Hey there, Whatsapp is confounding me!

Hey there, Whatsapp is confounding me!

The ping sound disrupts my sleep. In spite of the curtains, the first rays of the early rising summer sun are filtering into the room. I blink my eyes open and focus on the phone screen-5.30, it says. The bright light blinds me for a second and the three line internet gyan on life wrenches sleep out of my head.

Every sunrise I promise myself – tomorrow morning I’d ignore this Whatsapp message. Putting the phone on silent mode before going to sleep does not work for me. Not that I hold any important position or run a business or that there are scores of people calling me daily or there could be emergency calls. In fact, it is the exact opposite. The calls are so rare that I feel any sound that my phone makes should have a purpose- information, enquiry, entertainment, comment, so that it does not disturb the languorous pace of my existence.

It was in 2015 when Whatsapp came into my life. My dear friend Ruchira was insistent I install whatsapp on my phone. I had the perfect excuse that I had an old Nokia phone which worked very well for me. “Get a smart phone, then it’ll be easier to stay in touch,” was her instruction. Almost neophobic when it comes to technology, I tried to work with my old phone till work-related issues made it imperative for me to change the device. And with it was installed the boon and bane that is Whatsapp.

My relation with the app began with voice calls (when the wi-fi was stronger than the network), sharing of photos, and jokes. I loved the jokes-innocent or naughty, the memes and the messages, Asla’s repertoire of stories about men in uniform and about Punjabis. How creative is the world outside my cocoon! What thoughts, what videos, what imagery, what emotions, what sense of humour! The universe seemed a happy place. I immersed myself in the wondrous joy and hearing the voices of people I love who stay abroad, for free. Free- wow! (And the box asking for rating of the calls popped up within a second.) There was so much action and drama on Whatsapp that I started to move away from TV.

Then there was no need to cut or paste, and with a simple forward you could send the message to many people at a time. (It was the pre-five-recipients-at-a-time-only era.) The app made me feel connected and gave my ego a boost that some people remembered to share things with me. But slowly as the number of my Whatsapp contacts grew, so did the flavour of the content.

Till a few years ago, people sent greetings cards for birthdays, anniversaries, New Year, Diwali or Christmas. One either made the card himself/herself or went to the shop, chose the appropriate card, paid for it, brought it home, wrote the note and address, put a stamp and posted the card. The ritual needed time, physical and monetary effort and most of the recipients saved the card for posterity.  Nowadays, the ease of clicking on a photo or a meme and forwarding it seems perfectly appropriate and nobody minds it. With minimum effort, the free message reaches the lucky recipient in a couple of seconds.

But the enthusiastic ones have not stopped there. They have gone crazy with the freedom and zero cost and now there is a long list of additional days for which there are no cards or emails, but my well-wishers want me to be happy about- of course Independence and Republic Days, Valentine’s Day, raksha bandhan, bhai dooj, teacher’s day, navratris (not as a whole but each of the nine days), karva chauth, teej, lohri, Ganesh Chaturthi, Govardhan Pooja, Hanuman Jayanti, Akshaya Tritiya, the Sikhs Gurus’ birthdays, the list goes on and on. Whoever actually greets people on these occasions?

Not only that, when you meet somebody in person do you actually wish him/her a Happy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... any day of the week? But it seems perfectly normal to the Whatsapp devotees. The happy …day message comes with an image of the god associated with that day. In the beginning I was unsure if I could risk the wrath of that god by deleting the message but one day I came to my senses and bid a happy goodbye to all the gods and goddesses on the screen.   

Oh yes, good morning does not come alone. It brings motivational and self-improvement quotations or images of flowers, birds and animals, serene landscapes (depending on the season), cute babies, stuffed toys, cups of steaming coffee or tea, sandwiches, chhole bhature, samosa, jalebi, thalis of dosa, idli. My act of ignoring the messages has not brought about any change and I continue to wonder how bad my mornings would be if these well-wishers did not greet me each morn. (And what about the rest of my day?) A friend told me her boss took affront to her act of not sending her the Good morning message every morning.

