Old-fashioned at 23

Till some time ago, the first thing I would do every morning was sit down with a mug of hot, sweet tea and start my day with the smell of newsprint. For company, I would have my parents and brother, all of whom would invariably be engaged in animated conversation. On the other hand, I would simply plonk myself on the couch, nod in acknowledgement, and open the newspaper. I was not awake yet. There were still 20 minutes, two newspapers and one mug of tea to go.

Nowadays, the first thing I do every morning is check my two e-mail accounts, send replies, send out tweets, respond to comments on my blog, comment on others' blog and take over Gtalk. It doesn't help that when I wake up, everyone in India is done with their day and is free to talk. I go and make my tea, and come back to the laptop. Interestingly, it gives me company for the rest of the day. (For those of you in doubt, yes I do have friends, but Gtalk seems to have become our primary mode of communication, even though we live two minutes away from each other).

Why am I telling you all this? Because I am surprised at the contrast and the extent to which I have allowed technology to take over my life. Common sense, and many communication theories, have already predicted this phenomenon, but I'll spare you the torture of explaining them.

Something happened to make me think about this today. I wanted to send out thank-you notes to two people and predictably, I turned to my laptop and started typing away my gratitude. And then I stopped.

I put on my shoes, locked the house and walked to the supermarket. I went into the greeting-card section and spent fifteen minutes picking out the perfect thank-you cards for the people I had in mind. I came home and chewed on my pen. (And I realized that the last time I'd done that was when I was still in the habit of writing with a pen. It's been the laptop for a long, long time). I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it, and then I wrote it all down, word by word. My handwriting looked different, and weak, if that makes any sense. Like a muscle that becomes frail because it hadn't been used in a while. Then, I wrote out their addresses and sealed the envelopes. Tomorrow, I shall take them to the post office.

I want them to know that I care enough to do all this -- not like it's a lot to do, but I guess in today's day and age, a note of this sort will stand out. I want them to know that I appreciate their effort much more than the effort it would have taken me to write a thank-you e-mail.

And through all these seemingly trivial events, I realize that I am so old-fashioned. That I like technology, but not more than newsprint. That I am scared of the day there'll be no hard newspapers to read first thing in the morning. No sports section to take out and hand over to your brother. No page 3 supplement to ostracize out of pretentiousness.

I am scared of the day books will only be available through Kindle. No pages to smell, or watch as they grow yellow. No front pages to write your name on and mark your territory. No book spines to touch and feel comforted. No bookmarks to mark your place and put the book to sleep.

I am scared of the day people will stop writing letters, and that may have already come. I want to know that someone took out the time to sit down and slowly write those words to me. I want to see their handwriting and the ink they smudged on the lower left-hand corner of the second page. I want to see the postage, and the post office's stamp on it, and see the condition it arrives in, after making a long, long journey.

I want all that. But you know what the funny part is? I'm writing all this on my laptop. Sadly, I am too impatient to write on pen and paper -- the only uses I have for them now are class-notes-taking, and making to-do lists. But then there's this other part of me that loves writing letters, and nothing makes my day more than a yummy book, or seeing a plump envelope ready to be mailed, stuffed with my words.

Technology is nice, but people are better.

You hate me, I hate me

Ever since Obama has become the president, people have been cheering about how racial equality has finally come to America. Or rather, how it had emerged a long time ago but THIS event, THIS taking of the highest American office by a black man, is the ultimate proof the world can get of how much progress America has made on this front.

And I believed it. Why shouldn't I have? Everyone I knew was happy to have Bush out, and Obama in. Every American I knew - white, black, brown, yellow - was gushing over him, and how wonderful he is (as was I, I admit!). Everyone seemed especially happy to see a coloured man take over the presidency of the United States. Now if that doesn't spell equality and opportunity, what does? Right? Right.

Until I realized that things aren't really what they seem to be.

Everyone I know is from Boston, one of the most cosmopolitan, and thus racially tolerant, cities of America. Everyone I know is highly educated and as far from racial jingoism as it gets. Everyone I know is accustomed to being in the midst of people from various cultures. Everyone I know is respectful, welcoming and appreciative of differences.

But away from this racial Utopia, is another America, one that has the capability to inspire immense sadness. Since I don't know it well enough, I don't want to say much, regardless of what I have heard about it. But I found some videos on YouTube that seem to be quite an incisive yet subtle commentary on some aspects of the race problem. Here they are.





The second of these deals with a phenomenon I didn't even know existed - hating your own race. Now while this one deals only with black self-hatred, I found other videos and articles on the Internet that dealt with white self-hatred too. Apparently, hating your own colour is not limited to any one race.

Now if that's not an equalizer, I don't know what is.