Number 88

Eighty seven. 87. 87 is said to be the Australian unlucky number since it is 13 away from hundred. Whenever the score reads 87 for an Australian in any way, be it the individual score of the batsman or the team score, an Englishman in the commentary box rarely fails to give us this bit of insight into the way the universe works - 87 is the undoing of Australia. The commentator remains hopeful until the score moves on to 88 or greater and then all hope fades away as he watches Australia and other countries dominate the game of cricket while his beloved nation, the inventors and exporters of the game, fail to ever win a world cup. Sounds like football.

Eighty-seven is on my mind not because of some cricket related British mumbo-jumbo though. Nor is it because of Australia or England. 87 is my current blog-post count. And it's been stuck there for a while. But I'm not Australian. This is not when I lose my wicket. The show must go on and I'm merely 13 away from a century of posts. Twelve after this one.

88 in a bit over 7.5 years is slow writing but at least it is some writing. And 87 must be one of the longest breaks yet. Quite unique to this particular break though is my lack of guilt at not being more regular with my posts. I've hardly given any thought to this space since my last post. And today when I thought about it, I felt I simply must update my blog or I might just get struck by the Australian curse and so I bring to you this laborious post.

Over the last two months, I have been living the 21st century, urban, college campus version of the Amish life - no facebook, no WhatsApp. And perhaps that is why I didn't have as much motivation to write. The pats on the back and compliments for a blog post are surely, how much ever I try to deny it and call it writing for writing's sake and my sake, a big reason I write. And without facebook, the link to this post will not go up on my timeline and there won't be numerous "likes" and "shares" and "wows", nor will I get WhatsApp texts from mild acquaintances about how good my post was. The post will be lost away to internet obscurity. And now I write.

Life without the above mentioned, Zuckerberg owned social media (medias sounds odd since media is already the plural form of medium. Maybe mediums is the right word here?)  is a self-imposed restriction for reasons that are not a whole lot more ground-breaking than "I just want to see how it will be" and "to hopefully increase my productivity". And the results have been rather underwhelming so far - it isn't the sea change and total transformation from living the life of a time-wasting, procrastinating, unproductive waste of space to a highly efficient, punctual and productive individual. A slight shift from quite productive to slightly more than quite productive. And not scrolling down a facebook feed isn't a handicap at all. It's almost a relief.

WhatsApp is a different story. Keeping in touch with certain people is harder and I'm often out of the loop when it comes to chronicles from my family group. I miss out on photos shared and other things but the gap is being bridged manage-ably with email. Again, on the whole, nothing very earth-shattering to report. It happened - I'm not on WhatsApp,  Life goes on. Underwhelming.

A little curiosity about the language I wished to point out - when something is far greater than you expected, usually in the sense of an outpouring of appreciation or love, you are overwhelmed. When you expect great things that do not materialise, you are underwhelmed. When things are exactly as good or as bad as you expected and you planned for, why aren't you whelmed? Precisely whelmed, no over or under. Ha!