A Small World

Yes, we all know how the internet has made the world smaller and more connected and more accessible, and yes everything is “a click away” and all that rot. But when this cliché hits you like a bullet rattling a can, you suddenly start to realize how small this 510,065,600 km² of Earth is.

Facebook is God. It keeps outdoing itself, and is one of the main reasons as to why this world has shrunk. Having gotten admission at University of Texas-Austin, I decided to “Facebook” potential university-mates. I quite easily bounced upon a few Facebook Groups – “UT Class of 2011”, “UT Internationals”, “UT Desis” and so on, which basicallty consisted of similar direction-ed people. Exciting. Very exciting. Obviously, the obvious formalities with a few obviously random people were exchanged [obviously, a little more with the opposite sex]. And obviously, everyone part of this “exchange” was trying to figure out how exactly the other is. Is he/she a player? Smart? Stupid? Attitude-filled? Boring? Fun? Interesting, but-keep-your-distance type? Gay? Loud? Over-enthusiastic? Potential-filled? Cute? Ugly? Yup, it’s bloody exciting. But then there is always a limit to how much you can get from a few typed messages and with a few looking-good pictures of people. However it does make you feel [or rather, will make me feel] a little less of a stranger when you do land into “the new world”.

All this is all “cool and all” and fine, the world is “small” and all, bla bla, but it’s when you start finding weird connections with the most random people that makes the “small world” theory a lot more interesting. I found this person, who lived most of her life in Dubai, moved to Texas a while ago and is going to the same university as me. I didn’t know her when she was here, but Udai did, and a few more of my decently close friends also did. Hell we already have something in common! Then this other dude, who is currently in Bahrain, and is going to UT-Austin, knows a long lost random friend of mine who I was once half close to. Apparently the dude and this long lost friend knew each other in Bahrain when they were babies [somehow]. Wow. See, it’s fascinating. Oh, and Facebook also helped me come across a person residing in Dubai heading for UT, and she turned out to be a friend of a friend! WOW. These things blow me away. The world is bloody small. It is weirdly interconnected, perfectly imperfect and it never fails to amuse. Yeah I know I have said this more than enough already but all this makes the future bloody exciting. It’s exciting to restart your life, re-build your reputation and meet a whole new breed of people, and clash with a whole new type of life.

Tejas then made everything a little emotional. I was Facebooking – going through fellow Longhorns, when he said, ‘Shit Anish, in a year or two, you are gonna be hanging out with those people [pointing to the screen]. They are gonna be your new Romits, Alis, Harrys and Tejases, and we are gonna be heading down our own paths, with only memories binding us together.’

Apart from being small, the world also moves bloody fast.

P.S. The last “fast” bit would be more appropriate with respect to life, but hey, I needed to connect things. Also, the late post is because I have weirdly, crazily busy doing work, and also tossing a bit of fun in the mix. And also, I used “bloody” 4 times. Sorry Didi!