Burn after reading
This is a blog about things that would be of interest to all who love reading unconditionally. A warning: you won’t find here any pretence at ‘objectivity’ or ‘balanced’ opinion. Three things not even God can be objective about: books, ideas, and beauty. You’ll find all three here, and occasionally, God too, on the days He exists.
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Now, I have nothing against people wishing each other on Diwali. I have nothing against people using as many exclamation marks as they want. I am even — believe it or not — agreeable to being woken up at 6 in the morning with a Diwali greeting. But. Only if you are waking me up specifically and not waking me up by default because I happen to be one of the 72 recipients of your non-customised, industrial, mass-produced Diwali wishes. There has to be something in your greeting that tells me that you have a connection with me that goes beyond the possibly accidental presence of my cell number in your phone book; something that says you wanted to wish me, specifically, and weren't just adding a name to your forwarding list.
My point is this: I don't want to be manipulated into spending 60-90 seconds of my life sending a Diwali greeting to someone I don't know, have spoken to only once, and don't really give a damn about. Now, before you start thinking what a creep I am, please remember that all of the above are applicable to O as well: O doesn't know me, has spoken to me only once, and he doesn't really give a damn about me. Because if he did give a damn about me, or knew me at all, he would have known that it's senseless and cruel and pointless to wish me for Diwali at 6 in the morning through a message that is not even meant for me specifically, and yet, manages to make me feel guilty if I don't reciprocate or acknowledge his message in some fashion, and this is always a losing proposition for me. Why? Because while he invested 1/n (where n stands for the number of recipients and can be any whole number from 2 to 10,0000) in terms of effort and time to send me his greeting, I will, if I reply to him, necessarily have to invest at least twice (where n = 2) and a maximum of 10,000 times (where n = 10,000) the effort and time he invested in greeting me. Now, how can that possibly make anybody happy on Happy Diwali?
Realistically speaking, I get about 30-40 such messages every Diwali and New Year and Dussehra and other random festivals, including monumentally corny ones like "Happy Republic Day!" Many of them are from professional contacts you don't want to rub the wrong way, if you can help it. Imagine the productivity loss if one were to sit down and reply to each one of them. Imagine their productivity loss. But they probably don't see it as a loss. They see it more like an investment — a form of networking activity — which is exactly what fills me with revulsion and a great deal of resentment. What you're actually doing is to cynically harness the goodwill and positive sentiment of a cherished festival to fatten your social and professional capital, with the expectation that it will pay professional dividend in the long run. Otherwise I see no reason why you have to send 1/30th of a Diwali wish to someone, which is, for those who are mathematically challenged, less than one Diwali wish. If I really wanted to wish someone, I would either call up (because you can't — yet — spam verbally) or greet them in person if I could. If you can't make the effort to call — or if the person is not important enough to merit a call — then he's probably not important enough to merit a Diwali greeting anyway.
However, assuming you're not a hypocrite and are fully aware that your Diwali greeting is more a networking exercise and less an expression of your personal interest in my having a great Diwali, why send a message that is so transparent in its inadequacy as a greeting and so pathetic in its inability to convey what you want me to believe you wish for me on my Diwali? Yes, it's my Diwali, like my birthday, and my marriage — and my Diwali is not the same as your vendor's Diwali or your CA's Diwali, or your former boss's Diwali or your prospective client's Diwali. So if you can't invest the effort or the time to make that differentiation in your greeting, and I am the same as all the rest of your 397 recipients, will you then spare me my time and effort and please, please shove your greeting where it won't victimize me and make me feel angry, helpless and sad all at the same time?
