving the present to live for the future. The province, the state, the township is not yet prepared to receive this profession. The ideas that culminate in my world of thoughts die due to malnutrition of support. The system as well as the industry and hopes of the town doesn’t support us to survive. All of us those had dreamed to make Siliguri a better Siliguri, a modern Siliguri miserable failed. Failed in our own terms, in our own way. We were either too ahead of its time or too stupid to recognize and evaluate the circumstances, situation and time.

I learn from my mistakes and doesn’t wish to repeat the same but it is unfortunate that I have to leave my Siliguri. Adieu Siliguri.

Dreams set free.

Yes, I have to let her go.

At times when situation exacerbate its better we let her go for the time being. She cannot be caged lifelong just for my pleasure.

All the dreams that I have fostered over this years were really very close to my heart but there is a reality also which though I recognized but I never wanted to consider it. We have visited the zenith of our profession and in the recent future I do not think that we could do something drastically better. The ideas and thoughts that I had put together over the years for the industry is really a distant dream to be executed in my town. The market in our region is not yet developed to cope up with all this. True, its growing better.

Dreams are dreams and they truly don’t want to walk off. When they don’t, I have to. I have to move out to the destinations that give me the opportunity to bring my dreams into truth, see them make the news, create the waves once more. Judge and trust the situation that actually is. All the situations that were understood and believed are now to be accepted. Accepted to the core of my heart. Leave all and let me leave for my dream. See the smile back in my wife’s face. Bring back all the wonderful days we had spent together.

But the dreams I fostered since my childhood are definitely not going to die. Not at the cost of my miserable situation. Not at the cost of any thing on earth. My dreams have transformed to my dear wife as hers. The pain of leaving my dreams is creating more pain to her than its to me.

Hold on, our dreams are not dead yet.

Confined Dreams

The cell phone alarm wakes me up before sunrise in this shivering cold morning and unwillingly takes me out from the warmth of the blanket. My wife is already prepared for her school. With a scowl face I reluctantly pull myself out of the bed and push me to the toilet.

Rups is always after me, “Hey dear, please be a little faster, I will miss my bus.”

Panoplied with gloves, pullover, jackets jeans and shoes with army socks I feel myself a very brave man. I bike my wife to the bus stand and rush back to my small two room rented flat. I am now over with my days work. The next job is to fetch my wife back at 3 o’ clock.

Confined in my room with the lights on and surfing the whole day on unnecessary sites blocks my brain and keeps me away from all. The first few hours of the day I cannot open my window due to the fear of cold, later when I open, it is of no use as sunlight hardly gets in. When we finalized this flat for rent we never realized that sunlight will be so scarcely available.

Without regular pressure of job for months is such a pitiable feeling I never knew. Short assignments at irregular interval kept me busy, but the stumbling blocks that I faced one after another had put me into a back seat. I wondered day and night what I can do and what I cannot, what were the mistakes I made, what are the loop holes that I created in my business and what are the facts that I misapprehended that made me jobless for so long.

My dreams are still with me and at times when I see my peer group went far ahead of me those into service I wish if I had been there too. But something within me resists me, asks me to stay away and pursue my dream. I do not know will it ever come true or not but I keep on day dreaming. The four walls stoop over my shoulder and whisper in my ears, “Piklu, you will make it”. God knows!

The small spiral while lamp that hangs from the centre of my ceiling also teases me, taunts me saying that you are a big fool. Believing in yourself and pursuing your dream won’t come true. Come-on dear, change your set of mind and do something else, that can feed your family, that can give relief to your dear wife, that can bring smile to both of you and settle down in your life.

Dreams are still dreams, the doors and windows and the curtains, the wall hangings, the television all together laugh at me, make fun of me, taunts me, teases me. I close my ears with both my hands, close my eyes and try to hide my face between my thighs so that their laughter do not enter my ears but alas! all in vain. They scream so loud that in my dreams also I can hear them and spend my nights sleepless in the fear of hearing them and fearing that my dream may go lost.

I fostered my dreams since my childhood, how can I depart from her, how can I leave her go?