I wrote this for The Times of India. The original story is here : http://bit.ly/aFTxH5

The chief minister of Maharashtra may soon declare a holiday for a new celebration, the ‘Washing Lenin Festival’. Befuddled? So were we. But blame it on Ritiesh Deshmukh. A few days ago, the actor tweeted, ‘’Most families don’t wash their Dirty Lenin in public’’. Don’t castigate Deshmukh. After all he does have political genes and they were sure to affect him some day.

If you are famous then your tweets have more followers. Only a skilled Piped Piper can lure the tweeple over a cliff and into a stormy sea. And celebrity Twitter followers are often at sea with their spello-studded tweets.

Virender Sehwag can be quite cryptic online. The cricketer regularly posts musings about life and love on the forum, but his followers were taken aback when he once posted: ‘’Living is very simple..loving is simple.. wining is also simple..laughing is too simple..but, being SIMPLE is very difficult!’’. Did he mean whining or wining as in ‘wining and dining’? It has to be one of these two connotations since the Indian cricketers excel at both these W words only. The verb winning, on the other hand, does not figure in their vocabulary. It is only mentioned sotto voce, so it cannot possibly figure in Sehwag’s tweet.

With Twitter going mainstream, every side heroine and spot boy seems to have a real-time page of their own. While some outsource this work to their PR army, others prefer connecting with their fans themselves. The celebrities that choose to update their own profiles without any interference from those boring image-correcting middlemen are every eavesdroppers’ delight. Every time that hidden flaw surfaces, fans feel more connected to their idol. They curse the media for sanitising grammatical errors and spellos that their idols make.

Today, Twitter is saturated with bigwigs scaling a vast range from the wannabes to the comebacks and the ones ruling the roost. Every time they take a false step, their followers are adventitiously amused.

Sameera Reddy who is learning how to ride a bike was so excited that her tweet was full of vigour. “Its invigourating! What an amazing sense of freedom on the road!Graduated to a pulsur 2day!’’. After landing at the international airport in Mumbai, and in a vulnerable state of mind she posted, “Landed at intl airport-can’t change ppls opinion of Mumbai-Overheard some foriegners say it’s smelly & dirty! It’s home & I’m glad to be bck!’’.

Another entertainer who doesn’t cease to amuse is Chunkay Punday, sorry, Chunkey Pandey. His last gem read, ‘’Started d match, we’r feilding. actually i am also handling commentry along with the feilding ’’.

Yuvraj Singh had people guessing with his arcane words when he tweeted, ‘’Can’t sleep too excited to go to windies ! Goin to the gym chocalate for breakfast yummyy! Oh by the way goodmornin everyone rise and shine!’’.

The verified and very official account of Shilpa Shetty, a dance addict, wished her ‘tweetos’ a “Happy Independance Day’’.

Her contemporary Ayesha Takia has diets on her mind and it shows in her tweets. She once tweeted, “My spot boy immidietly said ,madam neeche raste pe dus rupey ka do milega,400 rupey mein party!! Hahahahaahahhaahha!! How much v hav laughd’’. Also wine is on her mind and is reflected in this tweet, “Farhan has been lighting OUDH (agar wood) in the house!!smells devine!!if only v cud send smell tweets id send it 2 all of u!!hahahahahah!’’.

Shahid Kapoor experienced a meteoric rise on the popularity ladder after he tweeted, “Sonams bday today ….. Wonderful girl .. With the sweetest smile … Wishing her good luck n good health .. Sure she will do her parents’’.

But everyone’s favourite entertainer on Twitter, Salman Khan who is being himself, has unwittingly revealed his love for the apostrophe (which incidentally is a symbol for belonging to). “Y am I not tweeting for the past 3 day’s?’’ he asks his followers. All one can say is that hope’s that’s all’s well’s that end’s well.

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It was my Twitter friend who introduced me to chatroulette.com, the new internet sensation and brainchild of 17-year-old Russian student Andrey Ternovskiy. It’s a simple enough contraption — no registration, no user names or passwords, just cam-to-cam conversations at the click of a mouse. The disconcerting part: the person in the webcam opposite you could be anyone anywhere in the world, one of the 1.5 million strangers who visits the free service everyday.

Journalistic obligations compelled me to connect, with some amount of trepidation. It isn’t easy being transported face-to-face into a random stranger’s domain. But it had to be done.

A few clicks had me reeling through a kaleidoscope of humanity. I met teen boys looking for boobs, a white-haired citizen breaking into a song, a gang of cheerleaders doing a shimmy, rooms of inebriated people grinning, and talking cameras pointed at pillows. With every consecutive ‘Next’ click, I came upon strange people talking strange languages, armed with props, puppets and pets; disguised with masks, wigs, sunglasses and superhero costumes. I was transported to bedrooms, dormitories, offices, kitchens and dark corners.

