"Tu Kaun Hai?"

A recent drastic event has shaken me as a person and has rocked my roots have made me question what life's all about have made me evaluate and assess people around me.

I came to know about this tragic news via "social networking site" and  it was pertaining to one of my childhood friends and I continued to read the news with a lot of disbelief and shock. It was about an highly unfortunate incident wherein my friend's wife tragically ended her life. Honestly I was shocked to read it. I immediately called up our common friends and my parents to confirm if the news was really true and they all confirmed it was indeed true. I haven't felt so disheartened and shaken in a long long time. 

My mind just went back to our childhood days when we played together went to school together shared our problems (having a lot of homework, having an argument with parents etc.) I remembered attending their wedding, how happy both of them were as their's was a love marriage and they went ahead with it against all odds. I remember feeling proud of them and wishing them all the luck in this world.

Meanwhile, I moved to a different city and moved on with my career so did both of them. We again became "Friends" through "Facebook" and chatted on countless occasions about meeting sometime as we had many things to discuss. We virtually became more "connected" through "whatsapp"and shared many forwards, jokes liked each others status and also conveyed the same to the other person. Life appeared to be an absolutely pleasurable journey from their facebook posts and comments which people made, comments like you guys are a made for each other couple confirmed "virtually" everything in their life was like a fairy tale, they both were very much in love and enjoyed being with each other. This news really shattered the fairytalesque world created by their facebook posts and whatsapp DPs and status messages. 

If everything was so perfect why did this tragic event occurr? could it have been avoided? could there have been any other outcome of the "fairytalesque" life shared by my friend and his wife? The people who commented "made for each other" could they have been of any help? could they have helped both of them in sorting out their differences and come out of the worst phase of their life? Instead of sharing jokes, forwards and only happening parts of our lives through whatsapp had it been helpful if we shared a bit of the real issues we faced? Why were we scared to share our troubles? why we only tried to portray happy side of our lives? Why we thought it was convenient for us not to share our troubles and problems?

This incident made me realise the emptiness of the virtual life we all are living now days and I started observing people even more closely and realised this technology has taken over our lives. We have stopped living in the moment and have instead started living for putting things on facebook and whatsapp I see a lot of groups of youths who hang out together in malls, coffee shops but when they all are together all of them are on their cell phones showing something or the other to each other talking about things present in the virtual world. I got a chance to attend to a wonderful music festival in which renowned artists were performing and even there I noticed people clicking pictures of the event, recording the performances and sharing it on whatsapp and facebook. Very few people were sitting in their seats and enjoying the music and performances of these famous and brilliant artists while the others were keen on recording the event anyhow. The people trying to record that moment didn't realise that the moment which they were trying to capture and share was actually slipping out of their lives the way my friend and his wife didn't realise its not about sharing the happy moments through facebook or any other social networking site.

I hope and pray we realise this virtual world is disconnecting us from realities of our lives and we do something about it before its too late. Cant stop my self from reciting beautiful lines from Lucky Ali's song and question this virtual world "Kahan se tu aati hai kahan ko tu jaati hai? Sapnon ko sajati hai apnon ko ley jaati hai. Baaghon mein jab behti hai kaanon mein kuch kehti hai. Aati hai nazar nahin saanson mein par rehti hai. Hawaa, pawan hai vayu hai, purvaaee hai Jeevan hai, jaan hai, ya parchaayee hai . Lene aayi hai ya kuch mere liye laayi hai? Poochoonga mein kya tujhse kahan se tu aayi Tu kaun hai, tu kaun hai.?"