Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts

July 15, 2013

Telegrams Fully Stopped Full Stop

Telegrams - while they lasted - must have meant some memories, good, bad and neutral for those who grew up without a mobile phone, a laptop and an IPad. So, when everybody is lamenting on the social media  that Telegrams will be shelved forever, I want to rewind some of my memories of Telegrams and share some of the most memorable telegrams in our lives.

Telegrams in those days were the most perfect means of communicating asyncronously - you will receive a telegram when you least expect one and you didn't have to be there to receive it - it will come when it is telegraphed in speed but you may have just stepped out or travelling but the receiver's address will collect it. I had filled out atleast two or three telegrams - it used to be like a Railway Reservation form and had clearly three components - Sender, Receiver and the Body of the text message usually filled out in boxes. Every character would take a box, including punctuation marks like a full top (.) and a hyphen (-). When I used to send telegrams at the instruction of my father for audit communications, I used to take a minimum of three to five iterations because I couldn't edit well and within the space and financial constraints. (My father used to give me only finite amount and the clerk at the post office warned me: "This will take one hundred and eight rupees, hai kya?")

In many ways, telegrams were similar to twitter messages- 140 characters were what it takes to deliver one tweet whether you use hashtag or tagline. Only difference is telegrams were never serialised like tweets nowadays - it was prohibitive to send out telegrams in quick succession like, say,"Baby boy born Full Stop Mother and baby safe." and again,"Gandam for father Full Stop don't come immediately."  Telegrams were inevitably followed up with costs for further communication via trunk calls and reciprocal telegrams. For my entire life, I remember telegrams only in CAPITAL LETTERS. In chatting forums, this sort of messaging is considered offensive and called as "Shouting". I still find many old-timers who "SHOUT" in their text messages. They tell me they are used to sending many telegrams in their life and hence the habit has caught on.

By nature, telegrams served immeasurable good to rural India and most of urbanites who didn't have a telephone connection until the 90s. They arrived with a sense of urgency, emphasis and unalloyed suspense. When the postman knocked on the door and said you received a telegram, he didn't reveal anything until he took the receiver's signature and then with a straight face pulled out the masterly message. If it was a happy message, he asked for  sweets or money. Never took money if the announcement was of grave consequences. Until even 2000, I used to see most Invitation Cards for weddings, etc. carry a code for GRAMs: XXXX which meant that if you wanted to send telegrams to the newly wed couple, you will save a few hundred rupees because the message would be that much shorter (to the extent of the recepient's address) and the venue is geared up to receive messages in absentia. There were also standard messages for telegrams like in Trunk Calls - so you had a number to refer to ready-made message for Telegram on congratulating, celebrating, getting married, births and deaths, successes and promotions, examinations etc. 

Majority of telegrams were used for breaking the bad news or when Trunk Calls were too costly or failed to connect with the intended recepient. But they used to co-exist and it felt good to send genuinely happy messages in bulk.  Equally imperative to send out the grave messages. Trunk Calls were quite different those days and I never enjoyed the presence of an eavesdropper from the Telephone Exchange who used to call twice, first time to connect us to the caller and the second time to remind us when to hang up, sometimes thrice to extend it. Most times, I was uncomfortable that some employee of BSNL was keenly listening to our conversation. Depending on the mood and tone of the communication, I could sense  the employee responded with a tone affirming as if she knew all about what we talked even if she used a simple "Ohkaay Saar!" or "Okay!"

What were some of the most memorable telegrams my family received? Very few I remember. One telegram  my father recalls came from the CA Institute (ICAI) saying,"Congratulations for passing CA Intermediate". It brought enormous joy to my father and my Baamma. In those days, the Institute used to send telegrams only to successful students who passed CA exam in first attempt. It discontinued the practice shortly. After that, he never received any telegram from the Institute even after he passed the Final examination and annexed about half a dozen degrees which look longer than his name. When I recollect those moments, I guess thats an incredible feeling for a student to get an emphatic word of confirmation from the horse's mouth - from the Professional Institutes. Gone are the telegram days for CA Results which migrated from telegrams to being published in the pink papers to being put up on the board of the local chapters (That used to be another kind of drama which was nail-biting; it used to be worse than being shepherded to the Kabath). 

After that, he was never at the receiving end of telegrams. Being a CA in practice meant audits galore. So, he sent out a telegram about the commencement and completion of audits whenever. This applied to bank audits, insurance audits and routine business matters. Because the outbound traffic increased tremendously, he ordered for concessional facility which came with a code for grams. It sounded something like RUBICON. So, I crossed the rubicon whenever he sent telegrams! Most messages were routine and boring: "Audit Commenced", or "Cash Verification done" and so on.  My father was on seventh heaven the day the communication came from the Post Office that his CA firm was awarded GRAMS. In those days, it was a status symbol and my father was as elated as one would get today on getting a 41 pixel camera smartphone.