Two boys, tucked under a blanket, on a bed with the flag of Turkey in the background asked me where I was from. They then came closer to the camera and whispered, ‘Can you do webcam show?’ Obligingly, I swayed my head and started singing Strange Love. A few seconds later, I was singing to a blank black screen. I had been nexted.

Nexting is a verb. You get nexted when the stranger on the other side brutally clicks the ‘New game’ or ‘Next’ button immediately after seeing you (I later realised the boys were looking for a different kind of show). Mutual predilection keeps roulette exchanges going until one party decides to depart, and to my consternation, most of my conversations lasted for a fleeting few seconds, as I was ‘nexted’ by 16 people in two minutes.

Rejection hurt. It felt like I had lost my mojo and muchness. Girls didn’t want to talk to me, the boys asked me to put up performances and racists disconnected after I told them I was from India. And then there were those who I nexted. Like every chatroom, this site streams its share of sleaze from around the world. It’s a flasher’s hotspot and you may chance upon a macho type doing a full monty and other unmentionable acts. Statutory warning: To avoid embarrassment it is advisable not to chatroulette at work.

All this talk with strangers and randomness brought back teenage memories of Yahoo chatrooms where every conversation started with the ASL (age, sex, location) question, everyone had a pseudonym and anonymous role-playing was savoured. But then everything’s not a secret on the site. Another service called chatroulettemap pins screenshots of the site’s users to a map using their IP address and geolocation tools.

Having being nexted too many times, I decided to don a colourful wig and look alluring. A cryptic façade, I figured, might help me gel a little better with the demanding strangers. It worked wonders. My next encounter lasted for six whole minutes. We didn’t talk, just stared into each other’s eyes. Fido looked debonair. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a bow tie. But a few incomprehensible barks later, I was bored and decided it was time to wave out, and say goodbye to Fido the pug and his master who only stood behind, giggling at the advances we were making.

At 2 am, IST, the only time I can surf the web without someone peeping at my screen, I met WB Yeats from Toronto. He ended every line in a rhyme and thought his words were sublime. The game got better with every click and I have to admit, I have become a Chatroulette addict. It’s a great break from the mundane text and photo talk on Facebook and Twitter.

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Participants were encouraged to use the #sapling tag on networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us and Technorati. An award awaits the participant whose sapling grows the tallest at the fastest rate. The group plans to plant 10,000 saplings to the city by 2010.

The citizens’ initiative has been called The Sapling Project (www.thesaplingproject.com) and was started because the organizers felt that most tree plantation drives were carried out at the National Park or Aarey Milk colony, while colonies and buildings that actually need more trees were being ignored. ”Living is a different thing, we’re just about managing to stay alive,’’ says Vijaykumar, a Borivali-resident, avid tweeter and blogger at bombaylives.com.

Weeks before the drive, online invitations to visit Shivaji Park and adopt a sapling were sent out using Twitter, Facebook and blogs. His friend Walunj wants to tie up with the BMC. “A lot of places in the city can be designated sapling zones where trees are needed. So people who do not find place can come here and plant them’’.

Online networking with tweeters in Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi has enthused locals to carry out similar plantation drives as part of the project. The next drive in Mumbai will take place in January and the organizers will visit areas like Dadar, Bandra, Andheri and Borivali with saplings in a van for distribution.

In the past, several sapling-planting initiatives have been launched in the city. In a move to restore the degraded periphery areas of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, GAIA Conservation Foundation is working with the Bombay Natural History Society to get citizens to plant saplings.

Over 10,000 saplings of indigenous trees like Red Silk Cotton, teak, Shivaji’s Sword, Khair, Shivan, Ziziphus and Flame of Forest have been planted by hundreds of people at the Goregaon site. NGO I Love Mumbai has been carrying out planting distribution drives in the city too.

But environmentalist Rishi Aggarwal says drives like these need support from experts who understand the ecology of each tree. ”You can’t plant a tree that will grow to have a 30-foot canopy on a narrow road. Plantation has to be an informed exercise,’’ says Aggarwal who wants the tree authority to have a separate website giving details of where saplings can be planted in the city using GPS coordinate. ”Location is the key criteria and the BMC seems to have failed in facilitating the good intentions of citizens in this area’’.

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Peeto Peeto by Dr K Chaudhry

It all started a few years ago, when the male nightingale from Paschim Vihar started uploading his videos in cyber space as a “humming non-singer’’.  The response was extraordinary. On one hand obscene abuses cluttered his inbox and would have sufficed to break the spirit of any novice singer. On the contrary Chaudhry felt elated that people had made time to post comments because real-time responses from around the world proved to him that he was a singer, good or bad and people were not ignoring him. Some said he sounded like a braying donkey while others said he deserved a music ratna from the government. “Praises please me, abuses amuse me. I feel indebted to every one of you for time spent by you in assessing me as good or bad,’’ he writes in order to allay his fans, some of whom have gone to the extent of forming fan clubs and theme evenings in honour of him and his special talent. They call themselves devotees of the man and currently there are seven fan clubs spread across the world including two in the US with medical doctors for members and an all-pilot group from Singapore. Imitating the video legend, his fans pay tribute at dinner parties and sing James Blunt’s ‘You’re beautiful’ Chaudhry style. He describes his relationship with his USA fan club with 310-strong members as, “This is a carry forward relationship from some past lives. I remained away from you for 63 years. Now we shall remain together until we live together,’’ he writes in response to a video.

