Dear TDRites
The first episode of TDR special Makkal Arangam has opened up flood gates of emails.
Postman used to come regularly those days and we eagerly awaited money for articles
published in Tamil magazines in our 'unemployed days' in Tiruvidaimarudur. Today the
postman came (I have never seen in the recent decade) asking for Pongal Inam. Times
have changed, he doesn't know. In this context, I am sending something about 'Easy
Come Easy Go emails' which have replaced him. What to talk of courier service boy,
who asks for your electronic signature on is device and never demands Diwali or
Pongal Inam!
Hope you will enjoy reading the article.
Jeyes
The first episode of TDR special Makkal Arangam has opened up flood gates of emails.
Postman used to come regularly those days and we eagerly awaited money for articles
published in Tamil magazines in our 'unemployed days' in Tiruvidaimarudur. Today the
postman came (I have never seen in the recent decade) asking for Pongal Inam. Times
have changed, he doesn't know. In this context, I am sending something about 'Easy
Come Easy Go emails' which have replaced him. What to talk of courier service boy,
who asks for your electronic signature on is device and never demands Diwali or
Pongal Inam!
Hope you will enjoy reading the article.
Jeyes
Have You Checked Your Inbox Today?
“Saar…Post!” used to be the only dialogue for aspiring actors to come up on the drama stage or in black-and-white films, as a ‘Postman’. But the news brought in by this innocuous character used to turn the storyline upside down. There also used to be some curiosity in childhood to check the letter boxes of our homes. Gone are those golden times. Who writes letters these days? When did you last go to the Post Office? Must be a few years or a decade back! By-the-way, where’s the Post Office in your town?
Now you look into your ‘inbox’. Else the ‘beep’ or a visual alert of your e-mail announces the arrival of information, putting you into action-mode. Letter writing habit is by far dead (and buried in old files)…Long Live the Letters! In fact, in offices too, it is only the old-generation-addict writes letters (after correcting a dozen ‘final drafts’) and feels happy signing them at the end of the workday, believing as if he has done a ‘great job’. At Present, letterheads are sparingly used, only for appointment orders, purchase orders or such other law-bound transactions. Practically every other office communication is through e-mails.
Surprisingly, people don’t have patience these days to pen even few lines or sign multiple cheques, but painstakingly they do ‘two-finger-typing’ in computers, not knowing how to ‘play’ the qwerty keyboard. In mobile texting, their thumbs dance to generate instructions for e-mail-groups down-the-line.
Crowded inboxes with red-colour mails give people stress in the morning, especially returning from tour or long weekend or holidays. They are not ‘red-letter-days’! People feel relieved once they open and forward mails happily to one-and-all, having done the ‘major part of the job’ in a day. In Punjab they salute ‘Satsriyakal’ (Namaskar)….and make it ‘Copy to all’!
This e-mail mania has gone out-of-proportions for the bandwidth and servers to crash. Spam mails are to blame. There is one insisting ‘good luck’ for you if you send it to seven people in your group; there is another threatening that who did not heed to such instructions lost few crores of rupees (which they never had) or met with some accident! The pious ones bring you the ‘rare fotos’ of famous deities, and tempting mails say Bill Gates wants to share his fortune with you, if you forwarded the chain mail, without breaking it.
And the teaser-mails tell you that ‘something surprising will happen in your screen’ if you send them to eleven email ids. These leave cookies (not for eating) and worms of different kinds (not biological ones) in your computer. Some other mails touch your compassionate chord and ask for money to be transferred to the African poor child of seven months (who has not grown up for over seven years now) for his cancer treatment. Dangerous ones ask for your passwords and PINs only to siphon off cash from your bank accounts. They call it phishing, but they only ‘swallow’ the hard-earned money like sharks.
Every organisation has well-laid-down policies, filters, screens & firewalls to get the spam out of their employees’ minds and their inboxes. But, like the uninvited credit card calls in your mobile, spam mails don’t seem to die out. Best way for one to stay safe is to delete them the moment they are seen. Beware…don’t ever forward them to your near-and-dear one’s. Else all hell will break loose, in their PCs.
In this electronic age, there are some managers who still want a print out of the mails received by them and they will happily mark the papers to all and sundry. These people, responsible for de-forestation, re-create jungles in office files. Such enemies of environment, who can’t change with mailing times, will soon become extinct, like the animals of the jungle.
Emails have no doubt reduced the quantum of filing to a great extent. Modern offices now have less cupboards\filing cabinets and look sleek. But not all is well with emails. There is a down-side too. Long long ago, so long ago, nobody can say ‘how long ago’, managers managed people by looking at their faces and eyes and ‘understanding’ their subordinates’ emotions. Now you see, everybody is glued to his desktop screen throughout the day, managing his mailbox. May be that is why we see regularly news of ‘HR managers being killed\lynched by emotional employee mob’ due to disconnect of emotional link.
Where is time now-a-days to stand and stare at people? Even gossips near the coffee-vending-machines and grapevine overflowing from the water-coolers have dried out. Instead, people forward Sardarji jokes!
-J Jeyes
[ராமச்சந்திர ராவ்]
