Z : Zoom Calls and Other Stupid Stuff #AtoZChallenge2020

I came across this meme on internet. I found it hilarious, because I connect with it. With 'Work From Home' being one of the most used terms during lockdown, and Zoom calls / other video calls becoming the norm, people are misusing it. What should have been an email, becomes a meeting. 

Today, I wanted to share some good and bad aspects of Zoom calls / other video calls with you. 

Good Aspects of Video Calls: 

1. You see someone digging his/her nose during the video meeting. You are relieved, as you wouldn't be shaking hands with him/her at the end of the meeting. 

2. If you get ready on time, switch on the video. If you wake up late and don't get ready on time, switch on only audio. That's an amazing choice. 

3. Unlike real meetings, you can mute others at your will.

4. Not having a good internet connection is an excellent excuse to not attend the meetings. I mean who is going to verify! And no one is going to ask you to come by cab, if your car is broken.

Bad Aspects of Video Calls: 

1. As there is no infrastructure (meeting rooms) constraint, the number of random meetings shoot-up. As mentioned above, what should have been an email, becomes a meeting. 

2. Whether someone digs his / her nose or not, there will always be one person in the video call, whose nostrils you can look into with microscopic details. 

3. I thought all of us look ugliest in our Aadhaar Card pictures. I was so wrong. Some look uglier than that on Zoom calls.

4. Unlike real meetings, others can mute you at their will.

5. If internet is bad (car broken), you are expected to use mobile phones to connect (cab). Doing video calls on mobile phones is even more tiresome. So use 'bad internet' excuse sparingly.

I am sure you have experienced a lot of stupid things with video calls. Do share your experiences in the comments section. 

Like guffaws filled video calls, there is other stupid stuff that has become normal in this lockdown. As this is last post of the April challenge, I wanted to list few of those stupid things too. 

• Baking cakes at home to post pictures on Instagram. However good it looks, there is no good cake without the creamy icing. Stop kidding me and wait for good bakeries to open. 
• Workout videos. Stop playing with my mind. You were doing workouts before too. Why showing off now? Be kind and humble in this lockdown.
• The guys who said, Netflix khatam ho gaya (Everything has been seen on Netflix) after 15 days of lockdown. You are idiots. That is Doordarshan, not Netflix. Netflix is like Akshaya Patra (inexhaustible)
• The parents who claim on WhatsApp groups with an air of superiority that they are engaging their kids in a proper manner. Friends, I am saying this from my personal experience, that these parents are lying. It is our kid who is engaging us, entangling us, making us run around the whole day. And he is the one who makes all those Zoom calls, tad more tolerable, by pressing random buttons on my laptop, when these calls are on. 

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My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is Lock-down Blues. I intend to write and talk about how I deal with it, what it inspires me to read or watch or any aspect of it which fascinates me. You can read the theme reveal post here. 

Previous Challenges : Letter Z

2017: Zebra / Jebra

2018: Zoom in

2019: Zeros & Stars in Hindi Films / Bollywood

Z : Zeros & Stars in Hindi Films / Bollywood #AtoZChallenge 2019

While I was growing up, a Hindi film was considered successful, if it ran for weeks at a stretch in a cinema hall near you. 25 weeks run was called silver jubilee! 50 weeks run a golden one! And a 23 years run (...and still counting) in Maratha Mandir (a cinema hall in Mumbai) is called Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted Will Take Away the Bride). 

The mention of DDLJ is also to make one of my readers (PB) happy who missed it in yesterday's post. Also here is my experience of watching DDLJ in Maratha Mandir when it was running for 12 years already. 

Also when I was growing up we didn't use to read reviews (in fact there weren't many in public domain) before watching films. Word of mouth was enough! 

Things changed at the turn of the millennium! Number of screens increased with multiplexes and more films started getting made. This made it extremely difficult for films to have continuous long run at cinema halls, as each new film squeezed the previous one out pretty soon. Satellite television made it lucrative for film-makers to quickly show their films on small screens cutting short the jubilee dreams. Another thing that changed at the same time was easy availability of internet and advent of social media. Critics of all hues mushroomed. And writing movie reviews on internet became an industry. With these changes emerged two new cliches and they both are pretty sad ones!

