Can Thoughtful Writing Survive in the Modern Inbox?

I woke early this morning, tackled chores, brewed a cup of coffee, and settled in to check my emails. Anticipating the usual notifications from my bank, blog engagement data, or the weekly offers from Musafir or Emirates, I was caught off guard. Instead, I stumbled upon a digital relic—an authentic email, complete with structure, full sentences devoid of text abbreviations, proper syntax, and impeccable grammar. It was the whole shebang! Someone had actually written to me – instead of resorting to one of those impersonal Whatsapp messages that I usually read a day or two after they are sent! How cool, no?

Reading the email beckoned me to a time when the internet hummed at the pace of dial-up connections. A time when my communication with friends and family bore the weight of contemplation, when writing was an art, and was also my only way of connecting with friends from Mount Abu to Melbourne! (You know who you are)

As a student I was tethered to an hour of internet usage a day at home. Our egg white box computer sat on a Magenta table that was custom made to hide a printer, a bulky CPU, a noisy modem, and box speakers. We were all teched out in the early 2000s primarily thanks to my father’s foresight in recognizing the transformative impact of computers on the world; he wanted to ensure that we had the skills we would need in the future.

But one hour a day was never enough for me and so I found solace in cyber cafes, where for 10 rupees an hour I could navigate the fascinating virtual landscape, develop the grace of an Orkut maestro, stumble into strange chat rooms where people had even stranger user names and I would inevitably find myself hastily clicking the ‘x’ icon on a tab whenever a questionable advertisement or image popped up—usually just as the café owner was making his way down the aisle to ensure nobody was misusing the sacred machines. How times have changed, no?

Despite it all, nothing brought me more joy than spotting a familiar name in my inbox. Over the years, I transitioned from writing and sending letters to reading digital life updates, and both brought me immense joy. I have fond memories of walking to our neighborhood post office with grandma, queuing up to buy stamps, hunting for a glue stick and then finally slipping the envelopes into the slender mouths of big red letter boxes. Later, I made memories reading out emails to my folks, and printing out the ones I wanted to keep going back to after my time online was up. Email, once an art form, unfolded as a tapestry of my thoughts, meticulously woven in the quiet hum of a cyber café or against the background noise of a family of four in action.

Fast forward to the present, our corporate corridors reverberate with the staccato rhythm of mindless email culture, CCs, BCCs, instant messages, and WhatsApp pings—a cacophony that drowns the eloquence of artful communication. The digital realm, once my sanctuary for profound exchanges, now succumbs to the tyranny of brevity, FYIs, and is often used as a substitute for actual human to human communication.

In this era depth is sacrificed for immediacy and I yearn for a revival of the email’s grace. The corporate milieu, with its stilted language and curt directives, has eclipsed the nuanced beauty of written expression. People just don’t have the time to care for what they communicate.

If you’re reading this, I would ask you to reflect on the richness of what we’ve forsaken. The email, once a vessel for emotion and contemplation, has been long ignored. Can we not, in the midst of this digital deluge, salvage the sanctity of our written exchanges? As the festive season approaches with Christmas and New Year’s just around the bend, now is the ideal moment to delight someone with a heartfelt, personalized email message. Craft a note that goes beyond words, making them feel truly seen, warmly remembered, and genuinely cared for.

Can thoughtful writing survive in the modern inbox? I am going to try and reclaim the art of connection in the remaining ten days of 2023—one carefully crafted email at a time. Watch your inbox just in case you’re on my list.

Help

My eyes opened at 6:00 am, just as my phone’s alarm was reaching its crescendo. As I lay in bed in that half-asleep, half-awake limbo, I noticed that I had 40 unread messages on WhatsApp. New morning. Old routine. And so the arduous task began…

Message Series 1

Horrible images from the wreckage of the flight in Kerala with links to news articles I already read last evening. What is worse, every person on the group feels it is their obligation to respond with ‘RIP’ or insert an appropriate emoji into the ever-expanding list of replies. The tragedy moved me deeply, the robotic responses did not and so I scroll, ignore, and move on.

Message Series 2

Funny cartoon image accompanied with #justsharing, multiply by 20 responses and now some memes in response to the first image!

Message 3

Silly video of a cow wearing Covid PPE. (Comments added for a personal touch)

(I wonder who had time to edit this video? I mean…)

Message 4

A friend from another continent asking me if I watch Indian Matchmaking. I don’t and even responded with a thumb down emoji before going to bed last night. The message clearly did not register, for here on my screen are 17 quotes from someone named Sima. I roll my eyes, look beyond the sexist comments and pick out the flaws in her grammar before I roll out of bed and add an extra spoon of coffee to my percolator.

Unpopular Opinion Alert: If WhatsApp did not give me the convenience of communicating with my family on the go, I would probably choose not to use it. Sure, it is a useful application but it also offers a constant tirade of beeps and flashing lights; a constant stream of throwaway comments and thoughts that I must keep track of, read and (*shudder*) respond to!

