App Trap

Some messages that come on WhatsApp make me cry. Because I’ll be reading them for the umpteenth time.

Why should my mornings begin with these?

WhatsApp is the only messaging app I have on my phone. Until a few days back there was FB Messenger too. I uninstalled Messenger the moment one particular friend snapped the friendship. Santosh used to write meaningful things and I loved reading them. It was only for him I installed Messenger. His writings were poetic, philosophical, funny, personal, bizarre, and just anything depending on his mood. I loved each one of them for the resplendent personality behind them. Then some well-wishers came between us. Well-wishers have been my nemesis for most part of my life. They ruined my happiness whenever they got an opportunity to do so.

Well-wishers rule the roost of messaging apps. I get at least a hundred messages from them every day. Clichéd rules of thumb, jokes that have gathered patina over time, muffled trumpet-blowing. I have stopped opening most of them. I need WhatsApp because sometimes my workplace issues important messages on it.

Some jokes are welcome :)

I would install as many messaging apps as you please provided there were more Santoshes in the world. I love writing that comes from one’s own heart. I don’t understand why people send to me things written by unknown others. What interests me is you, you as an individual. What do you have to say to me?

“Eeeee…” Santosh would write sometimes in response to my remark or comment. Even that Eeeee held a kaleidoscope of meaning for me. That sort of meaning is what I look for in any text; one’s own meaning, not borrowed ones. Borrowed meanings are as useless to me as religions. That’s why messaging apps and I don’t get along well.

Beauty queens from Saudi Arabia.
Sent via WhatsApp by a friend with a good sense of humour.
This was fantastic. I hope it won't gather patina with nauseating repetition.

Comments

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below. Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita: For certain is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead; Therefore over the inevitable Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog