The other day, I asked a long-lost friend if he was on Facebook. He told me that he had quit. I was intrigued and asked him why he hadtaken such a step. He said it was too much of a burden on his time. `How do you remember people`s birthdays?` I asked.

`I don`t,` he coolly replied.

I was horrified. Since then, I have been restless. Did he think he was, for some mysterious reason, better than us? `So, how do you stay in touch with your friends?` I asked.

`Over the phone,` he replied, almost haughtily, as if he was the only person among all of us whoknew how to use a phone.

`Are you serious?` was my inept retort.

`Yes.

I was frustrated beyond the limits of sociability.

Meanwhile, we stayed in the safe realm of nostalgia. We talked about the idiosyncrasies of the teachers who had taught us. Two of the teachers, another friend informed us, had passed away. We moved on to other, more entertaining, memories. One of the memories that, perhaps not surprisingly, sustained our interests for a long time was the memory of the biology textbook from eighth grade in school.

Chapter 19th of the book was about human reproduction. The chapter preceding that was about plant reproduction. But I am sure that for everyone, barring maybe one or two potential botanists, it was the least interesting of all chapters. The human reproduction chapter, however,created immense interest in most.

Within a sea of scientific gibberish, lay a gem that was discovered by some boys the very day we got our new textbooks. It was a picture of an expectant mother. For a lot of eighth graders, that picture was a symbol of their imagined liberation from childhood and their entry into the world of adulthood. A friend even remembered the page number, and said he`d look it up! Once again I turned to my iconoclastic friend: `So tell me, did you just deactivate the Facebook account, or did you completely delete it?` `Deleted. Forever.` Again, he answered my questions with single words. I felt a little insulted by this brevity. Irritated, and made defiant bythis imagined slight, I decided to press on.

`Why? Didn`t you have enough friends on Facebook?` I asked, hoping that that would be the case.

`No, I think I had about 900. But that`s not important.` I felt like someone had slapped me. His 900 friends were so much more than my 292 treasured ones. I was hoping to get them to 300 by the end of this month, since I had got back in touch with a few friends from school and met a couple at work. But he had had 900 friends. And, as if only to mock me, he added that it was `not important`. I now felt insecure in his presence.

Was Facebook a waste of time? Nothing exciting had ever really happened to me on Facebook.Except maybe that time when seven people had `added` me in one day. I had felt so important, and connected to the world. I remembered how good it felt when 79 people had wished me a happy birthday. Some had written thoughtful things. I had also reveled in the warm familiarity of `Have a good one`. But then I thought about what all these really meant to me. Will all these people really care if I dropped dead today? I looked at my Facebook-defiant friend and gave him a smile and a nod. He did not reciprocate, but I still felt like I understood him better now. I then made up my mind to delete my Facebook. I went home and slept peacefully, knowing that I had made a good decision.Today, when I logged on to Facebook, ready to delete my account, I saw a red notification at the top of the page. Apparently, my banker friend had tagged me in a photo that he had posted. I thought I`d indulge myself one last time.

When I clicked on the notification, a scanned image popped up before my eyes. It was the image from chapter 19.

I don`t know what to do now. E