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.

Growing up Anglo-Indian

Growing up Anglo-Indian, I always found it difficult to explain to friends why my mother tongue was not Hindi or Bengali.

‘’How can it be English?’’ They would ask incredulously. 

‘’It is’’, I would try to explain. ‘’I’m Anglo Indian’’.

“So you’re one of those half-castes?”

Not quite sure how to respond to their genuine questions that were often laced with deeply-ingrained prejudices and derogatory connotations, I would mumble something about being Anglo-Indian, and how I experienced life.

The history books record how most Anglo-Indian’s left India when the country gained independence. They probably identified more with the British, and so fled to other commonwealth nations. I understand that the Anglo’s were “anglicised” so to speak, and although they must have had positive relationships with everyone around them, there may have been such distinct cultural differences that it set them securely apart. It seems like over time, the community cherry picked the British and Indian ingredients it wanted and created its own cultural recipe. One that I inhertited from my parents and grandparents.

On reflection, I can see that cherry picking is a habit I have inherited too. I suppose that being raised by a parents who identified with a certain culture means that it has been passed down, and I have also plucked out, experiences, foods and stories that have kept the Anglo-Indian-ness alive within me. But my parents also ensured I had a very cosmopolitan childhood. None of my closest friends were from the community, we rarely attended those big parties and Christmas-eve events, I have never been to the Bow Barracks, I don’t jive, my taste in food is multicultural, I am a die-hard Bollywood fan, I scored a 92% in ICSE Hindi as opposed to 78% in English, and I have no distinct affinity for anything particularly Anglo, other than food.

So, am I just all Indian? Am I a heady mix of two cultures? How Anglo am I really? More importantly, does it matter? There are many who preserve the culture fiercely, I am not one of them. Many desperately hope that some day, they will be able to articulate the label they identify with. Again, I am not one of those people. Being Anglo hasn’t led to me having particularly better opportunities, support or guidance from the community. It’s not a badge of honour I wear on my lapel, and I understand that’s not a popular opinion to have. Growing up Anglo Indian was to actually grow up surrounded by questions about my identity, it was about being pricked by stereotypes regularly, and being judged for a perceived lack of aspirations and personal growth, none of which I enjoyed and actually worked so hard to shed.

This morning I listened intently to Barry O’Brien’s message to the community on the occasion of World Anglo Indian Day. O’Brien is articulate and has that deep baritone I enjoy listening to whenever he speaks. However, I couldn’t help but reflect on how his message was predominantly about the community’s history, heritage, it’s glorious heyday and even though there was an emotional appeal to adults to look after the youth, there was no mention of concrete plans to actually invest in the lives of younger Anglo-Indians who can make a difference to the community. To be fair to him, how much can you outline in eight minutes anyway?

Our leaders however, still quote successes like Englebert Humperdinck, Ben Kingsley, Freddy Mercury and Sir Cliff Richards as our own. But the list of icons ends there. The success stories don’t overflow into contemporary history. Despite a generous spattering of Whitney Houston lyrics, clichés and platitudes in O’Brien’s speechthis morning, there was no actual strategy or action plan outlined to preserve the culture or support younger members in achieving a better tomorrow not just for themselves, but for the community at large. Actually, there has never been any strategy and it doesn’t seem like there is one today when our national leaders have arbitrarily removed our representatives from the Lok Sabha citing horrendously inaccurate statistics from a census taken years ago. Then again, what exactly did our representatives do for us while they held those esteemed positions? There isn’t even an accurate and updated register for how many of us exist. How did they know who they were representing?

I suppose that’s why I struggle with feeling a deeper sense of belonging than I currently have. My community, has lived on its laurels for as long as I can remember. Its leaders have perpetuated the success stories of the past and glorified its legacy in the fields of medicine, education, and engineering. But the pride ends there, we’re so firmly rooted in our history that we forgot to think of and plan for the future. Today, Anglo Indian teachers and principals in our schools do little or nothing to nurture the young or support their dreams and goals and most of our initiatives lack the research or intellect that can provide the catalyst to preserve and cultivate the identity of a peripheral group in the way others have effectively done across the world.