I sip my coffee as I get back under the duvet and turn to my laptop to quickly read through the remaining messages. Beside me is the overturned novel I have been ignoring. I have not been able to turn past page 44 of the David Mitchel book by my bedside in the last three days; and this is not the first time I have laboured through a novel over the last few years. But where is the time for reading uninterrupted? Mitchel doesn’t stand a chance in this day and age and I will probably only manage a few pages after an extended period of blissful boredom one of these nights.

I am a lover of words, I study them, I collect them and store them away to be used when the right opportunity arises, words gives wings to my thoughts and so the irony is not lost on me. Words on WhatsApp have quite the opposite effect on most days. These words are fleeting. Momentary. Forgettable. Silly. Gone. Banished above the ‘load more comments’ button and lost into the ether. While the benefits of the application far outweigh the downsides, I am forced to question how much of the proverbial price I am willing to pay.

As I type this, I realize that I do not really have anything profound to share and this has turned out to be an early morning rant instead. Just then another beep interrupts my thoughts. It is a message from a former student studying medicine in Eastern Europe, I click on her name and read…

What’s the opposite of ‘Dominoes’???

 Tired of thinking???

Well the answer is ‘Domi doesn’t know’

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is too much, ‘You’re better than this!’ I scold her, ‘this is what you send me, when you message after months of no contact?’

‘Chill!, she responds, ‘You sound like my dad!’.

I ignore the cheeky jibe and we chat for a few minutes before both of us realize we need to carry on with the day. Saturdays are for catch-up and my day goes by as planned. Chores done. E-mails sent. Checklist…checked. Coffee had. Plans with my brother finalized. Just as I sit down with my lunch and to watch some Hell’s Kitchen re-runs, another beep.

A message from another contact, in another part of the world.

What’s the opposite of ‘Dominoes’???

Tired of thinking???

Mind.  Blown.

***I cannot believe this***

***You have got to be kidding me***

***Slams phone***

***Bangs head***

Feels like an episode of Hell’s Kitchen alright.

I am (of course) exaggerating, but you get my drift. What are some of the ways you cope without offending your contacts? I could *really* do with some advice.

Caught in The Web

 

I first met Rituparna Mahapatra some years ago and got to know her better through her writing which has now found a new home on her blog. Since then, I have been waiting to get her to write for ‘Frankly Speaking’. Rituparna is at present, editor-at -large for Kitaab.org. Her features have been published in India America Today, The Deccan Herald, The Telegraph, Borderless Journal and Odisha bytes amongst others. She taught English literature at Sambalpur and Delhi Universities before she became a full time writer; today she continues to teach writing in her free time. Rituparna lives in Dubai, with her husband, two kids and her golden retriever Hiro.

On checking the data for my phone’s screen time usage, it says 8 hours (in the last week?). I am perplexed as to how this can be; I hardly get time to breathe these days. But my phone clears all the dark clouds and shows me the time I have spent on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, chatting, reading, writing and browsing online. The data is out there, broken down to its tiniest measure of time and everything is crystal clear. I stare at the screen for a while – this is a revelation to me ‘about me’.

I have never known the insides of my mind, as well as my phone, does. It’s as if this 6 by 2.5 inch piece of living metal knows what I am looking at, what my desires are, the people I dislike, the ones I love, my happiest place, my darkest fears; all of it. It knows about the diseases I suffer from, my ovulation cycle and my mood swings. Eerie.

It seems like we have forgotten to feel our emotions without documenting them. Our date nights are spent clicking pictures of the flowers on the table to the food on our plates and sending it out there. Yes, we hold hands and smile but only to keep a record. Memories are not made anymore, we just store them to never visit again; unless Facebook reminds us.  Imagine everything ‘about us’ being out there, whirring in the universe of a never-forgetting web. Everything that we have ever done virtually is archived somewhere. Our private chats, our photos, our google searches, our 4:00 am calls, our food preferences, our favourite celebrities, our secret accounts, who we have muted, who we have blocked, who we are stalking…Every. Single. Thing.

I secretly envisage the threat this carries – of exposing us, our real selves.  This unravelling of our lives, layer by layer, stripping it of any vanity that we may have proclaimed, bringing our perfect lives to dust. To make matters worse, as I was thinking this, my Instagram flashed pictures of ‘Electric Kettles ‘ directing me towards stores selling them. How did ‘they’ know I needed one? Then I remembered that when my kettle crashed yesterday I searched frantically for a replacement on Google. I forgot about it soon after, but my phone remembered.

Maybe this is a millennial delusion, a picture of a dystopian world, all of which is a result of living in continuous surveillance of the ‘web’. I type ‘how’ and the search engine throws up ‘how to speak with more confidence’; mocking me, showing me my deepest fears; which I have guarded diligently and prefer to battle on my own through dark, sleepless nights. I don’t want to be reminded of it now; when I am with my friends sipping iced tea at the cafe and planning on our next trip to the organic store that sells the best ‘truffles’. By the way, I was searching for ‘how to cook with truffles’ too.

