When I saw Thambiah I was sure, he was on to something new and was itching to share his experiences.
He began, “Did you know I am now on Facebook? My daughter Keerthi went hammer and tongs at her hard sell of Facebook. Finally I relented. Now, thanks to a past master, rather ‘post’master of Facebook I am in the know of many things, mostly trivia.”
He continued: “Like now, I can call out the number of fruits in a big jack fruit without cutting it open, a messy process. I know now how an African tribesman sleeps head raised as if resting on a pillow, a yogic feat, so the black ants do not enter his ears. How a Chinese rooster in Shangai, besides crowing cheerily in the morning, enters the bedroom of the Kung Fu ‘mashter’, and pecks at its owner’s right ear, so he gets up for the next aerial fight in the cobbled market place with blood-curdling hoo-ha-woo noises.”
“However, I have no such nuggets at my disposal to post and increase my harvest of ‘Likes’. I wrote monographs curated from our epics. Seconds after posting the first one, I looked for ‘Likes’. But lo and behold, though I had several relatives and friends, including you, none clicked the ‘Like’ button. I felt cheated, though, to be fair, none solicited my posts. Such hardwork went unnoticed, while a few just posted their latest mug shots, all selfies, as profile pictures and got a bumper harvest of ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’. Bah!”
“Before getting into Facebook, I never bothered whether others liked my views or not. But after my plunge into FB, my heart yearns for the ‘Likes’ and bleeds if there is none. How? I wonder! But now I choose food and beverages. Yesterday night, my post was about a special tea served in a Southern coastal town. It is called Hitler Tea. At the last reporting, there were 79 likes and 18 comments, many itching to know the town’s name that served it and the special additive that earns the name of the diabolic Nazi Fuhrer.”
“My next post will be how to make groundnuts float at the surface of pitlai instead of allowing them settle down at the bottom that the wives would eat after their husbands who had eaten first had missed them. I was privy to this secret tip from a celebrity caterer. But no sneak preview now, rather spilling the beans, but do post your comment or just click the ‘Like’ button, when you read my post.” He stood up, hands joined. Indeed, he looked like a politician on a canvassing trail.
Email: writerjsr@gmail.com