What does your Instagram filter say about you?

Recently, I read a certain article about this celebrity urging everyone to keep it "natural" and not use filters to embellish one's pictures. It's like that period when suddenly celebrities were posing without make up (apparently) and trying to convince people not to indulge in the heavy duty made up look (while endorsing top notch make up lines of course).

Nevertheless, I really don't understand the hype about people using Instagram. Let's face it - the end result of the pictures is great so why not share it with your friends? Suddenly, the boring wine and dine place you visited last night becomes interesting, the blemishes on the skin disappear and guess what you even look for things in your vicinity that could be beautified. So we are looking fab, developing an artistic eye and are not bored at not-so-interesting places.

I love surfing through my news feed on Instagram and I am intrigued by certain people using certain kinds of filters!

I would think of you to be very lazy if you published a picture "normally" after Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger made their fortunes by inventing this wonderful array of editing filters to be installed at the touch of your fingers. On second thought, I do understand your extreme urge to share as soon as you click; so yes, editing can be tad bit difficult. All in all, you have a meaningful following on Instagram and they will not judge you.

Beloved "Amaro", "Valencia", "Walden",and Rise" users - I know the love for these filters becomes unconditional after a while as they are so loyal and make any picture perfect. It is like a favour to those self-clicks where you can't predict the action of light. You are quick and know what works for you!

"X-Pro II", "Mayfair" and "Lo-fi" - few of my favourites; these filters focus on you and just you. Darkening everything in the vicinity, the object of interest shines bright. You have an incessant reason to shine and your following on Instagram is looking for things you capture irrespective of where you are or who you are with.

Those understated "Willow" and "Inkwell" users - You know the BnW effect is available on very photo app invented by humans but you choose to use Instagram for it. So either you love sharing with your followers, are too artistic to give other filters a chance or let's face it you have a DSLR hidden somewhere that gives you enough of editing work to do.

The "Toaster" and "Kelvin" users, a kind note - there are so many tanning options available in the market or you could just use this filter, isn't it? You warm, fuzzy people love to extenuate every picture with more warmth and well, fuzziness! Sometimes you don't get the point of this filter but you still use it because somehow it makes every click look happy.

With "Hudson", "Nashville" and "1977" filters, everything is cool, everything is calm and everything is a weird colour of purple Japanese anime. In love with keeping it cool, these users feel the need to impart that effect on everything they do and trust me, it works! Every time, I look at my pictures edited using these filters, I feel a sense a tranquility. 

Whatever the filter, I love it how this photo sharing application has changed the way users are approaching photo editing and how it is influencing our depiction to others. So which filter depicts you the best? 

What working for a start up actually means?

Working in a corporate, teaches you to be competitive, teaches you to be a team worker and all those things that help you make a fancy CV. But what working in a start-up teaches you is to go out of your way and surprise yourself. 

So now almost two years later, having worked in both, I can firmly say that these are the 6 things that you will only and only know if you ever happen to work for a crazy entrepreneur or do something of your own. 

#1- You look for freebies everywhere. Whether it is a free tool used for monitoring online or a free venue for your event; it goes unsaid free things are the way to go. If it isn't free, it isn't worth it! 

#2- Work hours mean nothing to you.

You forget the two B's essential for any workforce- balance and boundaries. You spend hours at what you call your office and include anyone and everyone who knows you in what you are doing. Even if people are not interested or tired, you make sure the conversation somehow leads to what you are currently doing. 

#3- You look at fancy offices and say - SOMEDAY! 

Since, work for you means the nearest coffee shop or the study at your place, meeting people in their lush offices does not stop you from instantly picturing yourself sitting on their comfy chair. 

#4- You wonder - why doesn't everyone feel about their work the way you do? 

The answer to that is that they aren't maniacs like you are and they actually have a LIFE! So yeah, when you meet one of those normal workers, don't be surprised to know about the exciting things in their life when all you want to talk about is your idea! 

#5- You become shameless. 

Yes, shameless is the word. You are not hassled to talk to anyone whether it is at a bar or a shopping mall and ask them for their numbers. If someone you think can help you in someway, there is nothing that comes in your way to approach them. 

#6- Your gf/bf (if in a normal job) hate you and your family thinks that you aren't really going for "work".

I have witnessed this first hand- getting out of the car outside a coffee shop all the way in Gurgaon or my boss's house always made my driver wonder what I was doing there for hours! He would tell my mother - "I don't know where she goes and what she does so you speak to her!" And my mother would have a stereotypical response-"abhi enjoy kar rahi hain, karne do". To such conversations, you just want to say - "enjoy?!, seriously?". 

Whatever said and done, the accomplishment you feel by being a part of something that gives you the feeling of owning even the tiniest of things that you do without support from others is priceless. 

Will miss you - until further notice.

They say you only realise how much you miss someone/something when you lose them. Well I didn't really believe in this so-called rule of love and separation. I like taking things for granted especially when I have given them due time, attention and affection.

