Column

THE SPECTATOR

It’s a little like being all dressed up with nowhere to go.

But if there is a word to describe it, I haven’t heard it yet. It’s such a fleeting, tenuous, hard-to-capture piece of vague modern urban angst in any case.

What I’m referring to is the state of mind that you, me and everyone else who belongs to the wired planet occasionally encounters: being in possession of all the high-flying technology that money can buy — with no one to play with it with.

For example, a friend who recently bought the most advanced laptop in the market that offered every possible communication tool — from msn to email to Skype to live video chats — confessed that he often sits waiting besides his machine in the hope of a message — any message — that will render his acquisition valid. “What’s the use of buying this amazing communication tool,” he confessed disarmingly to me “when often there’s no one out there to communicate with?”

Then there are those amongst us who excitedly run to answer their fancy mobiles only to realise that they are being blind called by an insurance salesman who can’t even get their name right.

You know the height of modern-day angst? Receiving a single sms all Sunday — and that too from your fishmonger informing you of a fresh catch of prawns sold at a discount!

I don’t know about you, but there are times I’ve found myself staring at my comp, wishing for a ‘human voice’ to show up besides forwards and sales pitch from weird pharmaceutical companies or Nigerian scamsters.

And I know this is going to do my social status no good, but I’m one of those who actually find the beep beep of a new sms reason to feel happy — only to find that it says “download the hottest rated images and most melodious ring tones of 2006. Click on the link etc.”

And is there any one out there who like me runs to pick up the phone and feels personally let down when it’s only a credit card company offering a new card?

Most of my emails are from impersonal senders, which make me cherish the ones that aren’t so much that I am ashamed to admit I have a hard time deleting them.

Waiting for exciting personal communication with a plethora of high-tech toys at our command and being ever so slightly disappointed is perhaps such a new urban experience that psychologists and sociologists have still barely come to terms with it.

The more connected we become, often the less connected we seem to be.

Remember when we were young and the biggest fear was being left to sit out of every dance at the school social as a wall flower who no one wanted to dance with?

Well, waiting for the right emails, sms, msn and calls is this generation’s answer to that bugbear!

s_malavika@dnaindia.net