Lallopallo tagged me about a month ago. In the meantime, I tried to read a book and watch a movie to be able to answer every question, but couldn’t. Sorry lalloplallo for being so late on this.

1. Last movie you saw in a theater?

Having stayed active on quite a few online forums for many years, I had always taken words for granted, until I was rudely awakened just recently.  In an online exchange, I was being slightly misread by someone. I posted something, and got a response that was, to put it mildly, unexpected. I tried to salvage the situation with a humorous tilt (at least, I thought it was humorous), and there I was hit by another straight-slap-in-the-face of a response. I felt hurt, and simultaneously could feel the pain I must have caused at the other end. Feeling sorry, I was sure that any clarifications will further exacerbate the bitterness of the moment.  

In that one moment, so many instances where I had somehow deliberately evoked emotions online, flashed in my mind. Looking back, I now feel really sorry for all those who had silently drifted away from my virtual life, after those last exchanges which I had taken as virtual victories (sort of). I am now sure that most of them went quietly away, only because they knew that talking beyond the point would lead to further misunderstandings, hurt, and humiliation.

A little too late, but I have realized the full impact of virtual words. Virtual, but the pain can be real, and may give someone a sleepless night without you even knowing it!

We are monkeys to Darwin, sex maniac donkeys to Freud, a hierarchical bunch of selfish needies to Maslow, and are yet to be explored, and further explained. Everyone takes us for a ride with his own expertise, experiences, experiments, estimates, philosophies, theories, readings, hypothesis, findings, guesswork, and nonsense.  

Everyday we come by some final word on our wellbeing, happiness, spirituality, religiosity, behavior, values, attitudes, self esteem, fears, illnesses, sufferings, and everything in between, to be nullified by yet another paper by yet another polymath. Everything is hocus-focus, getting more tormenting by the moment, with more warnings, fears, doubts, qualms, suspicions, cautions, and gibberish of all assortments.  

Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge sucks.

This is the age of super talkers; talkers, talkers, and more talkers. They stalk us everywhere in the office, at the barber’s, on the go, and even in our own drawing rooms. TV, FM, or the net. We get them in the millions, all always talking and all making little sense.

In no time, talking has emerged into a multi-billion dollar industry. Only in Pakistan, they proudly and repeatedly remind us that we have got more than 50 channels – more than 50 table chair channels! All right, they may be channels in the eyes of the famous-for-its-ordinance PEMRA, but to an average entertainment starved, frustrated and tired viewer that I am, they are source of little entertainment and more frustration. If simply putting tables and chairs together and making idiots with oral diarrhea sit around and chatter, makes a studio room a TV channel, why have only 50? Why not fifty thousand, five hundred and fifty five!

But what drives these talkers to chatter ceaselessly, all day and all night?

The more I think, the more I am assured that these so-called programme hosts and their half witted talking heads are out there really and only to entertain their own selves. Yes. The sadists they are, they get pleasure from the mental torture they inflict upon our minds and souls. The same must also go for the so many writers and DJs, who itch to write and talk, mostly nonsense, in tones as if they were the saviors of mankind, the beholders of high morals, the purveyors of social justice, and the experts in everything on the face of this earth.

Ever heard a film actress talking of modesty? I have. Ever seen a massive former Punjabi film actress trying to teach the virtues of dieting? You soon will.

It is not that I am against the freedom of speech, since even if I was, acknowledging that would be politically incorrect and disastrous for the purpose of this page, which I dream will one day be counted among the top talkers from Pakistan. Yes, I am eagerly looking forward to establish myself as talker rather than be the lame-duck listener that I am and suffer in silence the unbearable rant of every Tom and Mrs.  

Moral: Talking is the best source of entertainment, listening to others bull is the worst kind of boredom.