A typical day in life of a Retired Banker like me is to go on a stroll for around 40 minutes all alone. I have stopped taking my two dogs for a stroll. That job has been entrusted to my better half. I have now also avoided taking my mobile on my morning walk.
While walking my thoughts go astray sometimes. And these I would post on Facebook during my walk. The other day while going for my early morning walk at around 6 am , I found that one of my neighbour (I will not name her keeping in view that she is my better half’s Facebook friend) , she was starting her Innova car. I thought probably she was dropping her kids at school as her driver must be on leave.
Further along my walk I saw that the same car was in front of the gym. Just for fun I posted on my Facebook page: Why do women go to a Gym in a car even if it is 500 metres away from their home?
By the time I got home the response to the post was beyond my expectations. Facebook goal is to get maximum likes & comments. I found that more than 100 friends had liked my post and had commented on it. Most of the comments were humorous: “women want to show that they have a car”, “a woman can drive safely only till 500 metres” , “since she is without a make-up, she does not want to show her face.”
Some comments were pungent; one lady accused me of being sarcastic, another called me a male chauvinist pig! One denigrating comment came from my friend Prateek from Lucknow; he wrote. “She wants to burn her husband’s money. “
One has to be very careful while replying on social media. I always tell my friends to be as cool as a cucumber . My wife knew that this Facebook post was related to her best friend. She avoided commenting on this post. But since the comments on this post were getting out of hand, she made me delete the post and then got my Facebook account deactivated. I am now back to square one, taking my two dogs for stroll and leaving my mobile at home. I tell myself that a mobile is a big distraction when you want to enjoy nature in the sweltering weather of Ludhiana.

By Rajiv Bakshi