All for an email
Every morning I open my email with the hope of receiving nice, gossipy, full of missives, loooooong emails. Instead, I am flooded with FB notifications, forwards, bank emails, junk, and missed pings.
Wasn’t it just a few months back that I wrote about the dying art of writing letters? And now look how, even emailing is replaced by social networking. It takes what, a few months (?) to make meaningful things redundant these days?
Mommies replaced by nannies, nannies replaced by day cares.
Husbands replaced by lovers, lovers replaced by one night stands.
Children replaced by pets, pets replaced by e-aquariums, e-pets and e-farms.
Real socialising replaced by e-socialising, e-socialising replaced by a strange sense of depression. (I so wanna elaborate on this one, but just can’t seem to catch the pulse of this feeling. Its a strange sense of existential crisis. I just can’t seem to explain. If you can feel the nerve, care to speak up ).
Breakfasts replaced by on the go muesli bars, they in turn replaced by sugar free chewing gum.
Visits to parents replaced by telephone calls, and in a few days time am so sure these phone calls will vanish too and SMSes will rule the roost.
Sex taken over by sleep, sleep taken over by last minute customer presentations.
Work taken over by ambition, ambition replaced by money.
UGH…..the way we live these days! There is something so surreal about it. I’ve begun to start believing in the Matrix theory. Maybe everything is after all simulated?
:D. Ok ok. All for an email??? I am dying for a soppy loong girlie email. Doesn't mean men can’t churn those. They are perfectly capable of mush. They just think its against their religion to express anything that remotely resembles mush.
May be all that I really am craving for is some romance. In that case its going to take a while. For the man I live with has temporarily abandoned me and is dwelling in his fairly tale land of presentations, customer reviews and clients. How exciting, he keeps saying, from time to time.
How dismal, is what I say.
Comments
When I asked a friend about her life on chat ( another e relationship) she told me that it was all on facebook :(.
All I got was a text saying 'thanx' :)
So you see...
common things like common sense have become so uncommon...and adultery has become the common thing... :P
I remember when we first became professional 8 years back in those pre-orkut days, we had our email chatting, which means a virtual mailing group consisting of all of our email addresses and it was exactly similar to chit chatting in our univ canteen/ or in some nearby gachtala except now we are not seeing each other and not sitting together. Believe me,every day we used to get close to 100 emails and I knew everyone else's whereabouts in spite of being 1000 miles away.Within 1-2 year, it completely vanished.
And then as recently as this Bijoya, I sent Subho Bijoya close to my 50 frnds, and I think i hardly got 10 reply!!
May be the so-called social networking sites are actually making us unsocial :(
@Psych babbler: so have u written?
@sachi: hi there, thanks for stopping by. i am guilty of excessive Fbing too. But the question here is, are we disregardiing more important relationships?
@IK: ufffff. :p
@scribbler: I keep telling you, you should hang out more with me. Did u write to me? Did you? did you? ;p
@Mustaf: e-farms, e-aquariums, e-town life, e-city life, e-dog pets are all applications of Facebook :D. I myself spent a lot of precious moments on those apps and regret it hugely. But i dont learn. :)
I think its ok to Fb and e-socialise. infact Fb has brought together some of my long lost friends and I have been able to keep int och with so many at one go. But the fight here is replacing FB for every possible mode of communication.
You get as you give.
I have been a writer of full and long prose for more than 30 years now, if you read my posts regularly. The usual crib is that my pieces are too long. But I resist the small piece as much as I love writing the long piece, packed with small words.
Besides, I write at least 5-6 emails and letters of more than 400 words everyday. The question is does the receiver care to reply and engage in conversation? Do you, KG?
The reason most people waste their time on networking sites like FB is because these sites are designed to seduce weak-minded and lonely people into an illusory crowd.
Scrolling down all those faces and reading all those teeny-weeny messages satiates you to believe that you are part of that world.
No sooner you exit FB than the lights go out and you know deep down inside that it was all fake. Yet we go back for more fake, because we have abandoned the real world of human beings.
The other day, I went down to the Shiv Darshan Chowk where I stay in Pune and met and talked with every shopkeeper I knew well. I have taken down their names and biodata and one of these days I shall write about them on my blog.
Our neighbours, my friends, my students -- all these are separate worlds I inhabit. They add meaning and value to my life.
And if it is romance you seek, dear KG. always bear in mind: "To be in love with oneself is the start of a lifelong romance." - Oscar Wilde.
I hope we meet when you make it to India soon.
Note I say, "Keep in touch" not connected. I save my words to protect my world.
Peace and love,
- Joe.
Aajkaal bijoyaar pronaam shara hoye sms-er madhyome. How sad is that?
Excellent post...but then, from you? -- of course!!
@M4: presisely my point. for certain things, one shouldnt be taking the easy route. I dont even receive smses any more m4. no longer. :(. But guess I need to put more effort myself..
post cards are cute ! simple !personal !
and yeah you have mentioned most things that keep coming into my mind too - but you express it really well on paper!
@madmomma: you know what is worse? these virtually socially people, who are sooo friendly online, can't socialise offline. They don't even return calls, but will scribble all over your virtual wall :D How uncool, i say. Oh and farmville...i lost precious moments to that myself. Guilty. But have learnt my lessons. :)