Life in a password

I woke up in the morning,switched on the computer for a early morning mail check and and there it hit my face. So began the story of password.

The ubiquitous PASSWORD :******* sprang into action. So after grappling and successfully pinning down the early morning password and breakfast,I reached office. Switched on the machine and again came face to face with the life altering screen which yelled..”Please enter your password”.Then you try to access your email,another password,open a bank site....password again,try to access and get any information and you are faced with the same Loch Ness monster called password. I don't know if I should hate it or fall in love with it. It protects all my valuable assets and on the other hand it seems to be everywhere to the point of being obnoxious. A necessary devil which extrapolate itself in many forms and you have to remember all of it!!!

It has ingrained so much in our lives that we treat it with nonchalance....until you forget one!!!.Imagine forgetting the password of your favorite banking site on the day you receive your salary..:) or even worse the debit card PIN. Envisage the agony and pain you have to go through to reset all these again,specially considering the efficiency of our systems. Like searching for a lost soul,you will be making frantic phone calls to numbers which most of the time is engaged.

Then you have to swim through the maze of automated voice message which take ages to dish out the list of navigation, sub navigation and all their relatives,a good exercise to increase concentration power though,making sure you listen to everything and not skip a word. Adding salt to the injury you have to bear “thank you for waiting,our executive will be with you shortly” chime spat out by the sweet voices once you have crossed the navigational hurdle. That is how difficult it has become to speak to a fellow human in this modern world. You have to dish out a huge phone bill to speak to a fellow human to gain access to a machine..its called the WOW technology!!!!!. Then you have to answer numerous questions just to be told that the password will be sent soon. And if it is a banking site password or a debit card pin then god bless you. The intervening days before your password arrives can be aptly titled the “Nightmare of 21^st century”. You will be besotted with all imaginative thought of someone ripping your bank balance and praying that your banking details don't accidentally reaches some other peoples hand.

To circumvent the problem you can keep the same password for all your application. But,god forbids, if someone hacks into it,you will have to face your worst nightmare. Your life will be an open book and you bank balance will make you stand in a street with a bowl in your hand. The mayhem will be of catastrophic portion akin to someone stealing your entire life.

Yes that ubiquitous password has become the key to your life. Hate it,love it ,curse it,kiss it but there is no running away from it. So how is people going to react with all the passwords thrust into their life? It gives you a feeling of complete control but with lots of uncertainty thrown in to keep you on your toes. So along with simplifying your life it makes you more anxious. The habit of some of the websites forcing user to change password every fortnight is also not helping much either. In this mental game you also have to keep yourself prepared with all sorts of password which can't be hacked .It's like a suduko or crossword puzzle which you have to complete every fortnight. After sometime it becomes hard to come up with a password which you haven't used for the last 6,7,8,9 or 10 times,is unique, alphanumeric,uncrackable ,complex and at the same time something which you can remember. Like a chess game you have to stay on top of it,remembering all of it including its variant. Imagine signing up for 10 such site and have to change the password every fortnight for all the sites. Soon people will run out of passwords.... doomsday!!!!! I guess some book titled “10000 ways to create password” might be handy. I am in the process of writing it as a service to mankind and humanity to spare my fellow humans from going through the agony(will be priced 2000 bucks only:) pretty cheap considering the time and brain work it will save all the people)

Given the creativity of people and propensity of praying to anything that controls them,the day won't be far when we will be starting praying to password god. So we will have password god's temple/church/mosque,you make one round of it then your password will be a little more secured. Make hundred round and it is fully secured. If you are not much into physical activity then you can get your password secured by paying a huge charity:). Long live the password deity.

Views..reviews...issues..love..war.....lets trash it out

This has been one of the rare morning when an Edison'ian bulb lighted in my so called head, which incidentally is without its perennial partner Mr Brain who seem to have gone out on a long sojourn. Now about the bulb of 1000W which struck me...

I was lying in my bed with nothing useful to do other than day dreaming and reminiscing about the old times and happening's back at home. Me staring at the roof hapless and wordless at being thrown a 1000 miles from home,family,friends and above all the home cooked food. Well it had been the place where we use to enjoy the yaoshangs,thabals(I still regret at only being a watchman and never have danced over there...although eons of thabals later I did danced to the thaban tune :).......),thinking of the beautiful girl we just saw and wondering if she had a boyfriend(Sadly never came upon one who didn't have one..).We used to enjoy the picnics near the pristine clear water of those lovely rivers, sight from the hill of the early morning sun rays playing with the yellow bouncing garden of flowers,the koubru trek,the fishing trips with those self made fishing rods,watching the vast expanse of loktak lake where our soul and mind were as free as freedom can offer. The unforgettable chit chats with cha bora,those laipum fhamba debates.These are the small valuable things in the life of small town folks that makes up for a great society. Life then was how the maker wanted it to be, full of zest,fun,love,harmony and respect for the human value.

That was then when the world was like a piece of snow flake ...all white,playful,PEACEFULL...

Wind up the watch to the present day and we find ourselves heckled and prisoned by our own guile.I still remember the days when people used to come back at around 12 midnight after watching late night shows,the days when I woke my friend at around 10 pm and went to the market in the hope that some shop will be open and I will be able to buy the component I needed so badly for my project. Then was the time and now is the truth where even going out at 7 pm is like anathema. Those days I still had the hope that some shops might be open till 10...now even god wont be foolish enough to even think about it.Going out at night , I am not sure if I should be more afraid of the perpetrator or the protector. But one thing is for sure families can't go out to enjoy those late night shows,memorable picnics,neighborhood courtyard theatre drama. Even going to thabals are fraught with dangers. Everywhere there are deary eyed kids lost in their own clouds of pills and grass. One wonder if we have learned anything from history of the great Opium war. With anti depressant being the top seller, we have bore the dark fruit of the greedy and corrupted seed we sowed. And for generations to come ,our child,grandchild will all bear the brunt of this fruit lest we realize our mistakes and work towards weeding out the dark seeds.

As Janis Joplin put it "freedom is another word for nothing left to lose"...we have nothing to lose but freedom!!!