This note is for my friends Sarvani Gooptu and Morihiro Ogasahara, both of whom I met through Rakesh Batabyal, also on my friend’s list in the facebook. Rakesh is a maverick adacemicians who believes that good minds must mingle as friends for good scholarship to emerge and Mahalakshmi, his wife and he try to get as many of us to meet up andbecome friends. Sarvani and Ogasahara are such friends. They and I share an important common interest – the facebook. Sarvani and I are fairly regulars on the site while Ogasan and I share a sociological interest in the pattern of its use, the sociological profile of its users and the uses that they intend to put the facebook into. Now that Sarvani made such a statement as her status that people think that she is into facebook because she has nothing else to do made me want to write this note.

I am into facebook. The days I have nothing to do, I do not open the facebook; the reason is that I don’t get to open my computer because I am not doing anything. I use the Internet for everything; my quick reference, my news, my music site, my dictionary and now with facebook, also a way to always track those who are always on my mind. Madhusree gets put off by so many people always hanging around, I am assured to know that all my loved ones, friends, friends of friends, nieces away in the south, nephews locked in deep mining areas, cousins working their heads and hearts off, their children with fever and stomache are all fine and all very well. Long lost housewife friend calls me, she is bored; but I am too busy to take her call and I know when bored friends call me such calls can last over three fourth of an hour. Come to the facebook, I tell them because a comment on the face book which takes only a few seconds has the impact of an hour long deep chat. Uncle complaints that I do not visit him; who says, I defend myself to him, don’t I chat with your daughter in the USA everyday. Uncle is assured and is even pleased. Facebook helps me socialize more intensely at a remarkably short span of time.

I have the facebook on all the time while I am working. Whenever I am bored I visit it, responding to comments, reading poetry, listening to music and use that visitation to catch my breath for a renewed engagement with my work. As I am writing this short note, I have already visited the FB once and this has helped me regain my concentration without going for that cup of tea that would have taken at least five minutes to prepare. Harder I work, more into the facebook I am, because harder work means the Internet, which means the facebook.

But there is another thing to it; the facebook makes me very comfortable as I feel that I am with my familiar world all the time, the corridors of school, the portico of college, the walks in the University, the alleys of old localities where cousins lived and in that home that grandfather had but sold to tide over an eventual penury. Nothing seems to be lost, all is regained in this site; this helps memories, as much as identities, as much as one’s sense of self. These contribute intensely towards our performance by creating psychological security. At least, I draw a lot from my surroundings, the facebook is one by which my environment becomes teeming with voices, merriment and dialogue, helping me to find enough peace to concentrate better and deeper and deliver assignments before deadlines.

Hail Sarvani !!

I hope this will be helpful to Ogasahara.