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Many ways to communicate, little to say

For a mere Rs 3, says an SMS I just received, I can flirt with a cool person like me. I am flattered that someone thinks I’m cool. Or someone knows that I think I’m cool. But I’m not so happy that someone thinks that I need to pay to flirt. And Rs3? What kind of a cool person would flirt with me for Rs 3?

So far, if I feel the need to flirt, I don’t need to find a phone friend at a price. Perhaps the day will come, but by then I also hope that I’ll have lost the urge. Besides, if you collect lots of Rs3s, it can become a fair amount of money to stuff into the mattress for old age security.

One could conjure up a picture of lots of lonely city-dwellers packed into their flats, complete in their isolation, sending SMSes to each other but not bothering to walk up to someone and say hello, are you going my way. Because ‘r u gng my way’ is easier though not cheaper. This is a clichéd image anyway, and so overdone by now. My favourite Ray Bradbury story, The Murderer is about a man who ‘killed’ his wristwatch phone because he was tired of constant electronic communication. And that was written before cell phones were invented, so the idea is over. We need technology.

This is more about our great desire to alienate ourselves. About 10 years ago, the managing director of the company I worked for introduced intra-mail for easy communication. Why can’t I just walk up to the person sitting next to me and talk to him, I asked idiotically. Because this is easier and more effective, he shot back. He read Ed McBain, I preferred PD James which perhaps tell you something about our differing philosophies.

Actually, using technology for communication is easier and more effective. There are no facial expressions, no tones of voice, no “did you mean this when you said that,” less room for misinterpretation. Ideal for letters giving you the sack, telling you that you’re not getting an increment and that your executive toilet facilities are being withdrawn. Can you imagine the joy of the shy person, not having to engage with fellow beings and thereby expose the inner self? Outside the workplace, break up by SMS must be even simpler than flirt by SMS and totally minus all the emotional boo-hoo that must inevitably follow an ‘I’m through with you’ conversation.

But, it’s also a cop out. A cowardy-custard method, what newspapers call dastardly. And in a convoluted way, it goes back to the pre-telephone days: letter writing. Delay the face to face and instead send an email.

We all know that the Internet has turned into the most human, personally impersonal way of communication. We can talk to the world, but we can hide behind a handle. We can meet more people than we possibly could physically in a lifetime but we can never reveal who we are. We are inviolate in ourselves. Every man is an island.

It is the most perfect form of loneliness ever invented. And each new invention so perfectly mimics reality that we can pretend that we are communicating and increasing our interaction with the world. Youtube, Orkut, Facebook, and all those other places to meet the faces that you’ll never have to meet. Alfred J Prufock, you would dare to eat that peach.

It’s sitting next to a colleague and chatting with them on some electronic computer chat. I’ve never got that. Don’t have the requisite brain power to surf the net and type out little clever things at the same time. Everyone else loves it, using short forms and hieroglyphs and never looking up at anyone’s face and actually speaking. What do we need vocal chords for when we have fingers?

In the early days of spam, I was bombarded with the usual offers to increase my penis size, give me an under-grad degree and clean my septic tanks. Now I get SMSes inviting me to flirt for Rs3. Maybe someone in techno heaven thinks I have graduated.

But my problem is currently greater than that. I use SMSes a lot, I have to confess. Because I’m partly deaf, I can’t always hear properly on the cell phone. One of my closest friends is partly blind. She can never read my SMSes. We are waiting for someone to invent telepathy, virtual, with GPS, HTML, HTTP, WAP and all the other required initials of mystery and wonder. Do I hold my breath?

Email:b_ranjona@dnaindia.net