A story called ORKUT

"Orkut". My first meeting with this word was in 2nd year of graduation, when one of my friends from Pilani exclaimed saying " You are still not on Orkut ?" with a pitying look usually reserved for endangered animals. I wondered if I was missing something in life! Strange thoughts arose in my brain asking myself if I was so lame not to have known about some thing that is so very obvious for every one else or was I an educated nescient not to have known if he was speaking English, when he said "Orkut". "How ancient can you get?" said my conscience. Later, I was sent an invite to create a profile in this "about to become famous community". Stung by his critical tone I went online that very day and fashioned a new identity for myself on a site whose meaning I still don't know. It took me a while to study and know something about what actually Orkut was. Though I had a profile created, I was playing a spectator instead of a full-fledged addicted Orkut user for 2 years, attributed to the availability of internet facilities at college those days and the minuscule number of friends I had online to interact with. The saga of the journey of Orkut accompanied by cyber-silliness actually started when I forayed in to this IT sector. Since then Orkuting has become the verb used daily. At office you see the ubiquitous Orkut windows open all the time, no wonder the RDC att communications reported the Orkut site as the second most visited site only after Google mail. The gradual transformation of the "stages of orkutting" as I call, have left me with an opinion of useful-nonsense on orkut as I jot. The qualitative changes as I observed in myself on a retrospect varied from a mere visitor to orkut my passion to addicted to orkut to stingy orkut to utterly useless orkut to waste of time on orkut to I hate orkuting. No doubt orkut has helped me meet a lot of my old pals from my school and college days with whom I lost connection, but means of communication with them, through orkut I thought is not a very good medium. On Orkut, it's your calling card. And failure to leave one elicits responses like 'How dare you visit my profile and not leave a scrap?' and land you in trouble. Agree that it is more convenient than a mail. But it is also much less private. You can be as prolific as you want and portray your self as next to any Hollywood star or a President of country or what ever, on your orkut profile. This is one thing that I didn’t like, since a person cannot be judged of his identity based on his profile. You may end up anywhere, I mean anywhere! I also feel that the Dictionaries have the right time arrived for them to update the meanings of words. No longer is a 'scrap' something a dog gets after dinner [:p]. The dollar dreams of the persons who got this innovative idea to implement, have been fulfilled but after-effects are ignored by mere sentence "Conditions apply" with a * mark at some place in the agreement where we click I AGREE button when we create a profile on this "Now famous Orkut" I am sure! So be ware buddies its as addictive as a Rehman's tune.