Farewell to Orkut

Remember those heady days of sending scraps and giving testimonials? We had just graduated from mass emails and chatting on Yahoo messenger and Orkut was waiting for us. We didn’t have names on Orkut, we had names with special characters. Remember friends who called themselves R@nnd$$, arbaz my sweetie u r so kewl’? Instead of walls and timelines, we, good old oldies had scraps (from scrapbooks that we pathetic creatures used in school?). And the ‘friend requests’! Or should I say ‘making frandship’ scraps!!

 Today, 30^th of September, Google is shutting down Orkut and there have been many a tearful farewells to the once extremely popular site in India. “Thanks for helping us showoff when we needed the most” says a tweet.  “GrandPaa! Thanks for making stalking so easy... ;)” says another. “R.I.P. #Orkut. You did good in your age and time. Thanks for giving me only good memories! :)”… “Someone give him param veer chakra :P”…”I got laid for the first time via #Orkut L”… Among the various eulogies, shining bright is Misguided Bramhastra, a song composed for Orkut’s demise. If you are not crying by now, you will surely be weeping by the time the song ends with “It’s time for you to lie six feet underground”. Crying for relief that the song’s ended, that is.

In 2003, Google offered $30 million bucks for Friendster, one of the very first social networking sites founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams. (Remember Napster, the godfather of sharing music with pals? Well, add friend to that.) Once declined, Orkut was ready to happen. 

On 24 January 2004, Orkut was launched by Google on a single server, that was not even its own. It was built by Google employee and former Stanford graduate Orkut Buyukkokten. Building it entirely on his own, Orkut used whatever tools and servers were available to him, most non-Google. It took some time for Google to even acknowledge it as its own but it did and Orkut took the world (Well, Brazil and India) by storm. India was completely and absolutely besotted with this new social networking baby. So much so it even got the 2007 MTV India Youth Icon award. When you saw the ‘Recent visited’ names, you got a thrill. Don’t deny it, you did! We changed the theme of our page often (Of course we had nothing else to do. There was no Facebook then!)

Why Orkut did not work finally has many answers. Maybe it had become too shady, too full of porn profiles with false names, too full of mass scraps (Remember the million ‘Good morning’ scraps you used to get?) and too full of hate groups. The main ‘maybe’ was, however, Facebook. Also founded in 2004, just a few days after Orkut, Facebook hit us hard around 2009. By 2010, Orkut was unofficially quite ‘six feet under’.

As I go through my scraps a last time, I come across gems from friends (and no, we can’t see what gems we ourselves have sent to others!!). Some made me smile, some cringe and all made me nostalgic. Go check out Orkut one last time if you haven’t already. Download whatever you have there and bid farewell to an old friend, or old Fr@@nd, rather. We’ll miss you.

Kabir

Reading Kabir today...feel so connected when I read his verses...Here are some:

Jaise Til Mein Tel Hai, Jyon Chakmak Mein Aag
Tera Sayeen Tujh Mein Hai, Tu Jaag Sake To Jaag
Just as there is oil in the sesame seed, and fire in the flint stone
your beloved is inside you, awaken if you can!
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Kabira Garv Na Keejiye, Uncha Dekh Aavaas
Kaal Paron Bhuin Letna, Ooper Jamsi Ghaas
Don't be proud Kabira, by the sight of your high mansion
Tomorrow you will have to lie on the earth, and above there will be wild grass
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Jab Mein Tha Tab Hari Nahin‚ Jab Hari Hai Mein Nahin
Sab Andhiyara Mit Gaya‚ Jab Deepak Dekhya Mahin
When I exist, my Lord does not
when my Lord exists, I do not
All darkness was removed, when I saw the light!
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'Eating out' at midnight...

Sanjib came home around eleven on saturday and for a change, he wanted to go out! Arjun and I, though almost on the verge of falling off to a dreamless sleep, did not give him a chance for second thoughts...