I’m a fourth generation Anglo-Indian, and honestly I believe that our community is so well integrated into Indian culture now that very negligible borders or constraints exist. Perhaps the only difference one notices is when people hear my name for the first time, or when they comment on the quality of my spoken English.

India is a land of opportunity for those who can set aside petty communal issues, work hard and innovate despite the many challenges. The same goes for all Anglos today. We are so much more Indian and so much less Anglo, than we ever were before. As long as there is no concerted effort to rally the troops, device a stratagem, invest in people and work with a singular and progressive focus, the community will continue to disintegrate, and its numbers and unique culture will fray at the edges till a wonderful fabric is unrecognizable patchwork.

The youth are indeed the future of the community like O’Brien rightly reminded us this morning, but I wonder what our leaders are actually doing to equip, empower and inspire them to make a tangible difference in the years to come. 

How to Talk to Children About Racism

A journalist friend recently reached out to talk to me about an incident at her son’s school. A conversation about race and how to talk to children about racism ensued. This evenings National Newspaper has me looking at conversations about race through an educators lens for @TheNationalNews.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/lifestyle/family/how-to-talk-to-children-about-racism-start-early-often-and-in-an-age-appropriate-way-1.1157526

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

After three long weeks, I finally managed to complete reading Avni Doshi’s ‘Burnt Sugar’. The novel’s Man Booker nod and Doshi being a Dubai resident, created quite a buzz around the book and I struggled for a while to get my hands on a copy. Halfway into the novel, I realized I was not going to be a fan. I also suspect I read ‘Burnt Sugar’ at a bad time and that I would  have appreciated it more had the circumstances around my reading been different. Readers will know what I mean.

203 pages later and I’m still quite unsure what to make of this book. While stylistically speaking, it is beautifully written, it is also needlessly intense, borderline disturbing, unsettling and lacks focus. I was never quite sure if Doshi’s intent was to explore the lasting impact of child neglect, a toxic mother-daughter relationship, a woman’s search for her sense of self or just a deep dive into the unstable psyche of two very troubled women. in fact the narrative touches on all of those themes but rarely goes beneath the surface. To misquote a line from the narrative –  (the book) halts and sputters but doesn’t reverse, and that is why the sense of incoherence in the themes left me trying to navigate my way through very, very distractedly.

Tara and Antara exert almost this opposing yet undeniable pull for one another, each trying to escape the clutches of the other and yet in some twisted way always seek the other out. Tara is suffering from early onset dementia; people, identity and actions slowly slipping away like colours fading from old photographs. Antara’s turbulent childhood has obviously had an impact on her, but alongside her unpleasant personality, Doshi presents Antara’s convoluted thoughts with such aloofness, such casual cruelty, it almost jolts you out of the book. How can a daughter, any daughter, be like this? And to be fair, the mother’s character is never given as much time and space for us to fully appreciate Antara’s emotional bankruptcy. So many sections felt laborious and unnecessary, almost as if she were trying to shock the reader with her subversive feelings. Whilst there is an overall plot arc, it digresses much too often, spiraling into incidents that don’t add to the story but rather subtract from it. I thought.

The process of typing this post, however random, made me realize I didn’t like this book very much. Aside from the writing, some sentences genuinely glittering in its finesse, there was not much I could appreciate. Do not let the abstract lavender cover with aloe vera mislead you into thinking this is some breezy read. It is deeply visceral, intense, unnerving and personally for me, one I could have done without. Look, nothign I have ever written or could possibly write will make it to the Man Booker list, so I will say this, there is certainly a good book in here somewhere, but it and the characters needed more time in the oven. In the end, I realize my criticisms are entirely a matter of personal taste, but I would have pared this back to the key relationships and taken out the malodorous wadding.

As it stands this ended up being all rather unnecessarily exhausting and a head-scratching inclusion on a Booker list and in my 2020 reading of course. On to the next one.

What does happiness look like?

Though it may come in different forms for different people, most human beings are in pursuit of the same thing: happiness. I try to recollect the moments I have felt truly happy, when there was no doubt in mind that, what I was experiencing was indeed a happy moment – everything that happy is meant to feel like.

