(CILLA KHATRY)
Last week when I met up with a senior police official in the course of an assignment, I was appalled to find out that there were over a dozen complaints registered for cyber threat and abuse. All the complaints had been filed by girls who had been victims of Facebook or email account hack where their passwords had been changed and then compromised, and even altered pictures were posted from their accounts, or private messages were sent from their emails.[break]
You can’t really term them as ‘hacking’ cases since the passwords were shared during their ‘dating’ phase. The fact that after a relationship went sour, the feeling of vengeance could overpower someone so much as to carry out such heinous tasks was a complete revelation. Thank God I never gave out my password to anyone! But that’s not the point here.
These girls came with their families to file complaints, and the trauma was all the more evident in the expressions of the parents rather than the victims themselves. I couldn’t even begin to envisage the horror they must be going through. Such were their hollow and vacant looks.
Of the many, many things I can’t comprehend, the idea of sharing passwords is the one I find the most ludicrous. So you’re committed to someone and want to be with that particular person forever and ever (!) but where’s your privacy? Where’s your space? Why does this other person suddenly have to know everything about you, no matter how trivial it may be?
As if having all sorts of personal conversations and intimate moments weren’t enough, one has to go all out and share bank accounts, passwords and phones as well? Really? That’s taking the idea of ‘what’s mine is yours’ a little too far. Far too far, to be honest!
I was feeling terrible for the families of the girls but wasn’t all that sympathetic towards the ‘victims’ who in my opinion brought it onto themselves. Yes, of course, they didn’t know that the persons they had put up on a pedestal would one day do such revolting things, but everyone should have the basic commonsense to be a little guarded and protective of their privacy.
We all think that something like this can never happen to us until it eventually and inevitably does. And sometimes the damage it brings about is irreparable. Some precaution should be exercised no matter how certain you feel about the other person. You never know!
A close friend of mine who, I can say with absolute certainty, would never let anyone encroach on her space, very wisely said, “There are 3 Ps a girl needs to guard with all her life – Phone, purse, and password.”
I couldn’t agree more. I can just hope there are others who do that as well.
Being judgmental
(NISTHA RAYAMAJHI)
Lately, my Facebook page was flooded with posts about Miss Nepal who is currently representing the country at the Miss World pageant. As we know how popular Facebook has been as a platform to share ideas and events, the posts were all about how we should be supporting and promoting her to get the required votes to win the title.
Well, all this while it was all about promoting her. But until not so long ago, negative posts started pouring in. And that went viral. There was this video of Miss Nepal where she mentioned something about her origin and the video was a pretty old one but that didn’t stop people from making a big deal out of it.
The rumors about how she refrained from talking about Nepal were making rounds with a million posts about people disliking what she said. That disturbed me a lot as the whole thing was firstly just based on a baseless rumor and people, just following what others did, started commenting on how it was an impertinent thing to do on an international platform. That just shows how quick people are at judging others without even getting to know the background of it.
Also, if people think that beauty pageants are organized for nothing, then why do they even bother to watch it and comment on it? It’s a free world and everyone’s allowed to follow her passion, and just because you’re a public figure doesn’t give others the leeway to point fingers at for nothing. When someone’s out there representing the nation, we should at least be supportive rather than getting very quick at being judgmental.
This is just an instance about how naïve people can get and how they just believe in following the herd without knowing anything about the core truth. People may have a history so they may not be comfortable to be open about it. So we all should be respecting that rather than be critical about it.
The ones who were questioning the beauty queen’s identity should question themselves, as they weren’t proving to be true Nepalis by disrespecting someone publicly. The Facebook has been a good platform in connecting people but sometimes it’s just misused so much that it has quite deeper impacts. So rather than just being one among the crowd in criticizing others, I think it’s high time that people got their facts right before being judgmental.
Delusional graduates!
(ASMITA MANANDHAR)
“I’m … umm…. freelancing,” said a friend at a reunion last week. She smiled as she was weighing her answer, whether by the anticipation of doubtful glances or by the uncertainty inside her, it was hard to tell.
“Good,” replied another, “better than staying unemployed like me.”
Even a year after graduating from different faculties, many of my friends were in a limbo. Some were picking up assignments here and there, some were tired of trying for a job and rejected on the basis of experience or the lack of it; some were jobless by choice and lot of them trying for abroad studies.
However, one thing was very common in each of them: the idea of the present as temporary. We all agreed that this was just a phase and we were at a transition of our own. It was fair enough; we have things to do, study more, work harder and promote ourselves from wherever we are.
But as I was walking home after the little party, I thought about this idea of transitory period. Is it just another name for uncertainty? Maybe we all were just using this fancy phrase and attitude to curtain the “I don’t know what to do next” phase that we had when we passed our SLC and when we were done with our +2. Only this time, we aren’t young enough to declare that we don’t know what to do with our lives.
Sure, there are many who are focused with their life, be it studies or career. And even more, there are these people who are working on their own, at very young age, regardless of the many constraints they face. We hear, read and talk about them. And after working for a newspaper, you meet some of them and write about them, a close-up experience for inspiration.
But they are the exceptions. The majority look through the conventional way. And for many reasons, you surely need a conservative platform to exercise your experiments.
I had once overheard a conversation between my dad and his corporate friend. He was telling dad how hard it was for him to find good employees.
“People talk about all this employment crisis. But I’ve been struggling with finding skilled and capable staffs,” he had argued.
And then, there was this friend who said, “You need experience for job and you need a job for experience. And the former one is the employer’s choice.”
Without a link to bridge such differences, there will be more graduates pouring out every year who would be in the same flaccid state.
And before they acquire higher academics with specializations that are impressive enough to hold proper jobs, their degrees however seem like a burden: a sign that refrains you to be called a novice and yet not enough to be trusted by the world!
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