I did a very strange thing today.
I posted a message to a friend of mine, on his wall. He will never read it. He had
died on the Diwali day.
And after I had joined a group of
his friends, in the virtual world, to pen a condolence message, in the only
place I could, on his facebook page, knowing fully well that it will probably, never
be read by any of his family members, I felt very uneasy. It made me shiver
We had stayed in the same city,
worked in the same company, spoke the same language, ate the same food, yet hardly
found time to meet or speak to each other. Today he is more.
There was a time, not very long
ago, when a telephone at home was a luxury for many. Yet we used to queue up at
the nearest STD booth to make a call or book a trunk call to speak to our near
and dear ones, at prohibit cost.
Today when it is so easy to make
a call, when almost every member of a family has one or more phones, we hardly talk
to family and friends. We don’t write letters but sent out short messages which
do not reflect any of our emotions. On rare occasions when friends come
together, everybody spent more time on their phones than talking to each other.
Two college students, sitting next to each other in a bus seat, do not talk to
each other but communicate through sms. So, has technology brought us closer or
driven us further apart?!
In this fast urban lifestyle and
in this mad scramble for success and money we have lost many of the small joys of
our lives. The meeting of friends, the long hours of adda, the laughter, the
joy of eating together, being part of each other’s joys and sorrows…..are only
dreams today.
But, however much the world may
change, however we may progress, nothing can substitute for the joy of seeing our
loved ones. The warmth of that hug, the tinkle of their laughter. The comfort
of knowledge that there is always someone to wipes your tears and lend a caring
shoulder to rest on.
So, everytime you think of
sending a sms to a friend or write a facebook post, spare a thought. Pickup the
phone and speak to him /her, or better still drop in and give him / her a hug;
because you never know, it could be the last time you would be doing that.
