************************************************************************************************************
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Well, I guess Cosmo Landesman is a senior citizen of my vintage and doesn't like the new social media.
There is nothing outright wrong with social media...all our politicos and actors are tweeting and blogging nowadays. And I am told that social media are playing a huge role in our recent elections.
As far as blogging goes, I am its Ancient Mariner. I have been there and done that (whatever that is) since 2007 as my Blogger says. And I love it to distraction.
Many youngsters asked me to come on Facebook and Twitter but I declined...I just don't have the time...my daily blogging consumes all 24 hours of my unlimited leisure.
And I am scared of Facebook nowadays. I read everyday in the newspapers that someone has been arrested for faking profiles and posting nude pictures and pornographic content out of spite for their ex-lovers. Or someone else has sunk into severe depression because she hasn't got a single 'like' for her latest post even after ten whole minutes. Or some bosom friends of decades had Facebook spats that ended their relation forever. Or some guy has even committed suicide in real space due to humiliation in cyberspace.
Our gated community here has about 450 youthful residents, most of whom working couples, working in real or cyberspace again. And that means there are at least a thousand Facebookers living close by. And I am told that spats and politics are more frequent than useful info like someone starting a drawing class or someone else catering.
A few months ago there was this Holi Milan in our Community Park. And all of us were there that late evening for good food...paranthas and jilabis and potato crisps sold in stalls. After an hour I felt this terrific urge to spit (an old man's privilege). And I started walking to the far-off ill-lit space bordering the fence to spit to my heart's content. And then I found my son running up behind me asking me to stop stop stop...
And I asked him:
"What is the matter?"
"Where are you going?"
"To spit over the fence"
"Oh, then it is ok"
"What do you mean, then?"
"I thought you were going to pee"
"What if?"
"No...there are these cell-phone addicts loitering and lurking here to take lewd pics and post them on their Facebook accounts "
So, it has come to that...one can't even pee in peace in Hyderabad...the heaven of peers...
I am not an anti-internet Luddite. For the record, at the age of sixty, I sent by e-mail attachments a word file of about 80 pages with sordid equations which was published as it was by no less than WH Freeman & Co.
And every morning as soon as I get up I open half a dozen windows on my laptop, like my Blogger's Stats and Google and Webster and Yahoo Mail. And keep watching my Blogstats...which of my blogs and how many are being read in which countries. I am not exactly a Narcissus looking fondly at his own image in a pool of water all the time...but just short of that.
And yet, I grumble at the advent of telephones, both landline and handline. These have caused needless annoyance to my near and so-called dear of whom I happen to have a hundred and more.
When my son's marriage was settled, I thought that it was imperative on my part to convey the great good news to my near and dear. And started ringing them up in the alphabetical order in which they were listed in my hard-copy phone book. And after ringing up half a dozen of them in ten minutes, every next relative I rang up complained that they had already heard the news from so and so a minute back and felt aggrieved that they had to get the news second hand and not from the horse's mouth..."Yes, I know...I am not one of your close near and dear, no?"
And then I started musing how nice the good old days were when there were no telephones. Everyone in the early 1950s in my family wrote only postcards which were cheap and open. Father had to go to the post office and buy cards and take pen and ink and write the message (whatever) in long hand. They were necessarily brief. And they took all of 2 or 3 days to reach their addressees. The writers even had short-hands for conveying that they were safe and not to worry. They scribbled 'Safe' at the top center of the card before logging in the message.
My ancient grannie on Father's side was writing postcards even in her 80s. And she used to start with scribbling "U-T" in Telugu. I asked her what this mysterious U-T stood for. And she told me that it is short for "Ubhayakushalopari-Taruvata" which meant, in all its glory:
"After conveying our safety here and inquiring about your safety there,"
What a mouthful of a tweet!
