“You’ve Got Mail!” “Those are very powerful words,” said Tom Hanks in the movie. And Meg Ryan couldn’t agree more.
When e-mail was taking over the world, our parents' generation watched this big change with a sinking heart as we, the 1980s children, stopped sending hand-written letters and cards to friends and cousins in other cities. We learnt how to send e-mails and demonstrated to them how the contents of the letter could be read in a matter of minutes. The ease of instant communication left them mighty impressed, though, to them, it never could make up for the joy of sending and receiving letters by post.
There was something so impersonal about reading typed-out letters on a screen.
Today, two decades later, I would readily give up my evening tea for a whole month, if I could receive one personal and meaningful e-mail. I tried recently looking for a mail that was addressed to me by a friend and gave up on the idea after having to scroll through hundreds of useless mails.
E-mail ids have a sole purpose now. They are black holes to absorb notifications and payment alerts! Notifications from your grocer, bank, shopping apps, food delivery apps, courier service apps, social media accounts, medical reports, tickets for your travels, accommodation booking details, school fee receipts and even your vaccination certificates!
Thank god for small mercies though; schools have separate e-mail ids for their students; otherwise I would definitely have missed all important information regarding the materials that have to be kept ready for the activities to be done in the next day’s class, or the specific colour of the outfits to be worn to a celebratory event, online.
E-mails are so rare between friends now, that if you ask someone for their e-mail id, they are immediately curious or suspicious even. You can almost hear them think, “Whatever is it that they want to send?”
It’s almost like asking for their bank account details (that information may be more readily shared)! It is hilarious and sad at the same time.
The arrival of WhatsApp and other messaging apps killed the e-mail phenomenon. Their huge popularity is understandable given the quick and easy sharing of pictures, and video calling facility on phones.
It is probably attractive since it replaced words with pictures. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words.
But, just because people learnt how to paint, poets did not give up poetry. Each is an art form to express oneself and has to be nurtured and cherished.
I have restarted writing e-mails (though not yet as frequently as I would like) and so enjoy the channel of communication it opens up. Sometimes, conversations on messaging platforms become merely transactional.
I look forward to the day when the e-mail notifications on my phone show more of my friends’ names than that of system generated mails.
