Control Freak

In today's world everything is about control. Eh, that's a clichéd start for any writing. I feel like starting it again, as using cliché shows your writing is controlled by the convension and an urge to allign it to the taste of others. So naturally the control over it is passed to someone else, in this case the readers. Nothing wrong in that as such, just that the ego of the writer is hurt and that's no small deal: remember Shaukat Vashist in Shabd and how he wanted to control the world both within and surrounding his writing space?

Now freaking out is one thing (when the control passes from you, that is), and planning for having the control always with you is another (that's called proactiveness, in terms of managerial crap). Again, there is nothing wrong in doing that, just that overdoing kills the fun of living for others sometimes. And having the control and utilising it can very well be demonstrated in a passive manner, you don't have to send your armed troops to the desert to show that.

For the people in the field of software, Control of course means something altogether different. As we all know, they are geeks albeit of a very special type, and for them passing control does not mean losing the battle. Apart from passing it to the pre-sales guy when a new project comes up (and without much fuss they do it, sometimes with an excuse as lame as "oh I like doing technical stuff and don't mind if I have to put 36 hours of work a day because of the aggresive selling someone does on behalf of my company"), and in their work they keep on doing it, when they pass it from one interface (well screen in layman's term) to another. And they do it with the most user-friendly manner, like when control goes from screen A to screen B, which field of screen B should have the control on (again, field in layman's term). Then they have activex control, stuff that controls almost anything important in an Interface. While building a website that allows the users to create their profiles (like the dating and mating sites), the control is everything. Whether you should have the control to refuse others to ping you or not is a big question. And even if that happens, whether they can send a message which will not reach your Inbox because you refused to it, and they will understand they are refused or they will not understand, is also very important. Like in Yahoo messenger you will never learn that the sweet girl you are messaging since ages has actually blocked you and not getting bugged by your romantic messages. Whereas in some sites when you try to type your message you will realise you are not allowed to do so because of the same reason: she hates you. It is probably rude to let you know that by passing that control, but I suppose that's more realistic, you can always move to another girl, this cyberworld is never short of lovely and virtual people.

In real world however, the way controls are passed (or not passed) is not so simple. Here when we refuse to listen to others in a way that's not rude (and thus politically correct), we simulate a scenario where the poor soul thinks he or he has the control. So the blabbering goes on and the husband watches the football match with a smile thrown in the air. And the wifey does not bother to check if that's a fake smile, she also pretends to enjoy the control, afterall peace is one big thing we all want. So the synthetic smiles rule over all lips, and the fake control is passed from one to another when both the parties know it means nothing, and things work exactly the way we want them to.