When we got a postcard with haldi (turmeric) smeared on its edges we knew that there is good news announced in a few words... a new arrival, an upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony) or even a marriage. And when Father happened to get a postcard that he read and tore it up into small bits and thrown them away, we knew it was a death.
And since postcards took all those days to reach everyone, the Namakaranam (name-giving baptism) ceremony of the newborn would be held on the 11th or the 21st day so that everyone could arrive conveniently. Even the Shraadh Ceremony (post-funeral ritual) was held on the 10th day or 11th or 13th, for the same reason maybe.
The arrival of a telegram was always bad news those days. Who would take the trouble to walk to the nearest Telegraph Office, pick up a form from the suspicious hands of the clerk behind the pigeon-hole, scribble the shortest possible message, pay through his nose per word basis?
It all changed by the 1960s. Telegrams often read:
"Send Rs 100 urgent exam fees"
And postcards were replaced by Inland Covers that were no longer open but glued up secretly....that was the start of instant love affairs and abrupt elopements.
I recall an RKN short story about a postman who was a family friend of a poor father looking badly for a suitable groom for his daughter. With great trouble and expense the father could find a match for his daughter and the wedding was fixed on an auspicious day. But there arrived in the post office that day a postcard announcing the death of an old relative. Custom and superstition dictated that the expensive wedding preparations had to be abandoned and postponed which the father could ill afford.
The Good Samaritan postman read the open postcard and debated for a moment and decided not to deliver it till after the wedding was well over...and had to pay a heavy price for his dereliction of duty...
Not likely nowadays with instant messaging and eavesdropping unsocial media...
************************************************************************************************************
...The critic Alan Brien wrote his own list of Bores of Britain in the Spectator in 1963:
"Salesmen are bores. Beautiful women are bores. Charming men are bores. So are a great many judges, editors, school-masters and lecturers. Sick people are bores. So are all stars of stage, screen and television. So are most men of power - presidents, generals, millionaires. Do-gooders are bores."...
...That was before the rise of the social media. Back then, if you didn't have anything interesting to say, you didn't say anything. But social media abhors silence. It demands a constant flow of comment and postings. And people are afraid that if they don't tweet or blog regularly they will simply go off the social radar and become invisible.
So in desperation even intelligent, thinking people will turn to the trivial and mundane bits of their lives - the very stuff they would never have mentioned in public for fear of appearing boring - and use that...
...Cosmo Landesman in the Spectator, DC Page 11, Tuesday 13 May 2014
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Well, I guess Cosmo Landesman is a senior citizen of my vintage and doesn't like the new social media.
There is nothing outright wrong with social media...all our politicos and actors are tweeting and blogging nowadays. And I am told that social media are playing a huge role in our recent elections.
As far as blogging goes, I am its Ancient Mariner. I have been there and done that (whatever that is) since 2007 as my Blogger says. And I love it to distraction.
Many youngsters asked me to come on Facebook and Twitter but I declined...I just don't have the time...my daily blogging consumes all 24 hours of my unlimited leisure.
And I am scared of Facebook nowadays. I read everyday in the newspapers that someone has been arrested for faking profiles and posting nude pictures and pornographic content out of spite for their ex-lovers. Or someone else has sunk into severe depression because she hasn't got a single 'like' for her latest post even after ten whole minutes. Or some bosom friends of decades had Facebook spats that ended their relation forever. Or some guy has even committed suicide in real space due to humiliation in cyberspace.
Our gated community here has about 450 youthful residents, most of whom working couples, working in real or cyberspace again. And that means there are at least a thousand Facebookers living close by. And I am told that spats and politics are more frequent than useful info like someone starting a drawing class or someone else catering.
A few months ago there was this Holi Milan in our Community Park. And all of us were there that late evening for good food...paranthas and jilabis and potato crisps sold in stalls. After an hour I felt this terrific urge to spit (an old man's privilege). And I started walking to the far-off ill-lit space bordering the fence to spit to my heart's content. And then I found my son running up behind me asking me to stop stop stop...
