Let me begin by saying that I am a person driven a lot by emotions… there are decisions taken emotionally by me which have landed me in a lot of trouble… relationships have broken… misunderstandings have been created… now that I have reached the last quarters of my life… I have concluded that be that as it may… I love myself and I am happy as I am…
WhatsApp/ Facebook have been around for hardly a decade or more… this has made us walk into a new world especially during the last two years of Corona… we have faceless friends… some we have never even physically met… a new kind of friendship is on the horizon: Facebook friend or WhatsApp friend… I send good morning messages to 50-60 of my friends every morning spending at least 10-15 minutes… primarily, announcing to the world that I am alive in this world… to enjoy another day… There are three kinds of friends I have on WhatsApp… one who, like me, announces their being alive, even before my good morning message reaches them… secondly, who responds to my good morning message by acknowledging it or sending me a good morning message in return, and there is a third category, who refuses to even acknowledge, which forces me to break the contact with them in due course… Some of them say that they are too busy or say they forget, but I always tell them that you have time for whatever is important to you. They perhaps feel it’s not important to even acknowledge a good morning greeting…
Be that as it may, most of Facebook or WhatsApp has become a time pass for elders like me… a toy with which we play… the mobile has become a machine to remain in touch with the outer world… so much so that within a house it is now used for calling children or elders to the dining table even… it keeps a whole lot of people, young and old, busy either calling and talking or sending messages or receiving them. I would like to end by sharing a real incident which happened a few years back with me. A close childhood friend of mine was regularly sending me good morning messages… Monday to Sunday… each day the message announcing the day… suddenly his messages stopped… his mobile wouldn’t be picked up… after 6 days, I found he was in the ICU after a kidney transplant failure… he never came out of the ICU… he died in the hospital… When you cross the seventieth year on this earth… a thought often bothers you… not much time left… but as long as you are alive… one likes to remain in touch with friends and family members… hope they care to respond to the good morning message lovingly sent by a friend or relative because you never know it may also be your or his/her last response…