HELLO JI!
A WORD (OR TWO HUNDRED) FROM THE EDITOR
Image credit: CHAITANYA PILLALA on Unsplash.
As children, our sons were very interested in the “olden days”. As in, “What did you do in the olden days when there was no TV?” Increasingly, I find myself feeling like a relic of an old, forgotten age when I see cartoon strips on young adults who’ve no understanding of what “hung up on me” means – there being no cradle to hang the phone on.
It seems just the other day I was apologizing for my first few e-mails that seemed so impersonal in those days of handwritten letters. Now a child is incredulous that “mailing” involves an actual letter on a sheet of paper, an envelope, a stamp and a walk to the mailbox.
But the writing was on the wall for snail mail when people moved from greeting cards to e-cards. These evolved from simple illustrations with generic messages to ones with dancing Santas or bhajans complete with flickering diya flames and incense sticks. Or fire crackers that burst into flames when you click on them. These are cards you can customize. So, of course, card companies were collateral damage and it was only a question of when not if that Hallmark announced it was shutting shop.
My phone learned to convey endearments to loved ones in various languages, differentiating between my different avatars of sister, aunt or niece. With communication becoming ever less formal, people adopted those ghastly texting short-forms – BRB, LOL, TC – even in semiformal correspondence. Which used to annoy me so much that emojis seemed an improvement. Then those got animated. Winking, rolling on the floor, blowing kisses... Customized ones, or memojis, came next.
I resisted, until my son got me hooked on gifs. Aptly described by my husband as gifs that keep on giving. You can have Tom Hanks or the Cookie Monster summarize your response to any situation. Or have Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan doing the Indian head shake!
I have to confess I thought the folded hands signified namaste, and was amused they were used for thank-you. Until I was enlightened that the hands were actually a high-five. But I’m sticking with my version. Folded hands for a thank-you are much more appropriate in these social-distancing times than a high five!
My husband has been steadfast in his rejection of such frivolous communication tools. “It’s like we’re back in the age of hieroglyphics, before the evolution of the written word,” he says. “If a joke can’t stand on its own without a laughing head to cue laughter, the joke is not worth sharing.” Good old Wren and Martin would approve. But then they didn’t know that emojis have been described as the fastest growing language in history by some experts.
In This Just Speaks To Me, Hoda Kutb wrote that the most popular emojis at the height of the pandemic were face with tears of joy, loudly crying face, pleading face with anxiety eyes, rolling on the floor laughing and red heart. I wonder what the coming year will bring. Cue emoji.
Happy New Year!
Shagorika Easwar