One for the Archive

Perhaps Greatest Writer (PGW) had a character in his novels who avoided old schoolboy reunions like the plague. The reason he gave was that the last schoolmate he met, though a few years junior, had no teeth and a white beard, and destroyed the image that the PGW character had formed of himself being a young man on the threshold of life. MMM is of the same view not because he fancies himself as a young man but because you never know what your old schoolmate has turned into.

This aspect was brought home rather forcefully to MMM a couple of weeks ago when a classmate of his asked if he could (re)introduce another former classmate to MMM. In a mistaken moment of sentiment MMM agreed and the connections were re-established via whatsapp. After the exchange of a couple of messages MMM got onto other things. But not so the former classmate – within a few hours he had managed to forward missives of many kinds – videos on cinema, political diatribes against those whom he despises and then paeans to his favoured leader. Then came some off-colour jokes, the kind that you laughed at when you were sixteen or so. MMM ignored the flood for the nonce.

But next morning, at 4 am there was the classmate sending a cheery good morning with some flowers attached. This was followed by some corporate report that dealt with India’s growth prospects and how the poppet valve industry could benefit. MMM decided enough was enough. And so he replied to the friend asking him to desist as MMM was not interested in any forward of any kind. To this there was no response though MMM could see from the status that the friend was online indeed. There was silence for the rest of the day and MMM assumed that the nuisance had ceased. But he was mistaken. The next morning the phone buzzed again and there was a good morning greeting accompanied by the visual of a deity.

This time MMM was not going to take it lying down. But before that he scrolled up the message history to find that all the previous messages had vanished. And so MMM repeated his request that no further forwards be sent. An apology came in promptly. MMM’s earlier message had vanished said the friend and so he had forgotten MMM’s instruction to desist from forwarding unwanted messages. And why had it vanished? Because said the friend, he had turned on the feature of disappearing messages. That way he said, he did not store unwanted material on his phone, such as forwards from friends and family! Clearly he did not realise he was part of the same tribe that keeps relentlessly forwarding junk to others.

Further forwards have thankfully stopped but MMM is keeping an eye. At the earliest sign of any further activity of this kind, this friend will be archived permanently. This is a very useful feature in whatsapp – threads archived will not pop up each time there is an update and the sender does not realise that their messages are forever in a limbo. A further extreme measure is blocking the sender.

Singing Away to Oblivion

Talking about blocking senders, has The Man from Madras Musings ever told you about this musician who got onto MMM’s list of contacts and therefore automatically assumed that MMM would be delighted to receive daily updates from him? This happened a few years ago when whatsapp was in its infancy and was all the rage. This musician had built up quite a following and most of that group was on his WhatsApp list of contacts. Each morning, the man would send a recording – it could be a song, a snippet of a raga exploration and occasionally a thought or two.

MMM tolerated all of it for a while and then began sending messages to the musician that he (MMM) would like to be removed from the list of faithful being blessed each morning with uplifting musical thoughts. None of these messages were acknowledged because the musician in question was not operating the WhatsApp – it had been outsourced to a disciple and rather in the manner of a Kremlin phone, which allegedly had no earpiece, this disciple only sent messages and never bothered with the responses. His not to reason why, etc, as the poem goes.

There was no option but to bear it. Those were days when these audio messages automatically downloaded and occupied memory space, or at least MMM had no idea as to how to prevent this and so his phone began warning him of shortage of memory for software upgrades etc. MMM had to spend time in deleting all of the messages. But even that he was willing to suffer for the sake of the musician who was a genial soul. But came a day when the disciple discovered the joys of emojis and began sending them ad nauseum to everyone. One day it would be a heart, another day a clap and a third day it would be a namaste. But when kissing emojis began making their appearance MMM decided to draw the line. He called the musician and after having spent some time explaining what an emoji was (thankfully he did not have to explain what a kiss was), asked the musician if he could be spared these daily updates.

There was a long silence at the other end. MMM wondered if the musician was offended and was willing to even accept that as long as the nuisance ceased. There was then the sound of a hurried confabulation and the musician once again spoke up. The problem he explained was that he and his disciple knew only how to send out these updates. The rest of the system was set up by yet another disciple who was now in the United States and so he (the musician) had no idea about how to remove one person from the broadcast. Could MMM please not mind if the messages continued to come?

To this MMM replied that he had a better solution – something that could be managed from his end, but which would necessitate him and the musician conversing only over the old land line in future. That was called blocking said MMM. The musician was most thankful. He was blocked and remains so on MMM’s phone till date. And the few conversations that MMM has had with the musician since have been over the landline.

Tailpiece

Do you have an ancestor who played a role in Tamil cinema? If so, be of good cheer – The Man from Madras Musings is happy to tell you that you need to merely write a letter to this effect to the Greater Chennai Corporation and they will immediately name a street after your ancestor. Such is Chennai. It may as well be renamed Chollywood.

– MMM