Peer pressure

Gone are the days when I used to count the minutes and seconds to  6 o'clock so that I can get up and start my chores. Now I count the minutes and seconds to 5 o'clock. Talk about old people and their early mornings. 

But the good part is, I don't fret much about awake-ness(not to confused with wokeness)  or I don't feel tired the next morning. So my body  is OK with early mornings. 

I also don't worry about what to do- what to do in these hours, (unlike evenings) when the world is in great slumber and only very few unfortunate ones start their day. I take up my laptop and start some kind of creative work (read either coding - or proofreading my sites/blogs etc). Only on some days, I open  online shopping sites. Does not end well. After hours of browsing, I just close the window and realize that was a bad way of wasting time. Even worse than Netflix or even worse than youtube shorts. 

Now I should talk about some kind of arthritis problem of mine - knee pain is quite popular. No, I won't. Since I have started my irregular walks, my knees have subdued.  Instead let me talk about the nice set of stories I have been reading by George Saunders. 

Semplica Girl Diaries is a story about a lower middle class man, struggling to provide a better future for his children. So that they don't feel lesser than their friends. Now this keeping up appearances - keeping up with your peers and worrying about constantly, was according to me, a middle class woman phenomenon. Looks like even men are infected by this.

All these friends and their parents are rich and they have SGs in their beautiful yards. SG is a semplica girl - a semi-human decoration for the gardens - girls from poor countries who are brought here and a chip is inserted in their temple and they are mounted on some poles in the garden. Gruesome! 

But people don't think so. It's symbol of prestige to have SGs in your yard.

But his young daughter does not think so and she is very depressed when this man brings  4 SGs to their yard. 

Now the problem with grown ups is they accept anything, almost anything, if they see majority of people are support it. But not the children - they see facts as they are. They don''t feel the need to follow the herd.

Let me quote a meme here

" राजा ने कहा रात है 

रानी ने कहा रात है 

मंत्री ने कहा रात है 

सुबह सुबह की तो  बात है "

Also let me bring up the discussion few talk show hosts were having, about the deteriorating political situations in their respective countries - UK and USA. One was saying "I wanted to be the little boy who tells everyone, that emperor is not wearing anything. But now not only does the emperor emphatically says he is wearing a beautiful suit, many people keep saying with lot of conviction, that they can see emperor's new beautiful suit and they just adore it".

Such is the world. Such is the power of internet and social media, which were supposed to make people intelligent and learned.

But hum kya kar sakte hain? We can only be witness - sakshi to this mania.