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What is a world without a skype date...

Have you heard of date on skype? 

Well I have one, ever so often with my family. Recently, I 'Skype-d' with my grandmother and she just couldn't get over the image of me sitting in front of her. Well, almost in front of her. Amazed, she asked my mother if my video was a pre-recorded message. Her amazement multiplied when I started a conversation with her. 'Just like on a phone but with video', she exclaimed! My nephew on the other hand, sitting in her lap seemed very comfortable with my digital presence. He started an online game with me as if this was as good as us prancing around the house with his action figures and bat-mobiles.

I could start telling this story with the usual 'once upon time', for it feels like fairy tale. A tale we've lived and forgotten so easily. I should begin at the beginning. When I was still a child. My cousins and I used to write to each other, especially during the vacations. I remember waiting weeks for the letters to arrive by post. Over the years, the letters reduced and soon became emails. Long sentences and paragraphs keyed in with effort arriving at destination "mail box" within minutes. And to add to my internet love, I often got a reply within a day or two. 

Do you remember the hours spent in an "Internet Cafe" waiting to 'chat' in a 'chat room'? That was probably my first dive into digital social presence before Facebook or Twitter were even born.

Those were the days, when children scurried across the neighborhood, carrying important messages, delivering home-made food and remunerated generously for the chore at both ends. Technology has taken us for a cart wheel ride. We’ve not only been rewarded handsomely with barrier free communication, but also with the right for vindictive voice, for the poor 'broadband guy' when the internet misses a beat. A beat, a millisecond of delay, a second of disconnectedness, is enough to drive us up the tree. We seem to have just about enough patience for a few seconds for messages to reach. And this, unaffected by geography. We communicate at lightening speeds, expect replies within milliseconds of the person "having seen the message".

“Double tick! Seen the message”… a paranoia building up...to check devices with screens of various sizes, to track down all messages ever sent into the universe.

I’m the last person to complain about the ability to connect with people miles away. Thanks to technology, I am able to attend all my Skype dates with my family, call my friends living in various different continents and time zones. And yet, there is a dis-junction. In-spite of all the digital fortress, a need to actually write something with a pen and paper, to read a story from a printed book. To submit completely to the digital era, would be like seeing the world through a lens only, sitting at a desk and missing the sunset in the horizon.

If one decides to re-write any of the classics today, what with their long lost letters and miscommunication, they'd all fail miserably. Who now, has the patience to sit and have a conversation, words forming sentences, blooming into paragraphs? Anything beyond a 'one-liner' would be like a monologue. But then, in comes one letter, written with pain staking ardour, on a nice thick white paper with royal blue ink, and I can feel a flutter. A small butterfly escapes my heart, as I sit down to read a rendition of an old song by a friend, penned down… and I miss the days when more of these papers filled my drawers…

Alas! The happiness is cut short as I prepare to initiate my next Skype date…

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