Whatsapp treasures

Then the whole day there are memes, photos or videos on any topic under the sun: cooking, parenting, environment, science and cures, politics, history, philosophy of life, sex, confirmed and unconfirmed nuggets of information and knowledge. Ah, you name it, it is there. There are poems and ghazals, short stories and newspaper articles, jokes, comic strips and cartoons, original or parodied clips of films and reality shows, soliloquies by religious gurus, celebrities and comedians, fiery outbursts by Modi-bhakts and equally emotional reactions of his non-supporters or links to all of these. Messages are tossed to and fro, many a times making self-goals. Photos are uploaded/sent without any mercy. Poojas and celebrations at home, family functions and get-togethers, dogs and cats, flowering bushes and trees in the house, photos of everything are sacred in the Whatsapp school. It is like egging you on - do not relax, there is competition, forward it fast before somebody else does. In a group especially formed for a ladies’ get together, my phone had already counted 235 photos of the three hour garden party before I decided it was not my cup of tea and made my exit.

Actions in groups are meanwhile, like people following in a mob. But you are the social outcast if you miss out on joining the congratulatory party. A couple of times (intentionally or otherwise) I missed out on joining the congratulatory or mournful stream of messages. It gives me immense pleasure to share with you that what followed was the ‘royal ignore’ given to me from that group.

Of course, Whatsapp is free yet people save on their time and effort in writing the full word or expression, e.g. gm for good morning, HBD for happy birthday, tks for thanks and K for OK. Why shed the load of those words which are already short but carry a weight in their meaning?  Or why make the effort of even typing that letter out? The recipient can see the blue ticks and know that it has been seen. The action after that would inform him/her whether you have decided to follow it or otherwise.

The saddest is when somebody posts about a death in a group. Like raindrops ping ping ping of RIP RIP RIP with folded hands, fills up the screen. As members of society we have always been taught kisi ki khushi mein shamil ho ya na ho, dukh ke waqt zaroor saath do (whether you share somebody’s happiness or not, but do be there for support in dark times). So if one doesn’t have the time, inclination or sensitivity to write out something to mourn somebody’s loss, what is the point of such RIPs of condolence except for haazri lagana (marking attendance). An acquaintance showed his phone screen with 54 RIPs, how his group mourned somebody’s father’s demise even though the grieving person was not a member of the group. 

The black video box does not come with a warning signal that it has already been received and seen by me. Sometimes it comes from several senders and I cannot keep sending smilies to everyone all the time. The image, information, joke or witticism is cycled, recycled and forwarded, sometimes for several months or it resurfaces the next year till it loses its appeal.

Whatsapp makes me work a lot. With a grammatical error, the out of job sub-editor in me finds the assignment for the day and feels it my moral duty to correct the error. The message is duly corrected with proper tense, punctuation marks, deletion of all emojis, flowers and multi-coloured hearts, then copied, to be sent to the ones I feel would appreciate it.

The sleeping newsperson in me gets into a tizzy trying to find out if the information is true and ignoring all other work at hand, I spend several minutes seriously trying to confirm the authenticity of the information. Most of the times, it displeases the sender. In a group somebody put a photo of an old ad with a woman drinking Coca Cola. Within minutes the others had commented how the western media and the multinationals are unethical, profit-oriented, and insensitive, imagine encouraging pregnant women to drink the cola. Naturally, I had to check and within minutes I found the company’s site where it claimed Coca Cola has way lower amount of caffeine than a cup of coffee. Itching to correct I posted the photo of that page and I am grateful to the member because she has not addressed me since.

Global figures tell us that India is the topmost user of this app with ‘50 million active users a month’. Moving ahead with the times, whatsapp is now a witness to a whole new trend which is COVID-19 related information - health and household tips, ayurvedic/homeopathic formulations, DIY masks (even upcycling men’s briefs for the purpose), sage advice, prayers, maps and graphs, or wisecracks on life and how to live it, memes and jokes, videos of helpers and generous souls, violators and police action, redone dialogues from films.

You are right in thinking that I too have the freedom to put the delete option to use. So once every few weeks, like a bird picking on grains, I start the deletion exercise, suddenly finding a treasure of a video or an image that I had missed out. And then I stop, open it, and if I like it, forward it to the unsuspecting Ayesha, Gokul, Asla, Sarla, Ruchira…...   Whastapp gyan ka bhandar (storehouse of knowledge) is teaching me patience, perseverance, steadfastness are important in communication.

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