This is the continuation of the series “COLLEGE LIFE”… College Student Life – Episode 7. Enjoy Reading!
How’s it going on fellas? NefariousPie here. I hope you guys are doing well. If you’re from West Bengal or Odisha, comment down below your situation. We would like to know if you’re doing all right or not. It’s been long since we have put some personal blogs on the site. The reason is simple, we were going through a lot. Now if you wonder whether I am talking about the quarantine, then the answer is no. I am talking about a lot of other dreadful things happening one after another.
Long Story Short
The first thing that happened was the communal violence. It broke out at Telinipara in West Bengal’s Hooghly. I was feeling pretty lucky when I heard the news. If my college was not closed due to the corona outbreak, I may have to witness the whole thing. The place where I live as a Paying Guest is quite close to the place where the riot took place. At the same time, I was worried. Lots of my friends live there and communal violence can spread like a virus in no time. When the whole world is fighting a virus from Wuhan, our periphery was getting destroyed by a virus of our creation.
Social media was getting filled with the wrong information. This wrong information was supplying fuel to the fire. A disturbing video of two men being brutally thrashed by a group of people is circulating on WhatsApp. The claim was that this is how Muslims are committing atrocities on Hindus in Bengal. After investigation, police found that the video was from Bangladesh. Some news pages from Bangladesh had uploaded the viral video over a year ago, in March 2019.
Internet Blackout Started
False News and edited video was always a problem for modern society. It misleads people. Force them to do miserable things. But that was not the end. The people of Hooghly paid for their karma. We were rewarded with 5 days of Internet Blackout for misusing our not so precious data for spreading wrong information. This was not the first time. India has a record of the most Internet Blackout in 2019.
Genuine Concern
The wrong information is like a cancer cell. The quickly you get rid of it is, the better it is. Don’t try to look over the miss information. I have my fair share of a dispute with my father for forwarding WhatsApp messages. Don’t just think that “Oh, OK. It’s just a WhatsApp forward.” Wrong pieces of information can be lethal. Nowadays IT cells of every political party are extremely active. Due to lockdown, they have more free time to think of new tricks. People tend to believe these stories because they used dome popular organizations’ names. You may think that “what rubbish! Who’s going to believe that?”
But trust me. People trust names like WHO, UNESCO, ISRO more than their child. But it’s not that we can blame the elderly people. We are the people good with Techs. It’s not their Era. We have to come forward. When you are reading this, maybe you’re thinking “Yeah! This guy is right”. “Let me tell you, bro, we as a generation are not doing very good as well. When it comes to misinformation, we are the ones who share it even before our parents.”
The Cause is Us
We still believe NASA takes pictures of India every Diwali from the space.
Yeah! We believe that UP Govt ended the Reservation system from Private Medical college.
We believe that UNESCO chose Indian National Anthem which is the best national anthem in the world.
Back to Personal Stuff
Anyway, back to my life. Due to the Internet Blackout, I was isolated from the rest of the world. I was not able to access anything. All of my Video Games were online. I could not even play video games to pass my time.
The first day of Internet Blackout was not that boring. I tried to work on website blogs. I didn’t have much to say. Because I was not doing anything, anyway. And to write any tech blog you need different resources. Without the internet that was not possible as well.
I had to drop the idea. Tried to solve some real-life problems using Java. I made a small application that transforms a normal image into greyscale. I tried to write a program that can take a file input that has different DNA sequence sample and it will find the distinct genes in it. These were really easy programs. But it took me a whole day, as the internet was not there to my rescue.
The Intense Day
Day 2 was intense. My father and I had to pile up about 100 bricks that were scattered on the ground. If you are wondering why there were bricks scattered on the ground, here’s the answer. There was some construction work going on. But due to lockdown, it stopped. And we were trying to remove unnecessary things from the construction site. It was causing us a hell lot of problems. It took us about 3 hours to complete. I was totally exhausted. And could not do anything else that day.
I called some friends that evening. Had some interesting conversation. When you don’t have internet and you are not in good shape every conversation seems interesting.
The next day when I woke up my whole body was aching. I could not even move my fingers properly. After I did my very late breakfast, I started reading a book. It was Sharadindu Omnibus. If you don’t know, this is a compilation story of famous Indian detective Byomkesh Bokshi. While I was reading, I got a call from a friend. He said his internet is perfectly working. I was confused. His place is not very far away from my home. If my internet is not working, his internet should not work as well. So, I went to my rooftop in search of Internet Connection.
Back to Normal
Internet was back. I tested some open ports and APN settings. It was working. But (Yeah! there’s always this but, no matter what you do) speed lesser than regular. I was able to watch YouTube videos in 240p. Though it was taking a hell of a time to load. And most importantly I was able to chat with my homies. The rest of the blackout days passed smoothly after that.
Realization
But with all this time I had time in my hand to think, I thought a lot about these fake news stuff. In my view, the best solution is to have a sense of community. We as individuals cannot confirm whether a claim is fake or legit. But with multiple people commenting or sharing information they have, we can stop the spread. A 14-year-old boy in Gurugram killed himself on Monday by jumping off an 11-storage building. A girl tagged him in a #MeToo post on social media, accusing him of molestation. And people just started sharing the post without cross-checking. Today India has this “guilty until proven innocent” mindset. We need to stop this. Think logically.
End Note
I know today’s episode was a general thing rather than a personal blog. But I am genuinely worried about this false news. I could not even post anything in my social accounts. Because some so-called “Feminists” are going to start a royal debate there.
All right that was my story, How false news fu**ed our life in the midst of lockdown. If you have something you want us to know or want to discuss, comment down below. You can comment Anonymously as well. As the name and email field are mandatory, you can write “anonymous” there. Looking forward for knowing your story.
Good insight about what happening in Bengal. It is the same state which used to provide bread and butter to other state people, now the scenario is reversed. Due to dirty politics post 70’s ruined the state like anything. We the people of Bengal who lives outside the state feels the difference very well. Just landing at Dum Dum airport makes you feel that u r in Bengal. We as a people of Bengal need to change our mind set.
I cal still see hope for Bengal in the form of you guys. All the best Bengal
Thanks for your reply, sir. We are trying our best to provide our insights to the world through our blogs. We believe that when people will be aware of the truth behind the cases, they will start thinking logically. Bengal will change. India will change. Once again, thanks for your support. 🙏
Very impressive article.
1. The entire story and the title of the story is a mismatch.
2. Was it written by multiple folks and assembled?? If yes they I see a lack of proper review before publishing a final version..
3. The story has many disconnected dots.. as reader I was not able to figure out the direction of the story? Was it on student hostel life? Was it on rumours over net? Was it on violence or was it about impact of a violence on a student life?or was it about a helpless student finding himself in dark without internet? Hope you see the disconnected dots in my comments..
4. The writer says boldly that its about a violence in local and finally landed on his personal computer desk.
5.why are becoming so techy in writing a blog ? Was it a techical blog ?? Not at all I believe??.was it targeting a specific age group or reader community?
The only positive note I have is, whoever has written this has good potential to write a blog beside he stick to topic..this blog remind me a song ….London,Paris,San Francisco ..Dil me mere hai Dard e disco..All the best guys .have a nice time
Thanks for your critic, sir/madam. The points you have written are absolutely true. I tried to write about how I felt about the Internet Blackout. But, I realized that fake news was the root. Due to the duality, the blog seems disconnected at some points. And Yes, our targeted audience was people who are pursuing any college degree or left college recently. But we realized from statistics of the website that people from other age groups are visiting as well. We will keep in mind every point you said. Thank you again for your support.🙏