I cannot touch my teenager’s phone anymore; the biometrics inform him every time it is touched by anyone other than him. Since then, I have added another prayer-point to my list, ‘to keep him protected from the web always’. I worry for my younger one too so now I insist on surveying the faces and lives of her virtual friends. I feel guilty about stalking them, but I do it nevertheless. The fear of ‘the unknown’ that our children are exposed to and what they are becoming is far greater than everything else.

Our parents are not safe either. There are stories I read every day of senior citizens being robbed of their hard-earned savings. I call my mother hurriedly and ask her to wait till she can go in person to the bank. She tells me, our small town is tense with an underlying threat of simmering mob violence, between two religious sects. I ask how will they know ‘who’ is ‘who’? She reminds me of the details they had filled up on the digital voter card; they know exactly ‘who’ is ‘who’. They know how many people live in each house, how much they earn and how much they spend, which places they visit, thanks to the online check-ins. My belief that God controls everything is shaken, our lives are flow charts for programming codes, in the end, we are just data to an algorithm.

This Pandemic has been a wake-up call for us on many fronts. It has brought out the lies, deceits, greed, the corruption of governments, the breakdown of societies, the evils of systems. It has shown us the fragility of the human mind; how it can crumble despite our best efforts and how relationships can break at the slightest provocation. It has taught us that there is always a possibility of hiding behind ‘Incognito’ mode, and pretend that all is well

Maybe the internet emerged as a coping tool for all this chaos; a safe place for each one of us, initially. One that seemed non-judgmental, comforting and sensitive. You could speak more freely here, explore fearlessly; unmindful that it was using every byte of your mind to build its kingdom. Spinning its web. What began with awe and allure of a simple ‘Mario’ or ‘Temple run’ game, has taken demonic proportions. Have we given too much of ourselves to this internet by clicking on too many ‘ I agree’ buttons without reading? Have we offloaded too much personal data into it.? We live a different life online.  Is it only a matter of time before we are forced to bear the brunt of living in this binary existence?

As I write this, my ‘Healthify’ app reminds me that I am just one cup away from consuming my optimal ‘water intake’ for the day. It gives me the option of drinking chamomile tea instead of water, promising a good night’s sleep. I click on the teacup image and google for the best organic chamomile tea even though I know I should delete that app and go out for a walk, to get a goodnight’s sleep.

Soon, hopefully very soon.

Teachers Learn

This article apprears in the June 2020 edition of Grazia India. In it, I reflect very briefly on my journey with #EdTech and about how important digital competence will be for teachers post #Covid19.

As a student in Kolkata, the only technology I used in my lessons was a calculator, and man would I have been lost without it! There aren’t enough digits and limbs on the human body to help someone calculate, who doesn’t have a mathematical bent of mind. Circa 2006 I was finishing my graduation and B.Ed degree and still spending hours in the college’s dimly-lit library, making copious notes of everything that I would later integrate into my essay type answers. There was an unsaid rule back then, the more you wrote, the more knowledgeable you would seem. So I wrote, and wrote. There was no question of photocopying anything, which self-respecting college student did that?

Cut to 2009, two years into my move to the UAE; I am standing in the centre of a cavernous hall at EdEX MENA, the region’s largest education conference and the focus of the year is educational technology. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and education as I knew it had transformed. I was surrounded by teachers geeking out over gadgets, apps, LEGO, Minecraft, augmented reality and robots. The keynote speakers were erudite educationists who claimed the landscape of education was changing and technology was one catalyst. I felt so intimidated as I realized my skillset paled in comparison to the more cutting-edge practitioners.

With the sudden upheaval of education post the Covid19 outbreak, teachers may find themselves intimidated again. I am conscious that not all countries have kept pace with the changing times, and not all teachers are able to adapt as smoothly as they are expected to. Let’s face it, so many of us were taught under a 19th century model, grew up in 20th century classrooms and are still expected to be a modern-day McGonagall or Dumbledore; as the world grapples with unprecedented disruption.

If 2020 has cemented anything for teacher’s it is this – the landscape of education has undergone another paradigm shift. Successfully balancing work and life, keeping abreast of evolving policies and technologies and dealing with children is akin to ‘survival of the fittest’. I hate that old adage ‘those who can’t, teach’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Teachers today are/need to be consummate professionals with skills in technology, data-analysis, modern pedagogies, medical and life saving skills and they have to teach too!

It’s easy to get caught up in the buzzwords and evolving philosophies, but one thing remains unchanged – children still need teachers who can inspire them, individuals who care about them and also about how they learn. But teachers need to accept reality too, while tech may never really replace teachers, teachers who use tech, might. The burden is on us to either upscale our skills or risk gradual extinction post Covid. It is important to understand is that this is a new experience for us – both students and teachers and so it is imperative that we treat this as a learning experience. Every day, something changes and we need to be patient and gentle with each other as we acclimatize.

It isn’t all doom and gloom though, teachers continue to orchestrate fun learning experiences whether online or in a face to face setting, that being said, always remember to check yourself, your pyjamas and your background before turning on that camera. The last thing we need is another teacher becoming a viral meme sensation.