BFF – so close yet so far!

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Every morning I wake up and log into my work email and meet my familiar friend – spam email. I have come to expect the spam emails to be greeting me into my mail box every morning at work. At some bizarre level I think if 1 day I dont see any spams I think I will possibly miss it (!!!).

And begin my morning ritual of clicking on each one to make sure that I it to make sure that I dont delete a legit email and then put then in trash to purge. You would ask why not have a spam folder where these mails get filtered into? Well dont get me started on that, lets keep working with IT companies and requesting “basic” stuff for another post. So here I am sipping my morning coffee, going through mail after mail of saying hello to acai berry sellers, russian lovers and in the process doing some work and replying to ‘work’ emails!

I also manage an online knowledge network and what have come to be in awe of some people trying so hard become my friends – spammers – clearly they have all the traits of becoming BFFs. Who cares about human machine differences? I dont! They are smart and methodical in their visits to the network. As mere humans we have CAPTCHA working on the network – you know just to make sure we only hangout with our kind, we think that should work? Nope! My Spam friend finds ‘real people’ to sign up, wait for first time log in, create a permanent log in and then start spamming! They join in and offer services in all hues and colors, everything from leather tanneries, website maintenance, night clubs, free movies etc etc – enough to entice any mortal -logging into become members of the site. If I was not working on this project I guess I would be impressed by the efforts I see and feel may actually have a new bff!

My persistent friend, after logging in and getting an account, makes their first post as a legit post, which may be a compliment on the work the network is doing or be even supporting the cause, so I approve the message to be posted on the live site (it goes to moderation queue-having been burnt in my zeal to make friends I do filter friend requests). Now that I have this trust thing going I have a sure shot in finding a true bff!  I may be close to approving everything this friend says on the network, but once bitten twice shy I keep checking everything and lo-behold finding a bff is not that easy, my trust is broken, spam comment made and I have to ‘delete’ both its poster and the post!

We were this close to becoming bff’s! and the jorurney continues…

Growing up

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The first thought when I saw this video was how fast a girl grows up into a role that society expects of her. There can be countless debates and researches that can state whether the nurturing nature is biological or social or both. But for Punam and children like her there is no debate, they have to grow up and take on responsibilities that expect from them much more than what can be expected of a nine year old.
There is no doubt that Punam being able to go to school despite all the hardships and household chores, can make her a “success story” (it is a loaded term, but I use it nevertheless). However, it is not hard to see the future when all it will take is one decision to stop her from going to school and take care of family and start earning. But till then she gets to be a parent without having fully lived as a child. As development workers we must provide alternatives that can help best leverage the existing circumstances of an individual or community, in this case what Punam has going for her is her father letting her be educated, which sadly is not the case for other children from her neighborhood.