How to Save a (Social) Life

                Is your right eye twitching? Do you often fantasize about flying squirrels and talking tortillas? Can you see dead people? Just asking.

                Moving on, this note is for those who have been unceremoniously ditched and stingingly disowned by their friends for perpetually having exams. ‘You don’t have time for us anymore,’ they complain and ‘You have turned into such a nerd,’ they whine. Little do they know that in the non-existent recuperation time that we get in between fresh cycles of internals, we (specifically referring to the people who landed up doing science, medicine or engineering rather than some fun course) are burdened with an insurmountable  amount of work in the form of seemingly endless lab records, assignments, seminars, and slave labour. All of this has resulted in the sad demise of any semblance that we had to a social life (having 3200 friends on Facebook and an overly active Wall doesn’t count).

                I, however, like to think that every problem has a solution. In a truly altruistic manner, I sacrificed some sleep during class hours to ponder over this nagging issue. Most parents and teachers in general don’t believe in the concept of a social life. They are living relics from an era where marks were the be all and end all of a student’s life. Never mind something as petty as a social life because, of course, it can wait till after we’re through with college. And once we’re through with college, it can wait till after we find a job (good marks will obviously get us great jobs), get married, make babies, make more babies, and grow so old that even Neanderthals would stir uncomfortably in their graves. You can go right ahead and play by their rules, or you could let me help you.

How to Save Your Social Life:

1.       Pay your friends by the hour to hang out with you - an offer they cannot refuse.

2.       Drop out of college. No college = no exams. Education is just overrated anyway.

3.       Get other people to do your work so that you may go out and party with your friends. This is where being nice and having an irresistible smile help.

4.       Get adopted by extremely wealthy parents by putting yourself on the illegal market. That way you don’t really have to study/work, which leaves you with more time to spend with friends. Paris Hilton makes being a socialite seem like a real job, so why can’t you?

5.       In desperate times, if you think your old social life is far out of reach, start over and create a new one. How? Hang out with your teachers and their families.

6.       If all else fails, create a bunch of imaginary friends who will keep you company.

Run along now, kids. Go out and play.

P.S. The fact that you’re reading this note doesn’t say much about your social life either.

Lights, Camera, Mush!

Chick flicks... y’know, those movies that appeal to prepubescent girls and adult women alike. They can make them weep, clutch their hearts, sigh, look wistfully at the screen, and elicit a series of other similar reactions. Most of them can be deciphered in the first two minutes of the movie (including the time taken for the opening credits).

The general plot: Messed up, awkward girl protagonist meets studalicious dream boy who is way beyond her league. The stud muffin has an evil girlfriend/ex-girlfriend/mother/some woman in his life that deserves to be hated by the general female audience. The said woman’s role in the movie is quite obvious – she plays the antagonist that stands in the way of the true love. Awkward girl is left heartbroken and alone. However, stud muffin ultimately sees the awkward girl’s inner beauty and falls in love with her. Together, they overcome all obstacles in their path and live happily ever after. Oh yes, and there just has to be that final kiss which will turn on the waterworks.

There can be slight variations of this plot:

1.       Cynical guy who doesn’t believe in love meets The One, but doesn’t realize that she is The One until almost the end of the movie. Following this realization, guy chases after her (this scene is ideally set in an airport), miraculously stops her before she leaves and professes his undying love for her.

2.       Two best friends date a multitude of other people, only to realize that what they’ve been looking for has been right in front of them the whole time.

3.       Guy and girl hate each other when they first meet but they somehow end up falling in love.

Mix and match the above plots and voila, you get a few hundred more love stories.

I happened to have the misfortune of watching Sex and the City 2 today. There went three hours of my life that I will never get back. Not only did I fail to see any point in the movie, but I also killed a few million brain cells trying to do so. This isn’t the first time it’s happening to me though. There have been a handful of occasions on which I was forced to watch movies like The Ugly Truth, Ghost of Girlfriends Past, The Accidental Husband, and Twilight. On all these occasions, I sat back with a puzzled look on my face as I tried to figure out what women saw in them. I earnestly tried to list out the factors that could possibly motivate them to watch garbage like this:

1.       The attractive cast

2.       The generous serving of cheesy lines

3.       The predictable happy endings

4.       The apparently-oh-to-die-for shoes, bags, accessories, meh

5.       The soundtracks

What troubles me is that it still doesn’t seem like motivation enough... *scratches chin thoughtfully*