Disclaimer – This post is purely fictional, resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  Also, there are some strong words directed towards a particular sex and ethnicity, but only for humor. It should not be construed as a propagation of hatred or enmity of any kind. FACEBOOK MANIA If you live overseas and have forgotten to send a birthday wish to your friend or family over few months, didn’t know your friend had just checked in to Marriott while visiting Chicago or never saw those gazillion photographs of women in red from New Hampshire to San Diego during teej; it only means one thing – you do not have that darn Facebook account. Which is also wisely interpreted by an American teenager - that you are f^$king retarded. Seriously, why don’t you have a facebook account when you already know how to use a computer effectively unless you still listen to FM on a flippin’ transistor? And if someone hasn’t told you so far, I’ll tell you now – Hurry Hurry, you are missing out on lots of fun. “It is an awesome platform to make friends” says my cousin who has already fought with and lost two of her good friends just because they didn’t comment on her ‘awesome’ picture. For me, Facebook mania is a perfect platform to those individuals who display their pretentiousness through pictures and status messages. Maybe I am a little too harsh, but seriously, buy a brand new Beamer and post the pictures in facebook, after garnering enough likes for the first few days, you will never hear from them again. So, for me, facebook, besides anything else is just an indicator to authenticate (or not) ones’ friendship with others. I do not expect you to believe me, but a good friend of mine in Sydney, who has recently been bit by  a Facebook bug, hasn’t returned my calls simply because I forgot to wish him a ‘happy birthday’ on his umm…..birthday. He used to call me few times every week. I even sang a birthday song to him few days later while leaving a voicemail, but I guess it had to be on Facebook wall to truly acknowledge his acceptance. Similarly, my aunt in Khumaltar, who didn’t care about my mom’s multiple visits to US, suddenly became jealous after she finally created a facebook account and saw my parents chilling in Las Vegas last year. As a result, she seldom calls my mother. And now that her application for tourist visa has been rejected twice earlier this year, I could see her dashain tika in our household just fly out of the window. Now speaking of Dashain in facebook, it is a whole different dynamic. A white dude posted a picture of our Nepali brother wearing a dashain tika (with jamara) shopping for a 30 pack of bud light in Walmart in Murfreesboro Tennessee. The caption of that picture was “WTF is this?” Speaking of the same issue, I was navigating through some dashain pictures of my friend’s brother in law’s cousin (he doesn’t know I exist, I didn’t either) only to look at some photos of cute young girls who supposedly wore a bareback blouse.  The dude had no clue he made all his albums public. While doing that, my associate Nancy, a 130lbs 5’9” superhot brunette stops and peers at my computer inquisitively. As we both came across this snotty little kid who has a red tika smeared all over his forehead and is sweating from every corner, she almost gags and drops her 4 dollar starbucks but cleverly disguises her ‘yuck’ with “that kid is so cute”. “Yeah right b!#ch!” I had mumbled, the last thing I want to hear is someone ridicule dashain, my primary Nepali festival. If it were an Indian dude who had come out with his lame wisecrack, I could have even punched him on his left cheek, precisely in that location, so he could no longer eat his roti for few days. And of course I would, I am a ‘Shantipriya’ Nepali, my famous ancestors fought in ‘Nalapani’ and the first thing I’d do to prove my Nepali pride is by punching a d#0ti (mind you, not Brits), even when his remarks were completely innocuous. That said, my wife brought the house down last year by ‘liking’ all the status updates and pictures of this facebook page that said –‘Buddha was born in Nepal not in India’. It made little sense to me, I mean why do you have to ‘like’ it when you already know the truth? If her good friend Madhurima Joshi from Kanpur would have liked it, it would have made complete sense. But she didn’t, and I am not sure if my wife is still friends with her. Whoever would have thought that the world’s biggest spiritual leader in Buddha would have waged war in current day and through facebook – no less. And it was my mother too who liked the page that said ‘बुद्ध भारत मा जन्म्या भए गान्धी नेपाल मा पानीपुरी बेच्थ्यो’. I do not know if it was her ire towards Indians or the panipuri vendors in general, because in the past, during her college days in a University in Gorakhpur, she was hospitalized for weeks because of jaundice, and she blamed the local panipuri seller that came to her hostel every evening. Amid all this, I like my dad, who only limits his computer skills to google, ekantipur, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN and Times of India. He doesn’t need a facebook to pick fight with others. Facebook is not just about befriending friends or finding long lost ones. It is also about relations. This fabulous woman who was doing her ph(double)d from University of Florida  I had met during a wedding in New York (and had been salivating ever since) was actually the daughter of my dad’s second cousin. That was several years ago and we were both drunk and were hitting it off until her friend insisted on leaving early. I thank her friend now, अन्यथा कुकर्म हुन्थ्यो. Also facebook is about shocking revelations as well. The girl from Himachal Pradesh in my engineering school who I saw for almost four years (and kissed only few times and was supposed to marry but didn’t) is now a director in Sun Microsystems. Likewise, a pretty pretty girl named Aradhana Patel who we all sincerely believed was a clone of Aishwarya Rai had ejected three kids off her hip which had tripled in size in over a decade. I almost wept looking at her picture, despite seeing a different girl all that while, I always had a thing for her. As we speak of revelations, Radhika auntie’s 19 year old daughter Jasmine had uploaded her two piece bikini picture taken in Cancun with a white dude who was also semi naked. She was divorced by several would be mother-in-laws instantly.  Thanks to facebook, the DSLR sales in recent years have soared high. So high, my cousin who I mentioned above refuses to post any of her pictures in facebook that are taken by a point and shoot. She mentioned several times she wants a headshot taken by a Nikon, with a prime lens and which has creamy bokeh in the background even though she has no clue what all that means. For those who shoot in an auto mode with a kit lens off a DSLR, their wives are always in a state of confusion as why their pictures wouldn’t be as promising as their friends’. “बाबु, पछाडी blurry निकालिदिस्यो है, वहाँलाइ त खिच्नै आउदैन” some bhauju in Dallas who I do not know the name of, had requested me last year as I was taking the pictures. Now when it comes to me, the reason I am in facebook is to post sarcastic remarks and wise cracks in my friend’s statuses and pictures. I also talk a lot of football and correct spelling in other’s status messages. A cousin’s wife in New York had commented on a common friend’s photo – ‘She is so ‘preety’, why is she with such a ‘looser’. I had corrected her in my comment that followed hers, and next thing I knew the broad had deleted me off her friends list. Seriously, the last thing an undergrad in Laguardia community college with a TOEFL score of 450 and a GPA of 2.7 should do is comment on a photograph that is visible to millions of people. A different dude who is related to my brother’s wife had once written in facebook – ‘I am commenting in English because my Nepali is not so good’. I had commented too which was like this – ‘Seriously? I do not think your English is good either’. And as you all might have guessed, I have no clue if that dude is dead or alive. I do not see him in facebook anymore. I thought he disappeared out of embarrassment until my wife told me that he has ‘blocked’ me. So I like picking fights in facebook, but all in good humor. It was never personal and it will never be personal (just like that dude Nas mentioned while he was crying a river before departing from sajha). But lately I did something unforgiveable. I played with a friend’s emotion, he was a good friend who lives in Altoona, PA and for him, alike me, football is a religion and not just sports. “Black and S#it got owned by Manning” was what I had written after Steelers lost to Broncos last week. He hasn’t replied to my voicemail, and it has already been five days.