|
|
|
|
The Email Of The Species
|
||
|
 |
 With family and friends scattered all over the globe (Still There, Doing That), surely email is the greatest thing since those dolls that stick their tongues out and shout "Hello, you're bothering me", every time you punch their stomachs. Or so I thought to myself, when I signed up for my lebensraum, my little corner of the worldwide web - my very own 10 Megs. FREE! LIFETIME! REGISTER NOW (and, while you're at it, win a one way trip to the Moon), cried the slogans persuasively, and I thought I'd be emailing, chatting, instant-messaging in no time at all.But I hadn't bargained for the battery of psychological tests they put you through before you can send and receive mail as Someone@Someplace.com. Do you promise to abide by the constitution of our website and all future constitutions, etc etc? Will you let us give your phone number to timeshare salesmen? Will you let us put cookies in your hard disk and Pepsi in your fishbowl? Will you let us drink all your beer? Do you promise to use only Bill Gates bolster covers from now on? Will you promise not to Spam, not to Napster, not to stick chewing gum on the underside of your computer table...and most of all, to never, ever watch a David Dhawan movie? It was like a Donald Trump prenup. Yes, yes, I accept, I said in panic, clicking on all the little boxes, more fervently even than my marriage vows. And now - aaahh, I thought, I'll be emailing, chatting, instant-messaging with flamboyant ease. Dream on, sucker, grinned my email provider. I hadn't bargained for the Personalized Homepage, netiquette, and email protocols. Did you think a signature was the little squiggle you practised at school during History class, to make sure your name didn't look anything like your name? Think again. In the New Improved Wired World, a signature should read something like this: "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities." Where was I? Oh yes, the benefits of email. Email is cheaper and faster than the postman - and anyway, you don't get to beat up the postman unless you're an Amazon in Bollywood. Email is cheaper and faster, if you don't count the net time and the phone connection, and all the times you get disconnected by your ISP after - gasp! Shock! Managing to dial in at night. It's also less intrusive than a phone call (especially when your email provider tells you with a cheery ping, in the middle of a meeting, that you've got new mail); less hassle than a fax (again, you only have to get through to your ISP.); and they say that emails lead to more equal information exchange (especially when you get to forward your Santa jokes to the entire Northern Hemisphere and, in return, get uncensored Pamela Anderson photographs - all this before you can spell Sabir Bhatia). In fact, surveys say that more and more people are busy surfing the net these days, which explains how you actually managed to get through to the KBC phone-line, even if it was at five in the morning. This is the story of how I stopped using my first email account within seven minutes of signing up. I had said yes, remember, to all offers of mailers, bulletins and the world's junk-mail clearinghouse. So seven minutes later there I was, screaming myself hoarse, crushed beneath nine thousand email messages, all with capital letters in the subject lines. When I surfaced at last, I found that the last email message from the email providers had offered me a prize of $1000000 if I could say exactly how many emails I had climbed through. But meanwhile, there was more. My mailbox had turned into a writhing Hydra. For every ten mails I deleted, twenty more would clamber into the inbox. "Hot and Horny!!!" "Free Beer!!!" "Lowest Mortgage!!!" "Wanna Party?" Where have all the Rhinos gone, demanded one email from the Save-the-Rhinoceros e-group. Not having seen them near Kemps Corner (not recently at least, if you didn't count the lady in front of the Mitsubishi showroom), I thought I could safely trash that message. There seemed to be a lot of really nice people out on the net, though. "We'll refinance you when the rest won't", said WheelerDealers@TakeARide.com comfortingly. "Enhance bust size", urged one, while another, to be gender-PC, offered: "Bigger penis in days". In fact, "Whatever your needs, we can help", said yet another hopeful mailer. As I said, some really nice people. And it wasn't the fault of the nice people at my XYZ Mutual Fund if their email said that the NAV had slid from 95 to 9.5. A small matter of the decimal point, but at least they kept me informed daily by email. Yesterday it was 10. Today 9.5, tomorrow it would be 9. And the best part was that, with email, I would always know! Another nice person, LadyMacbeth@LendMeAHand.com, went a step further. "There are 6.2 Billion people on this earth. Want to know your fate or fortune? Palmistry, Dreams, Tarot, Age-Turning, Feng-shui, Pyramidal Love, Lucky Numbers, Future, Next Generation and All Reincarnations". Uh - Pyramidal love? Oh, wait a minute! A mail from my sister! Yay! Hi, it said laconically in the subject line. I climbed up the steep rockface of emails, feeling like Chris O'Donnell in Vertical Limit, hoping to be able to reach it. I teetered and tottered and nearly fell off. And finally I reached my sister's email - which, when I opened it, read: Hi! Test email. Reader, I wanted to send her a string of multi-syllabled expletives, but my keyboard fainted. So I sent her a blank mail. And then I took out all nine thousand emails one by one and arranged them all in a line, and the line took me to Tierra Del Fuego. Life changed when I discovered Check All. Delete. Empty Trash. Block Sender. And times have also changed. In the past I would get emails from auction sites, inviting me to bid for contemporary art, horses, cars, and travel packages. Now the only emails I get are from auction sites inviting me to bid for Down-and-out Dotcoms. RECENTLY ON JAAL: Kandahar Ka Kaana Raja The World Is Not Enough Back To Squire One Poll Gita Where There's A Bill, There's A Wait DotComs, By The Numbers GoI-ing After Veerappan The Bore-Gush Race Hack Attack! Eee! Governance! Justice Unbound Small States, Large Stakes Con Banega Crorepati Salesman No. 1 Cat And Meows 25 Years After Paswan Goes DOTty Child's Play Toilet Paper Drought And About Boer Boar The Joke's On You The Coming Of Bill Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta is a bureaucrat. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and their butterscotch Labrador puppy, Whisky SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE: ?
|
| | About Us | Archives | Help | E-mail | Advertise | Legal Crap | Webmaster | | |
| Copyright © 1998-2001 Jaal™ | nEtAhOy ! |
