Invisible Wall

Summer of 1991 would have been a memorable ever summer for my grandmother. Because that summer only I wrote my first letter in my life. I sent that letter to my grandmother. Immediately! after three days I got a reply back from my grandmother. I got excited very much. I don’t know what made me so excited. It’s like I had done something, which the also elders were doing on those days. And have done something of my own. That happiness is still fresh in my mind.

After that summer the person in me who wants do something “new” had woken up. After that event I started noticing the letters coming to my home. When a post man came it’s an exciting one. The ultimate happiness came during the festival time. During festival the post man brought home different and colourful greeting cards. Streets were filled with small stalls / shops selling greeting cards, decorative items.  Even though my family was financially not stable at that time my parents use to send greeting cards to most of the relatives. Based on the intimacy of the relationship, the size of the greeting card would shrink or increase. Another fun is collecting the greeting cards which are coming to my home on those festival days. I use to cut the beautiful images from those cards and stick them on my drawer and backside of my notebooks, inside my geometry box, on my cycle etc.,. Each festival left a footprint! on my belongings reminding me about the happiness of those days.

My grandmother is one of the important persons who made me aware of this postal communication, as she was the head post master of the village where she lived. I used to get excited whenever she sends me a letter telling she is coming to the festival with sweets.

It used to be a wonderful atmosphere when those seasonal merchants selling greeting cards on the roadsides. It added colour to the festive mood.

The winter of 1996 was another milestone in my life. That’s the time we got our first telephone connection at home. It was an amazing improvement in our communication. Communicating a message / greeting had shrunken from days to minutes!!! For more than a year we used to wonder about it, but without ignoring the postal service. Because in my home we didn’t have STD facility and more over cost of making a STD call is not an affordable one. It varied 4-10Rs per minute based on the distance.

As years moved on, the cost of making STD calls started declining slowly. It eased us to make STD calls and exchange greetings. Around 2001 most of the festival wishes we exchanged were through telephone only. When some greeting cards came home then we use to think of like “Oh! Yeah we could have sent a greeting card”, but that feeling is left behind backed by the conveniences of exchanging the wishes over phone in minutes of time.

The years moved slowly and the world, especially India, has been embraced by the technology fever. There was a big boom in Internet. I should not forget the contribution it has done towards communication. The internet became the primary medium of information exchange through the growing free email services. The internet made it possible for the smooth transition of festive mood from the real world to the virtual world. Greeting web sites were flooded on festive seasons. But I don’t know how many have noticed, including me at that time, the decline of roadside seasonal greeting cards sellers. The frequency of letters reduced from 4-6 per week (during 90s) to 2-3 per week. Out of which most of them were marriage invitations, or demise cards.

Then the behemoth of all communication mediums had arrived. The MOBILE PHONE. The mobile phone has made a great revolution in the communication. Even though it was costly at the time of its adoption periods, it started growing exponentially as the price of the handset and the mobile service started declining. Everyone had seen mobile phone as a promising medium of communication. By the end of year 2007 the mobile phone penetration reached till the lower middle class. Thanks to the custom packages provided by the mobile operators (in India) due to the competition. Text messaging became fastest and favourite medium, for most of the young people, to exchange festival greetings. I was so pleased with the easiness in using SMS to convey greetings. Wow!!!

By experiencing all these, I felt that technology is always good. It makes life faster, easier and efficient (looks like a tagline of some consumer goods )

But, something was itching in my mind for a long time. I noticed one thing, very odd though, the number of calls made to relations (other than family members) became very less. I almost stopped calling most of my relatives, even though they are seconds away through mobile.

The frequency of letters reduced from 2-3 per week to 3-4 per month, out of which 2 are bank statements!!!

Following are the ratiocinations came to my mind:

1. When the technology grows, the life becomes faster.

2. When the life becomes faster, there is less time to stop and think about others (especially relatives)

3. Even though the technology has shrunken the distance between relations, an invisible wall is keep widening between them.

Oh! technology, bring us the love, the mood and the affection we had for festivals & relations across the wall.