• The parameter of a movie's success now is the number of Zeros in its box office collections! The movies get categorized into clubs like Rs 100 crores club, Rs. 200 crores club and so on! Sometimes rank bad movies get a huge opening because of their promotions and star cast that before even people realize that its shit, the movie has already made 100 crores. Even viewers now discuss films based on these zeros. The discourse on internet is all about this. Trade Analysts are tweeting these figures daily. Art be damned! It is heartbreaking when an excellent movie like Sonchiriya (the golden bird) is not watched by many because of its poor opening day collections. 

• Movie ratings or Stars which critics give to films are based on their subjective opinions and their inherent biases. But some critics today, carry so much clout that they can make or mar a film even before its release. Their individual opinions get amplified on social media and many get impacted by it. Also most critics in India in their reviews give out spoilers and plots of the films. This also makes the viewer biased and can set expectations which may spoil the movie watching experience. 

Anupama Chopra gave the movie Kalank (Stigma) 3 Stars and she gave Avengers : Endgame only 4 stars. Who will avenge this gross injustice? Is there even a comparison here? The self appointed expert on movies, Raja Sen, declined to review a movie (The Tashkent Files) recently because it didn't align with his political ideology. Such arrogance!

I feel movies should fulfill three purposes: 

Happy Level - Entertainment (like Singham)

Happier Level - Entertainment + Engagement (like 3 Idiots)

Happiest Level - Entertainment + Engagement + Education (like Taare Zameen Par)

If in a movie I get Entertainment I am happy with it! Anything over it delights me! Sheer ecstasy! 

I love movies. I love watching them in cinema halls. I don't care what each movie earns or how many Zeros are there in its revenues. I don't care how many Stars critics give to a movie. What matters is the sheer joy of watching a film in a dark hall. I will not let Zeros and Stars take that experience away from me.

Do you think I have missed out on a cliche in this month long challenge? Like blasting cars in Rohit Shetty films! Then tell me in comments space. I will write a post on it. But for that you have to read all 26 posts in this challenge, if you haven't already done that. 

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My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is Hindi Film Industry / Bollywood cliches. You can read the theme reveal post here.

2017 Challenge Post from Letter Z: Zebra / Jebra - A post about linguistic jokes. Click here to read.

2018 Challenge Post from Letter Z: Zoom in - The post reflects on memories, photographs and the zoom-in feature. Click here to read.

Z : Zoom in #AtoZchallenge

There was a time, not so long ago, when there were no digital cameras and no mobile phone cameras. For taking still photographs, we used to have that prized Kodak film roll camera. The film roll had a  limited capacity. We could only click 36 photos on one roll. The process of converting them to actual pictures was painful and often disappointing. Painful, because it was a long process and involved a photo studio. Disappointing, because often we would discover that some photos haven't turned out great and there was no way to capture that moment ever again. 

Compare that with today's scenario, when digital / mobile cameras rule the roost. One you don't need a roll, so you can go click-happy and click as many pictures as you want. Second, the output is right there in front of you. So if you are not happy, you can click another picture. Third, as digital / mobile camera also is your storage and retrieval device, there is neither any hassle of storage nor any chance of photos or your negatives getting damaged. You can also now share pictures with the click of a button. 

But there is a down side as well. There are so many pictures now on our phones and we are so busy in creating new ones, that we have lost the sense of wonder associated with browsing through our old albums and photographs. I have always believed that the key purpose of photos is to provide us with the ability to look back. To feel nostalgic about the times gone by. Sadly, that purpose has been muddled in the race to get more likes on Facebook. 