But recently when it actually happened to me, I was dumbfounded. I was dreaming, day and night indeed. Dreaming of access to that one thing that I had taken for granted for the longest time.

I can't actually recall it but my family reminds me of this incident time and time again. I was about 2 and half years old when I got a terrible asthma attack. It was like in the movies, the patient lies in the ICU while the family stares through that absurd round window in the door, weeping to bits. So apparently when I first came to my senses, I had asked for what I had been missing all this while. 

Yes, I try to spend time with others but I hate it when they just can't match the comfort level I felt with the one I am trying to get over. The feeling that could turn scorching Tuesday afternoons to spring breeze and wake me up like a shot of caffeine is gone, gone until further notice. So one can imagine my attachment to it. 

Moving on is tough but trying is not. So here I am trying new things, giving up hope on things that I have left behind. But my fizzy, cold glass of diet coke with a slice of lime - nothing like you will I ever find! 

Overnight Celebrity

 Is it luck or simply one's genius - one day you're just any one and next you're like no one else. The concept of ordinary people making it big really fascinates me. Why is it that some of us just have that factor in us to shine and others don't? To be very precise, I do not perceive cinematic success the only benchmark for success but celebrity to me is anyone who has made a great mark in their respective fields of study, business, art etc.

Now look at Shahrukh Khan; my mother recalls seeing him during her college days just like yet another guy on DU campus and now she is a die hard fan! What did he do right that hundreds in the Drama club didn't do? Bump into the right people who recognised his potential or just worked so hard that there was no choice? In one of his episodes of the show - Living with a Superstar, he says - "To be successful, one needs to breathe belief, eat belief, drink belief. Believe in what you want, what you desire and you'll succeed." But don't we all do that? I mean I have seldom met a person who is doing something that he/she doesn't believe in. Then what does one attribute his success to?

More than belief, I think it is the unimaginable perseverance. To me the relation between effort and success follows Hooke's Law as applicable to elastic bodies.

In layman terms, Hooke's Law states the relationship between force applied on a spring and the deformation it suffers due to that force.

I'm sure all of us have looked at an elastic spring. You press it and it bounces back. What I think is that all of us have been granted that elastic strength but a lot of us or for that matter, most of us break before we reach the phase of permanent deformation (In spring terms, when you press it and it would permanently lose its elasticity).

Using SRK's example once again, he lost his parents, lived alone, wasn't well off to afford a decent standard of living and I'm sure had matters beyond his control trying to wreck his efforts. Or take the example of Thomas Edison, he came from a poor background, was declared "slow" at school, lost hearing ability and sold newspapers at a young age. What such instances provoke me to think is that there is this driving force that one needs to surpass what so ever life puts you through without suffering permanent deformation.

It could be anything - personal satisfaction, love for the work one is doing, immeasurable desire to succeed for a loved one or just conditions that leave you with no option but to keep going.

Looking at the competitive landscape we work in, promotion to a higher position in the hierarchy is considered success. But to that one person for whom that success is a mere decoration and a reason to move ahead, there is no looking back. 

Hyper-connectivity. Amen.

Adjusting the on-the-go playlist on my ipod, checking email on the blackberry, finishing a presentation on my laptop and not to forget occasionally staring at the novel in my Damier check tote waiting to be "held". I found myself trapped in the car breathing "devices"; scared to the bone by my ability to coordinate using all of them at the same time without a glitch.

Instantly, my conscious came into play and I grasped "100 Dollar Start Ups" lying ignored in my bag. Almost immediately, I convinced myself that listening to some music couldn't do any harm and plugged in my pod. I barely finished couple pages when my hands started itching to touch the qwerty keypad of my Blackberry! I resisted the temptation; almost meditated (concentrated on my breathing and all that jazz). No luck! I held my phone and it felt like 'Pi' after being trapped 277 days reached ashore and touched the warm sand! An email about some deadline and there it was; back to my laptop.  Back to square one.

Blame hyper-connectivity! It is almost like the device doesn't require our touch to function but our touch requires the device to function! Why is that knowing everything has become so vital? I know there were times when an entire village knew what was going on in one tiny hut at the other end(especially if it was gossip). But that was the fun bit I suppose - the finding out and the manipulation of news as it traveled. Now what we have are: brief sentences, no punctuation and minimum emotion!

We, the baby manufacturing machines!

Running around in the unknown territory of a government hospital for someone I am not remotely related to has given me a sense of relief like no other.
I was out having high tea on a particularly idle Sunday when I decided to go back home early. My driver, V who has been working with us for over a year called in the most disturbed voice saying -  "hume nikaal diya" (They turned us out)! I didn't really understand why his wife who was in full-time labour be turned out of a private hospital at such a crucial time. I tried to ask him why, but fancy words dropped by the doctor about a certain complication were far from being comprehended by this man who drove a rickshaw since he was 15!