And I asked him:
"What is the matter?"
"Where are you going?"
"To spit over the fence"
"Oh, then it is ok"
"What do you mean, then?"
"I thought you were going to pee"
"What if?"
"No...there are these cell-phone addicts loitering and lurking here to take lewd pics and post them on their Facebook accounts "
So, it has come to that...one can't even pee in peace in Hyderabad...the heaven of peers...
I am not an anti-internet Luddite. For the record, at the age of sixty, I sent by e-mail attachments a word file of about 80 pages with sordid equations which was published as it was by no less than WH Freeman & Co.
And every morning as soon as I get up I open half a dozen windows on my laptop, like my Blogger's Stats and Google and Webster and Yahoo Mail. And keep watching my Blogstats...which of my blogs and how many are being read in which countries. I am not exactly a Narcissus looking fondly at his own image in a pool of water all the time...but just short of that.
And yet, I grumble at the advent of telephones, both landline and handline. These have caused needless annoyance to my near and so-called dear of whom I happen to have a hundred and more.
When my son's marriage was settled, I thought that it was imperative on my part to convey the great good news to my near and dear. And started ringing them up in the alphabetical order in which they were listed in my hard-copy phone book. And after ringing up half a dozen of them in ten minutes, every next relative I rang up complained that they had already heard the news from so and so a minute back and felt aggrieved that they had to get the news second hand and not from the horse's mouth..."Yes, I know...I am not one of your close near and dear, no?"
And then I started musing how nice the good old days were when there were no telephones. Everyone in the early 1950s in my family wrote only postcards which were cheap and open. Father had to go to the post office and buy cards and take pen and ink and write the message (whatever) in long hand. They were necessarily brief. And they took all of 2 or 3 days to reach their addressees. The writers even had short-hands for conveying that they were safe and not to worry. They scribbled 'Safe' at the top center of the card before logging in the message.
My ancient grannie on Father's side was writing postcards even in her 80s. And she used to start with scribbling "U-T" in Telugu. I asked her what this mysterious U-T stood for. And she told me that it is short for "Ubhayakushalopari-Taruvata" which meant, in all its glory:
"After conveying our safety here and inquiring about your safety there,"
What a mouthful of a tweet!
When we got a postcard with haldi (turmeric) smeared on its edges we knew that there is good news announced in a few words... a new arrival, an upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony) or even a marriage. And when Father happened to get a postcard that he read and tore it up into small bits and thrown them away, we knew it was a death.
And since postcards took all those days to reach everyone, the Namakaranam (name-giving baptism) ceremony of the newborn would be held on the 11th or the 21st day so that everyone could arrive conveniently. Even the Shraadh Ceremony (post-funeral ritual) was held on the 10th day or 11th or 13th, for the same reason maybe.
The arrival of a telegram was always bad news those days. Who would take the trouble to walk to the nearest Telegraph Office, pick up a form from the suspicious hands of the clerk behind the pigeon-hole, scribble the shortest possible message, pay through his nose per word basis?
It all changed by the 1960s. Telegrams often read:
"Send Rs 100 urgent exam fees"
And postcards were replaced by Inland Covers that were no longer open but glued up secretly....that was the start of instant love affairs and abrupt elopements.
I recall an RKN short story about a postman who was a family friend of a poor father looking badly for a suitable groom for his daughter. With great trouble and expense the father could find a match for his daughter and the wedding was fixed on an auspicious day. But there arrived in the post office that day a postcard announcing the death of an old relative. Custom and superstition dictated that the expensive wedding preparations had to be abandoned and postponed which the father could ill afford.
The Good Samaritan postman read the open postcard and debated for a moment and decided not to deliver it till after the wedding was well over...and had to pay a heavy price for his dereliction of duty...
Not likely nowadays with instant messaging and eavesdropping unsocial media...
...Posted by Ishani
************************************************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment