By: Barnali Bose, Editor-ICN Group
KOLKATA: I was surprised to receive a call from Amita. Surprised, because in these days of ‘Whatsapp’, hardly anybody calls up without prior information and confirmation. One usually is expected to Whatsapp( it is now used as a verb too) and seek an appointment to call up( ring up). Only after that can you fix a date and time via the mediator ( who else,but Whatsapp,of course) and then only call on ( visit) someone.
A few years back, people called up to say, “ Are you at home? We are planning to come.” One would say,” Oh,sure. You are welcome anytime. You needn’t have called.” Notwithstanding, to call up before visiting someone was an unwritten implicit rule. Surprise visits were not an exception,but rather the norm then.
Decades back, when I was a child, I remember we would get the most unlikely visitors at the most unlikely hours but my mother always received them with the warmest of smiles minus the hugs( Bengalis didn’t have this custom) with piping hot tea and home- made delicacies that she would have kept safely hidden away from our reach.
“ Hello,are you still there?”,Amita’s voice jolted me to the present. She said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were in Delhi last September?” “Oh! I thought you knew,” said I, feeling guilty for not having informed my childhood friend about my visit. “ But I had posted in the Whatsapp group,” I voiced my lame excuse,hoping my white lie would sound convincing.
I argued that she must have missed my one liner in the mileu of forwarded good morning messages and messages of health warning and videos that our friends never seemed to tire posting. Obviously, I had attained some success in confusing her because she paused for a moment before saying, “ Could be….”
She continued,“ We should meet up the next time you are here.” “ Meet up? Surely.Where?”, I enquired. “Anywhere….. at a mall would be good,” she said nonchalantly. “ Mall? Ok,” I fumbled my consent.
Well, friends, this is the new trend in relationships nowadays. A few years back, you could expect to be welcomed to your friend’s home for a tete-a-tete over a meal or at least get invited to tea.
Now you are invited no doubt, but for a ‘meet up’ at a mall. Gone are the days when one would invite you home, take you on a tour of the house, cook for you and share anecdotes, happy and sad, at the dining table.
The sound of old friends’ bursting into splits of laughter till their sides ached is conspicuously absent. Obviously, one cannot burst into loud “ hee hee s and haha s,”sitting in a posh restaurant where such behavior would be labelled outrageous and downright uncivilized.
Now when you ‘ meet up‘ someone at a Mall, you exchange a cursory “Hi!” and entwine in a hug that is merely a greeting, with the warmth missing.
At the restaurant you order food for yourself according to your taste and your friend does so according to hers.One doesn’t have to worry about who will foot the bill because it is mostly ‘shared’, that is “his his whose whose” which means each one pays for herself.
Perhaps this is what practicality in the modern world is all about. And most of us seem to be absolutely fine with it.
The winds of change can leave our minds in a daze. But, isn’t the web of relationships but a maze?