I asked him - "paisa ka problem hain kya?" (Did you not enough money?). He said he assured them that money wouldn't be a problem but still they asked him to take his wife to a government hospital.
He rushed her to a nearby government hospital and called me from there saying they were not accepting her admission too.

I was appalled! Do government hospitals not cater to complications or people like him don't have complications at all! That's when my aunt and I decided that sitting at home and trying to help him over the phone wouldn't help. We went to same hospital where he was being denied admission. It was a dead place with casualty cases all over the compound. Never in my life had I thought that I would have strength to walk through such a place. It also cleared a massive delusion in my head that one day I could be a doctor!

He was there outside the OPD trying to get his wife admitted for medical attention! They failed to make him understand that it was the emergency room he was looking for.  We guided him to the emergency room where they readily took her in and asked us to take her to the labour room.

This room was one floor up so for obvious reasons I requested for a wheel chair service for the girl in labour. That was considered an absolute impossibility as I got stares from people screaming - "don't you know women are baby manufacturing machines? She will be okay to walk". We had no time to argue and hence, slow and steady we got her to what they called the "labour room". It was more like a untidy dorm room where no one had a clue about what's going on.

The gynaecologist incharge was nowhere in the vicinity and this 10-12 bed place full of women absolutely ready to shoot out babies was being attended by tiny interns who were manually dividing the number of days by 8 to see how many weeks has it been for everyone.  When their multiple choice ticking ordeal to decide the number of weeks was over, we showed one of them her latest ultrasound report. The lady leisurely looked at it and started copying it word by word in what looked like her bible. It was getting too much to handle, so my aunt just followed her to the reporting doctor who of course was not slightly perturbed by the piling cases that needed her attention.

We had to drop a few names as my grandmother used to be a known gynaecologist in the area to get her to move her butt. First thing she looks at the patient and says - "kya problem hai? (What's the problem?). Seriously? If we/the girl knew what the problem was, why would we need her at all! My driver, V tried to come into the room several times but apparently men weren't allowed inside. Well, I thought to myself it is only in India that a man who is equally responsible for getting the girl into a situation like that is not expected to share the pain with her.

Finally, the doc ran a few regular checks and told us that it was a little late and she would have to operate on her and the chances of survival of the baby were slim. That's when I went out and stood with V. He was scared. The good part was he was less scared about the baby but more tensed about his wife in pain. I told him it wasn't going to be easy and he just kept trying to peep into the tiny opening to catch a glimpse of his wife.

I realised the feeling one gets being a parent has nothing to do with how rich or poor you are. At that moment, everything just becomes the same. The pain of watching someone close to you suffer dilutes all differences that we as humas have created.
Nevertheless, we left them there at midnight and couldn't sleep all night thinking about what the outcome of the operation would be. Finally, we gave up on waiting to hear from him and called him expecting bad news. To our surprise, we heard - "ladki hua, abhi hua" (It's a girl). I don't think I have felt that sense of relief ever before. And I kept repeating It in my head - "it's a girl! , it's a girl!". Phew.

Piece of cloth or a semi pressed animal?

Have you ever noticed while driving down on a fairly empty road, these rugged things or pieces of crap lying aimlessly. Black or brown due to the pollution and dirt brought by vehicles, to me these seemed like maybe injured animals from far off. Maybe highway road trips I took as I kid have instilled this thought - I used to without fail look back at every piece like that on the road and sometimes it was actually a semi-pressed cat or dog that probably tried to cross the road without caution. Fear or the sub-memory thought of those injured animals makes me leap every single time I notice such a disturbing thing lying on the road.

My utterly active mind especially when it comes to things that don't actually require so much over-thinking doesn't leave this instance to imagine the worse. I used to think to myself -  where did this piece come from? Has it traveled a lot? Maybe it was a part of someone's wardrobe. Maybe a dupatta? I don't know it used to leave me a bit intrigued about the history of those pieces and where they came from. A very similar thing happens to me  when I sit in an airplane. I used to look down during take off and wonder where the lights were coming from until there was complete darkness. Especially while traveling when you come across barren areas with just a light or two visible - I used to ponder about what those prime lights could be illuminating. Could the lights be coming from a house? Are people around that light able to this plane?

It might sound shocking to some but I have this incessant habit of keeping things that mean absolutely nothing apart from the fact that someday sometime I happened to find them somewhere and they looked fascinating. I know it can be formally referred to as hoarding by the way I explained but actually things that I am mentioning here are the most unimportant tiny ones that I link my memories to. Say a napkin I found with a note for someone in London, a bottle that looked stunning but was abandoned, pink paper clips stained due to paint, tickets to the show I never attended etc. I just think we come in touch with things or even people for a reason. The reason may not be entirely clear initially but as time passes I think one might find a connect. For example - the ticket of the show I missed reminds me every day that I still haven't seen it! Or the bottle - it instantly takes me back to the moment in London when I missed the 12am train and was stranded. Everything teaches me a lesson or brings a smile across my face.