At this hour, in the place where we stay, it was not likely that we would find anything or anyone on the roads. "Let's take along a couple of hot cases", said Sanjib, "Just in case we find a dhaba open." We went off in the general direction of a old, derelict 'dhaba' that goes by the name of 'Baba Hotel'. turns out it was about to close but more than happy to pack some dal tarka and make some 'Alu subzi' for us to take home.

We reached home around 1 at night and needless to say, both the dal tarka and the 'alu' was finger-lickin' good!

O Calcutta!

We just got back from a short trip to Kolkata and I have a number of tales to tell... Kolkata is a place which has been so oft written about that everything you write is almost bound to be passe. However, at the same time, it is also a place that lends itself to new discoveries everytime you visit it. This time my visit to the city of joy was a bonus... Sanjib was part of one of the company golf teams for the Merchant cup golf in the city and spouses got to go along...what fun! The weather, unlike every other time, was very pleasant.

As soon as we landed and checked into our hotel (that's HHI, or Hotel Hindustan International), Sanjib went off to 'check the course' and Arjun and I went off to check Oxford book store. It is not easy shopping with a 2.5-year-old, especially when you are looking for books. We ended up getting 4 books for him and none for me! I had a couple of other things that i had to do in Cal...one was visit Kalighat, which I did very early one morning. The roads were clear, people were jogging and near the temple, flower sellers were beginning to spread out their ware...It was beautiful. Kalighat is a Shakti pith, where a part of the body of Sati, cut off by Vishnu's disc, fell. The image of the goddess is so powerful that the first time I saw it I almost got a shock!

The second thing on my agenda was to buy some handicrafts. I usually visit Swabhumi for this (Swabhumi is something similar to Dilli Haat in New Delhi, a crafts 'centre' where you find a number of local and traditional craftsmen under one roof along with food), however this time I saw an adevrtisment for a place called 'Sasha' and decided to visit it. It was a nice place in Free School St. but I expected a lot more crafts from Bengal. Instead what i found was crafts from across the country. Unlike Swabhumi where I could pick up a lot of lovely jewellery and terracotta goods for very low prices, here the choice was not much and i also found the prices slightly high.

Now comes the fun part...food! I love eating out whenever we visit some place and usually build up some favourites places to visit everytime. However this time, there was a change int his as well. Apart from breakfast, which was on the house, one meal in a day (either lunch or dinner) was given by the hotel. We thus had beautiful five-star twice a day and had either lunch or dinner outside. Sanjib was in the mood for Bengali food and we discovered two lovely Bengali restaurants. The first is Kewpie's (2, Elgin Lane), opposite Forum. This is a beautiful quaint resturant with a wonderful owner. The second is Prince, in Free School st. The place is exactly like its name, the Bengali equivalent of a Punjabi dhaba, with plates slammed down in front of you and dal spilling from the bowls, but the food...it was absolutely tasty and hot and exactly what you would get in a Bengali home.

There are a couple of things I learnt ont his trip: If you are travelling with a child, and staying at a five star, buy (from outside, of course)and keep the following things handy: A packet of bread, a packet of milk, a jar of cheese spread and some jam. Arjun's been travelling with me ever since he was four months old and I always carry his food with me. This time, since it was a short trip, (I gave it a miss) and somehow Arjun really did not enjoy his food, delicious though it was. A cheese sandwich is something that I always fall back on in times like this and the HHI cheese sandwiches (three slices of bread with two cheese slices between them) cost me Rs 350 each!!! Internet too is very expensive for someone like me who's used to getting it at so much less: it was Rs 95 for half an hour! I also missed all the evening functions at RCGC (the Royal Calcutta Golf Club- pic on the left) because I felt very guilty about spending so much money on baby sitters (Rs 1000 per hour!) ...

Sanjib's birthday was celebrated en route on the plane with the crew making an anouncement and everybody cheering him as he stood up, red in the face.

Calcutta was a fun trip for us!