I close my eyes and I can see myself sitting in my living room, the soft glow from Christmas tree lights filling the room. My parents are going about their chores humming softly in the background to an Anne Murray Holiday number we have been listening to for as far back as I can remember. My brother is somewhere strumming his guitar, while our dog is curled up on an extra shaggy IKEA carpet, we hauled back on one of our trips home.

My mind wanders, I am now running my fingers along the spines of ancient books at the Shakespeare and Co. in Paris. I am in awe of the place, guilty for having stepped over Rumi’s poetry and yet so glad that I did, because upstairs is even more magical than the rooms below. My friend who lives in Paris, shows me around, here’s a sofa that Edith Piaf sat on while she was in the shop, there’s Sylvia Whitman’s two Persian cats lounging in a gleam of sunlight on the stairs of the fire escape, as a poster of ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ sways above them, dancing ironically in a whimsy July breeze. I feel like I am in something of a literary utopia, where the outside world vanishes and generations of writers—Allen Ginsberg, Gandhi, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin among others who have found a Paris home, take centerstage.

Sometimes when I am driving to or from work and I catch a glimpse of the sun lighting up the sky, or going to bed behind the horizon, it fills my soul with a sense of ….I really don’t know what to call the emotion….or mix of emotions that I experience when that happens. I am just grateful for the moment. I am just so thankful. I wish I had a personal photographer, someone who would follow me everywhere, taking candid snapshots at poignant moments for me to look back on and think about – to see what happiness looks like on me.

I wonder if the experiences I have or the ones I seek out contribute to how happy I feel. I wonder if all of that were to e stripped away, what would I tap into for a refill?

*takes a ten minute break to find a strip of beef jerky and pour a glass of Coke*

It struck me while writing this post that perhaps I have been looking for the wrong signs, perhaps happiness can’t be found in the tangible indications. I realize that the the things I write about, are indeed the ways I know that I am happy.

• I have harmonious relationships with family and friends. Not too many, but by no means insufficient.
• I live in the moment, I drink life greedily and allow it’s flavors to tantalize my senses. I am fully awake to my experiences and will re-live them over and over.
• I live with integrity, and yet, I don’t take life too seriously at all.
• I love my work, but I am not afraid of change, of challenge, of being wrong.
• I love all the places I have been, where I am now and even where life will take me next.

My deadpan expressions might sometimes betray me. I live in my thoughts, argue with the voices in my head and choose to hibernate with a book and soft yellow bedroom lighting when everyone else wants me to be part of the crowd.

Happy people I realize, are not the ones who are seemingly immune from life’s hardships. They go through rough waters like everyone else does. However, happy people know when to reach out and ask for help. They know when they see grey clouds rolling in that they will get through the bad weather. And if they don’t, happy people know when to recognize they’re sinking and ask for a helping hand.

Like most people, I periodically check in on my wellbeing.

Am I happy? Do I like my life? What, if anything, would I change? Here is what I reminded myself of this evening.

Happiness does not look like rainbows, flowers, and sunshine always. Happiness is not about having a Louis Armstrong track playing on a loop like the soundtrack to my existence. True happiness is in my control and no one person or thing should ever determine whether I am truly happy. And with that idea, comes lightness across the rest of my life.

Happiness comes in waves. It’ll come looking for you again, let it find you.

29.10.2020

This morning I woke up to grainy fog hanging over the deserted streets of my neighborhood. The usual morning traffic frenzy was replaced by a delectable lull. Behind closed windows and curtains drawn tightly together to keep the light out, people are still asleep, oblivious to the Muezzin’s voice, as the last notes from his call to prayer reverberate on a gentle October breeze. Hazy sunlight streams into my apartment and onto a money plant I have been neglecting all week. I fill the glass bowl with water and return it to its shelf in a cooler, darker part of the room.

As I sit down with a cup of ginger tea and my laptop I realize that I haven’t written in a while and decide to take a moment to acknowledge the good that has happened in what has been a devastating year for most. As my fingers hack away at the keyboard, I am conscious that I am typing this from a position of extreme gratitude.

From the outside, it looks like big things happen swiftly, quietly, almost without fanfare. Within me, the difference feels loud and sometimes deafening. The tectonic plates of my inner universe have shifted, and I find it almost surreal. I still wake up some days thinking, How? What? When?

