The January 1st New Year Day has no real significance. For me, it is just another day. The Gregorian Calendar, which we follow, is itself unscientific, and a bit of a joke, unlike the lunar based Indian Calendar. And in any case, more than 50% of the World don't celebrate Jan 1st as New Years Day. But that is for another post.
This post is about simple courtesies. I still remember, in 1982, when my Sister got married, we printed 2000 Invitation Cards, of which nearly 1000 were for invitation in person, and balance to be posted. Even those posted, many, required personal letters to be attached. Also, one has to write by hand the addresses, a painful experience.
We, being a nucleus family, meant me and my mother had to personally visit at least 600 houses, with balance 400 to be distributed to classmates and friends. My elder brother arrived from Delhi only two days before the Wedding, Sister, of course, was not allowed to join the Invitation party, and Father - he would not be bothered to go house to house to invite people. He remained the master strategist, and HQ bound.
But the tiring experience taught me the value of human relationship, how much people, whom we have not met for years, really appreciated our visit, and their happiness at being honoured with a personal invitation. No wonder, 95% of those invited made it a point to attend the function.
The above was a norm those days, and still is, in rural areas at least.
But times have changed. With the advent of modern communication tools, people have lost the old world courtesy.
It galls me when I get an invitation attached to a mail, and me being part of a gigantic mail list. It is bad enough that my e mail id is given to all and sundry, and the recipient idiots clicking 'reply all' and sending a 'thanks for invite' reply, further inconveniencing me. A wedding in the family occurs once in a decade or so. Can we not take the trouble of sending individual mails with names clearly mentioned in the dialogue box, along with the attachment? I do it, and I expect others to do it too. I feel insulted when I am part of a crowd. There is no personal touch.
What triggered this mail is this years New Year Wishes I received in Whatsapp. Without exception, none was personal in nature. Everyone just sent a Video (which is bad enough, with each video 5-8 mb in size), or image and used the 'Sent to All' option.
I too had a simple image as greeting, but I made it a point to add a message as Caption individualizing each Greeting with the name of the recipient and an additional message.
How many contacts do we have whom we want to really wish on New Year, Onam, Vishu or Deepavali? 20? 25? 30? or maximum 50?.
Can we not take some time to remember them personally and send individual messages?
Or better still, as someone close to me does every occasion - Call them up personally and wish them!
That would be great, right?
