The power of status’ing’

Chikoo kissed his mother with a ‘Goodbye Mamma’. His father Nitish followed suit and Nisha was delighted. Joy and nostalgia bubbled inside her and with a spring in her step, she put the status of ‘A lovely day begins with a peck in the cheek; I am loving it’.

Nitish battled through rain, dropped the son at his bus stop, then went to the station got into the local and by the time he reached office, he was in a bad mood. But the receptionist looked at him and quite mischievously said, ‘Good morning Sir and how good is YOUR morning’.

Nitish already in a foul mood said,’ Its raining like hell, how do you suppose my day will be?

He sat down in his cubicle switched on his computer when his colleague Arun came along and said,  ‘ So how has our Gregory Peck been?’

Nitish looked up and saw half a dozen colleagues giving him knowing glances and he knew that something was wrong. He looked at Arun questioningly and he said, ‘check FB’ and he left.

‘But’ Nitish said,’FB is ‘firewalled’ in office isn’t it?’

Arun replied,’You moron check on your mobile’ and then he only ‘taught’ him how to use FB on mobile.

Nitish was in a rage in the evening. ‘But I did not specifically take your name’, Nisha said.

‘What do you mean, that a neighbor came  or do you have another boyfriend. I tell you Nisha no statuses from now on. Why status, no FB from now on or better still no social networks from now on’.

‘But you know na Nitish I work online, I have to be in touch with my clients and I have to market myself. FB helps.’

‘NOTHING DOING,NO FB’, screamed Nitish. Well you could not say that he was wrong entirely. Nisha’s status had landed him in a soup more than once. He was a very private person. And did not like that others knew what was happening in their lives. And nowadays he was finding that the whole world knew what was happening in their lives before him.

Nisha being the obedient wife listened to her husband, stopped using FB much. FB was just to stay in touch. She started tweeting instead.

Nitish had not yet discovered twitter and so it was peace time at home.

Nitish was returning from the neighboring town where he had been for some official work  when the bus broke down. It was late. it was dark, there were only about 10 passengers and whats more his mobile was sleeping. Meaning that the battery had ‘died’. Even if it was ‘alive’, it would have been useless as in the middle of the wilderness, there was no network. He searched if someone had a laptop with a photon connection but no; the rest were farmers, vegetable vendors and the like and he sat down in utter dismay. He was sure that there would be panic at home.

After some time he got down from the bus to stretch himself and to his good luck a motorbike whizzed by. And it stopped in response to his frantic waves.

The biker came, peered at him and said, ‘You are Nitish, aren’t you? Your wife is worried sick about you’

Nitish was shocked,’ But how do you know all that?’ There was a turmoil in his mind. He was in doubt, in relief, in anger and so on.

‘Well she tweeted that you were untraceable along with your picture and there have been retweets; that is how I know’.

Nitish did not know how to react, Was he to be angry or should he be glad.

Anyways Nitish got on the bike with the biker after promising the other passengers that he would be sending help their way.

Two hours later he reached home. When he saw the feeling of relief on his wife, son and mother’s face, he realized that networking too; had its advantages.

*fictitious

**images courtesy wikipedia