My Kitchen calendar is still stuck on July, and yet the days fly by in a flurry of Zoom and TEAMS calls, planning, brainstorming, and discussing things. It has been manic, fulfilling, stressful some times but I have no complaints, except that I rarely finish my coffee warm these days.

The other day, I remembered that I had not paid for my electricity and water bills in two months. Then I stopped to muse at how at a point, the thought of this — paying bills and rent, working, and supporting myself in a foreign country — all these seemed like milestones. These are hilariously mundane things that no one in their right mind would consider ‘milestones’ — but they were for me; so I stopped to simultaneously appreciate and laugh at myself.

This time last year, I was in a different city, a completely different frame of mind, planning a visit to Singapore and waiting for mum to come visit me in the Emirates. I had a plan for what 2020 would be like and absolutely no idea (like most of us) that the world, our world, my world – was going to change.

*takes a break to brew another cup of tea*

I rarely have a leisurely morning all to myself and though I woke up with ambitious plans, I can feel sleep calling. The soothing ginger tea is doing what it is meant to and so I give in – to a deliberately vocal yawn and to the sandman.

2020 has been a rollercoaster and there are obviously many more uncertainties and challenges ahead. But for now, I stop, breathe, and take in the moment. I wonder where life will take me next year but today, I am cautiously optimistic, cautiously joyous, and very, very, thankful. To infinity, and beyond – but first, a few more hours of sleep.

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.

Type. Delete. Repeat.

When my high school English teachers told me to write every day, I took their advice to heart. I believed that they were offering sage wisdom gained by being fantastic practitioners themselves. From that moment on, I wrote almost every day, convinced I had found the key to being a good writer. As I look back, I realize that was probably not the best advice for them to have given me, also I never read a single piece of their writing, and don’t remember being particularly fascinated by their turn of phrase. As time passed, I learned this notion of writing every day was, in fact, common writing advice but not very impactful. Still, somewhere deep in my conscious mind is a little kid committed to that practice in the hopes that such discipline will make me a real writer, a good writer, a great writer, a respected writer.

When I began this blog, I would get home after a long day and sit at my desk, always in dim lighting, with mood music to boot, and write; just write – about my day, people I met, conversations I had and the writing, was not very good. (It’s all still available on here for anyone who has the time and the inclination to check. It might even make you chuckle) It was comforting, I suppose, to put so much energy into making myself feel like I was trying hard to improve my skills because I was certainly not having any success finding external validation. I would submit work to magazines and newspapers relentlessly and have that work simply ignored.

I’m a different kind of writer today. Reflective, pensive even, easily moved by everyday things but cautious with how I express my feelings. I still write two to three times a week but on so many days, the writing is questionable. My wasted words, I call them. They never make it to my blog or anywhere other than the trash bin on my computer. At the end of a long day I sometimes scroll through twitter or read the news or try to answer a few emails. Then I remember I should be writing, so I open up a Microsoft Word file and tap out a few lines. I procrastinate. I tap out a few more lines. I tell myself I have written for the day and have, therefore, done as I was counseled to do so long ago.

What I crave deeply is the luxury of those few times when I start to write, and though I don’t yet know the shape of what will come, I write my way forward. I remember the joy of those moments so vividly. Stolen pockets of time – on a bus travelling between Paris and Engelberg, at the grave-side of a teenage student who had died tragically, as I watch my mum and dad carry out their household chores in domestic bliss, listening to a busker playing a Coldplay song on the high-street in Goadilming and sometimes even just as I stare out at the red taillights of cars lined up end-to-end on a highway between Dubai and Sharjah.

Writing everyday is akin to building muscle (so I have been told) – the muscles get stronger with time. Perhaps I am my own greatest critic, nothing about the writing I produce or the work I do, fulfills me completely. I am always looking to get better. Do better. Be better. Maybe I am meant to be the kind of writer who writes best when I least expect it. A writer without consistency. A writer stealing from everyday experiences and hoping that some day the words will come together more beautifully than they usually do. Until then I will type, delete and repeat. Bear with me.