Skip to main content

War of Words – guest post


The following is a guest post written by Anupama Joshy, one of my former students. I asked her to write on this topic because of one of her casual remarks in a chat message.

Asked to introduce herself, following is what Anupama sent me.

Completed my lower primary education from The Bethlehem International. Middle school and high school from Carmel CMI Public School. Both in Vazhakulam where I have been residing. A second-year student of BA English Literature. Hobbies are reading, writing, watching movies and web shows.  Love spending time with friends and family. Trying to be a better person every day.

Words have evolved a lot through the generations. The archaic word 'thou' that meant 'you' can now be read 'though' in the gen-Z text slang. Means of communication have become online with emojis and GIFs serving as the medium of communication. People are hesitant to talk face to face and rather prefer 'chatting' online. 'Can't talk, WhatsApp only' has actually become the 'status'' of today's generation.

Memes, on the other hand are a means of expression. Now between 'communicating' and 'expressing', people have forgotten how to 'talk'. Let me rephrase. People have forgotten to talk. In most cases, they don't find it necessary to talk. One can always respond with a giphy instead of taking the effort of describing what they feel. It sure saves time, but doesn't it often lack clarity?

Even while texting, there is a war between words and acronyms, stickers and smileys. Looking at the old ways, one cannot help but wonder how people penned such beautiful verses exploring all human emotions. It isn't that they don't exist today, but somewhere between rap songs and remixes, they have lost their antique beauty. This of course, is how evolution works, but I believe everyone possesses a romantic part of themselves that inclines to a g(olden)-age-thinking, even 'thou' it's just another way of escaping the harsh reality we live in. 




 

Comments

  1. People settling down with gifs, making them lesser connected to words, giving out lower clarity whenever they need to speak up... like Anupama said, People do need to stop these and start talking again. Words are magical and when a gif replaces it's place, it's not just clarity that rules out, a part of themselves, their true expression to the spoken topic is out of the picture leaving themselves out by replacing a predicted emoji that doesn't say enough once one starts talking.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's good that Anupama opened this discussion. Let's hope this makes at least a few individuals think differently.

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    Couldn't agree more, Anupama! Glad to see that you, at least, are willing to 'talk' 😀 (With thanks to your 'host'). YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Her eyes talk a lot more. They did in the classes too. Having her in class was sheer delight.

      Delete
  3. We as a society have lost the ability to imagine. We are outsourcing our imagination to content creators or meme makers. Texting always lacks a personal touch. One could be enraged, but you can put two smileys to make the conversation funny. It lacks sincerity, compassion, and honesty. Emojis, gifs and memes convey one's emotions. There is a reinforced fervent towards reading, not books, but reading between the lines. Texts have lost their face value.
    Oddly, memes and gifs provide you with something more. Plausible deniability. One could always take a safe stance. One could argue that it has resulted in faulty interpretation or was sent by mistake. Both are not possible in face-to-face conversation. With words, you always have to own up to them. And having an eye-to-eye conversation with someone makes you bold, daring and courageous these days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Jojo, for adding substantially to the discussion. Emojis and memes make life a lot easier but hollow. The question probably is whether anyone cares for depth anymore.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

War and Meaning of Victory

In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...

Diwali, Gifts, and Promises

Diwali gifts for me! This is the first time in my 52 years of existence that I received so many gifts in the name of Diwali.  In Kerala, where I was born and brought up, Diwali was not celebrated at all in those days, the days of my childhood.  Even now the festival is not celebrated in the villages of Kerala as I found out from my friends there.  It is celebrated in the cities (and some villages) where people from North Indian states live.  When I settled down in Delhi in 2001 Diwali was a shock to me.  I was sitting in the balcony of a relative of mine who resided in Sadiq Nagar.  I was amazed to see the fireworks that lit up the city sky and polluted the entire atmosphere in the city.  There was a medical store nearby from which I could buy Otrivin nasal drops to open up those little holes in my nose (which have been examined by many physicians and given up as, perhaps, a hopeless case) which were blocked because of the Diwali smoke....