We had gone for a college trip to Goa during my engineering. When I browse through the photo album of one particular day from that trip, there I see a picture where one of my friends is standing besides me on a rock by the sea shore. There are 5 photos with us standing exactly in the same pose at the same place. 4 out 36 photos in that roll were wasted. Because we all were wasted that day. We had been drinking beer for hours. Had it been a mobile camera, we would have deleted those 4 additional pictures and may be that memory as well.

But I am digressing. I am fascinated by one particular feature of digital cameras. Zoom in feature. Once you have clicked a picture on a digital camera, at any later time, you can zoom in and find surprising details which you may not have noticed while clicking the picture. That is not possible with pictures clicked on film roll cameras. You can look as long as you want at the pictures in your photo albums (physical ones), but you won't be able to zoom in. 

I just imagined, what are the kind of things you would discover, if you had the ability to Zoom-in on your older pictures. 

1. Would you find out in your school's group picture whether that girl is smiling at you or not?

2. Would you find out the beer brand you had 15 years ago, because the bottle you had thrown carelessly around is still in the bottom left corner of the picture?

3. Would you find out who really was clapping for you standing by the wings of the stage, when you were receiving the award at your school's annual function?

4. Would you find out who borrowed your favorite Enid Blyton book during the bus ride to Ludhiana, while returning from that school picnic?

5. Would you find out whether your best friend was digging his nose or just scratching it?

6. Would you finally find out who was the one who was wearing spikes while giving you birthday bumps?

7. Would you find out who all had tears in their eyes at the farewell party?

If you had the ability to Zoom-in, you would definitely find things in your old pictures, that would surprise you or may be even shock you. You may find answers to some questions that have always bothered you or you might feel cheated, because you had always thought something transpired otherwise. The possibilities are infinite and tantalizing. But the moot point is if you had this ability would you really Zoom-in or would you just let it be!

You can't go back in the past and change anything. That Enid Blyton book is lost forever. The girl who clapped for you from the wings may have married someone else, completely oblivious to the feelings you had for her then. You have memories - some strong, some faded - of the events in past, the way you thought they happened. What is more precious? To know the details? To know the truth? Or to just keep your memories the way they are? Isn't life less burdened when you don't Zoom in? Sometimes it is not the specifics that matter; what matters is, the larger picture!!!

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future ~ Corrie ten Boom

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My last year's challenge post from letter Z was about linguistic jokes. It was about my mother-in-law pronouncing Zebra as Jebra. That led me to a discovery about Zebra / Jebra. Read it here.

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My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is all about writing stories, anecdotes and observations from my life in form of easy to read listicles. You can read the theme reveal post here. 

Z : Zebra / Jebra

My mother-in-law pronounces Z / Za as J / Ja. I always have fun with this fact, at her expense of course. When she comes to our place, I often ask her, what would she like to eat. And I wait for her to say Pijja (Pizza), for cheap laughs. Now she knows my routine, so she doesn't respond. She is one spoil sport.

In fact, every time I see a Zebra Crossing, I ask her to tell me what it is. Some times she obliges me, by blurting out Jebra crossing and I laugh out loud. But over the years, she has become conscious and thus Zindagi became Jeevan (Life) and Pizza became pata nahi (I don't know). My wife thinks I deliberately needle her. But she doesn't know, that such linguistic jokes have always been source of cheap laughs for me. I remember the time, when my younger brother had to write an essay on "My Mother" in school. In that essay, he was supposed to write one line that went like, "My mother runs the house very wisely" . Instead he wrote, "My mother runs in the house very wisely." For many years, I kept pulling his leg for this hilarious error. 

My own writing isn't that great. And when I read my old posts and mails, I cringe at the mistakes I had made. 

Coming back to my mother-in-law's pronunciation issue, let me give one clarification here. If a person, in India, has not learned Urdu or English, they will pronounce Z / Za as J / Ja. Because in Sanskrit and Hindi there is no letter Z / Za. 

Therefore I promise to my wife through this post today, that I will not crack jokes on her mother's pronunciation anymore. But that doesn't mean I will score her high on cooking. You can't have it all. Haha.