Conversation....

Everything changes… So does the meaning & substance of the word “conversation”. A decade or two back, it would have meant meeting a friend - sitting & chatting. Coffee or no coffee, the pleasure of being with a friend was great. Those were the good old days when we had the luxury of time.

Now that our lives have become fast & electronically connected, what needs to be seen is… are we still personally connected???? On my regular walks I see most people fiddling with their Ipods, cell phones etc…. and rarely do few, enjoy “nature”. Didn’t we have better memory when we had less electronics on hand – we could easily remember a dozen phone numbers offhand. Now most of us don’t even remember our close family member’s phone numbers. The electronic world has it’s boon. Many have found staying in touch with friends & family members far away, easier. The loved ones birthdays are on social media, which sends us reminders to wish them (because we can’t be expected to remember everything!!!) Some of us do take the liberty to send an e-greeting, which we view once or rarely twice, before trashing it. Previously we would display the greeting cards we receive on the mantel piece for months and on a regular basis those cards would fill us with beautiful memories. Now to even, make or break a relationship, there is sms or social media on hand. Just “unfriend” them, to let them know - they have been “dumped”.

On my recent trip to Singapore, I was surprised to see that majority of the MRT users (metro users) were engrossed in their electronic devices, that they don’t even acknowledge the person standing next to them. Once while I was travelling on MRT, I noticed a family of four travelling traveling along. The two year old and the five year old, playing on their individual Ipad’s and parents browsing on their own smart phones. There was no interaction among the family members, leave alone anything around them. To add to it a friend told me that her daughter’s sms bills ran into thousand bucks on a particular month, while she didn’t even use her free calls. The reason she was told – “who calls these days….” (as if it was something against the social etiquette).

I value smart phones and latest electronic gadgets. But dear friends, let’s give real human value to people, instead of just pressing the electronic “likes”.

By Pushpa Ramesh