But closest to his heart are his fans from Pakistan who first admired his talent. “We Pakistanis are in shock. We used to pride ourselves that we had Ghulam Ali Mehdi Hassan, Noor Jehan, Reshman, and Nusrat Fateh Ali but now we are dumb and speechless,’’ reads a comment on Youtube from across the border. “With the advent of Dr Chaudhry, you Indians have left? us, far behind. We will never catch up, we stand defeated.” But offers to appear for live concerts in Lahore have been dismissed. “I cannot perform without lyrics and a computer screen,’’ he says.

At first glance, one would think, that here is another bathroom singer nodding away but his eyes are wide open behind spectacles that reflect the bright computer screen as he swivels in his chair. An almost ethereal experience grips the viewer as he elegantly pulls off a spoof of Avril Lavigne’s Skater Boy, his personal chartbuster. “I prefer singing songs by female artists,’’ says the Bryan Adams and Mohammed Rafi fan. His grandchildren perch themselves on their silver-haired prodigy, singing along blissfully unaware of the world watching them. They just enjoy the moment.

Fate can do strange things when people’s actions are not governed by financial constraints. An epitome of self-proclaimed “genius’’, this dotard continues to zoom higher up the popularity snorkel. Today, his Internet biodata boasts not only of 30 years of medical practice but also credits him with the creation of a horoscope software, laboratory equipment, a billion webpages and the title of a work addict. Carry on doctor.

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(This was written for The Times of India)

He’s been hailed as the minister who tweets ‘diplomacy for dummies’. Shashi Tharoor’s tweet-by-tweet account of his recent visit to Liberia created great interest about India’s relations with the African country. In 140 characters or less, the minister of state for external affairs started posting updates soon after he touched down in Liberian capital Monrovia. ‘Greetings from Monrovia,’ he wrote, followed by a mention that this was ‘the 1st Indian ministerial visit here in 38 yrs’.

Staying true to Twitter that asks users to post in response to, ‘What are you doing?’ Tharoor updated his ‘followers’ with details about the 200 Malayalees in Liberia, his meeting with the Indian female police unit there and ‘breakfast with President Sirleaf at her rice farm.’ In an email interview with TOI, Tharoor wrote about his admiration for, ‘the first democratically elected woman Head of State in Africa,’ who discussed issues ranging from UN Security Council reforms to combating international terrorism with him. A review of bilateral bonding was followed by a tweet: ‘India offers help in capacitybldg, training, trade, investment & IT. Donated 25 buses and 2 holein-the-wall computer educn centres.’

U n d e r s t a n d ably, Liberia’s bloggers had a thing or two to say about the minister’s visit and Indo-Liberian relations. “When I heard about the Indian minister’s visit, I thought it was about time,’’ writes blogger Emmanuel Liu. The 26-year-old resident of Monrovia thinks that though there is a large Indian community in Liberia that plays an important part in its post-war development, they are yet to “take advantage of the huge mineral resource that Liberia has in abundance’’. Liu points out that the Chinese have beaten India at this.

Quite opposite to Liu’s stance was an editorial in Liberian newspaper Daily Observer that talked about how all the diplomatic talk was doing no good to the country: “Currently, we see India just as we see the Lebanese or other traders. They sell us substandard goods and take away our money.’’ Tharoor clarifies that Liberia has welcomed the Indian private sector’s participation in farming—particularly for cultivation of rice, the lack of which once led to rice riots. Civil servant and senior student at the University of Liberia, 33-year-old Denna Gibson explains how the poor are forced to replace life-long habits of eating rice, which is their staple diet, with cassava, wheat, gari and corn meal.

Keen to augment the public transportation facilities for the Monrovia Transit Authority, India’s move to donate 25 buses “will be of immense help because there’s a serious transport problem especially in Monrovia,’’ writes Nat Bayjay, a 29-year-old blogger from Bushrod Island. Tharoor says the ministry will soon float open tenders in leading newspapers and invite bids from manufacturers. “The whole process should be completed within a couple of months. But the buses will need spares, tool kits and training for the mechanics to maintain them.’’

The suave Tharoor was delighted to meet a 125-member strong Female Formed Police Unit (FFPU), the first ever women’s contingent in the history of UN peacekeeping. He tweeted, ‘After a war in which so many women suffered, a female police unit shows women as sources of strength & security, not only victims. Inspiring.’ Tharoor recalls his interaction with FFPU members: “They miss their families but surprisingly manage to find time after their duty hours to connect with them on the internet. Some of them, I understand, are also able to help their children in completing their home work.’’

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