I received less than five telegrams all my life. One of them was from the American Embassy. During my early career, I was referred by my mother's friend to apply for US Embassy position of an Economic Analyst. The position was based in Chennai and meant a simple analysis of all English and vernacular newspapers on a daily basis for the American intelligence. I found the job profile exciting; it meant more reading and more writing. The telegram communicated me the date of the interview and where I should attend. Its another story that after attending the interview, I was never selected as they thought I was too young. The second telegram I received was happier but the ball was in my court this time. I completed a round of written test and interview for TCS and I was informed via telegram "You are selected for the position of "Business Analyst" Full Stop Join on or before XX.XX.XX". It meant a lot at that time when I was already at cross-roads of journalism and banking. I chose banking instead of writing and this position at TCS would have taken me into a different direction. I still wonder, had I taken the TCS offer, as some of my friends have taken, I would have been counting both rupees and dollars in my account and crores worth of ESOPs! But never regretted my career decisions - I am happy then and I am happier now, more than ever. But those two telegrams changed my destiny in a way.

That is, to cut a long story short, a nostalgic trip down the telegram path. The curtains are down on the 163-year old telegram service; it happened to the hand-written letter, inland letter, trunk call, and so on. The news of  Abraham Lincoln's assassination took almost three weeks to reach the other side of the Atlantic. Telegrams filled a big void that even ships couldn't for a long time. Neither I nor my father ever stored even one telegram that made our moments memorable but I do store an equivalent of a telegram  today in my comfort zone. I favorite the tweets I like, I like the facebook posts and pages I like to reference back, and I copy the best sms messages on my mobile phone to the memory card. Telegrams are dead, long live happy telegraphic messages!

April 17, 2012

Pulitzer Prizes

There is only one gold standard of writing in English methinks - Pulitzer. You have many literary awards for Writing in English (WiE) like the Man Booker, FT Awards etc. but none come close to the award instituted by the Columbia School of Journalism - for writing in English. I keep throwing my savings to acquire the collection of Puliltizer prize-winning entries. Ever since I got to know there is somebody called Joseph Pulitzer and there is an anthology called Pultizer Prize collection, I have been buying since 1991. Of course, I perfectly agree there is outstanding literary output coming in non-English too every minute but Pulitzer is up there for American Writing in English and their standards are too rigorous. Most of the American writers we revere since 1917 -the legendary Christopher Hitchens, Paul Krugman, Dave Barry, Nicholas Kristoff, Joe Nocera, Mitch Albom, Maureen Dowd, Anna Quindlen, Art Buchwald, William Safire, Russell Baker and Roger Cohen - they were always feted here first and cited and celebrated before they became icons of English Language Writing.



2012 awards have been announced - and their categories are as always varietal and calibrated - Pultizer for Explanatory Reporting (as in explaining "sub prime crisis"), Pulitizer for Breaking News, Puliltzer for local reporting, Pultizer for International Reporting, Pulitzer for writing on music, biography or autobiography, history, drama, commentary, feature writing, criticism, etc. A Pulitizer for poetry also - thats the respect and veneer the Pulitizer committee has for all departments of journalism and writing. If the standards are not met, NO AWARD. Surprise, this year, NO AWARDS for FICTION. (Howzzaat???) and NO AWARD for Editorial Writing. This is truly outstanding - why dilute the standards instead of giving to the undeserved? No other literary award matches these standards. Of course, it is Americana all the way - this is for American journalism/writers who are American Citizens. No wonder, Jhumpa Lahiri got it once - not Naipaul of East Indian origins. Of course, there is criticism that these awards are a jingoistic celebration of American Publishing phenomena - but thats the truth - they are the most literate society. India publishes 80,000 books a year but US publishes probably as many number in a quarter, if not more.


I envision a scenario where we will have over the next quarter century more categories of writing introduced by Columbia School to cover the invasion of web-based writing and the many faces of social media. Right now, Columbia School has a New Media division which has asked the US Library of Congress to archive every tweet that goes out of the 200 million user ids every nanosecond anywhere in the world. But I guess giving awards for tweets and facebook posts is tough and difficult. Good Writing is writing thats edited, as David Ogilvy used to say, atleast 13 times. That kind of luxury is impossible to attend on facebook or twitter or blogs without comprising on the qualities of relevance and immediacy. Anyway, whether or not that happens, Pulitzer will live on as long as American English thrives - and readership for elegant writing exists. Congrats to Pulitzer-prize winners - Surprise, no winners from "The Atlantic", "Harpers" or "The New Yorker". Are we getting there? I mean, shorter.

July 24, 2011

On Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and Google+ - Views by Prof.Sree

I keep making shorthand notes of almost every lecture I listen to. Here's a summary of Prof.Sree Sreenivasan's talk at Manthan last week, point-wise. My own twitter id is @onlysridhar.Thought I will share with a wider audience before the next Manthan: • Facebook, twitter and other social media are increasingly used to impact social changes and bring revolutions as examples of Egypt, Syria, Libya prove.
• Facebook now has 750million users and is the third-most populous “country” in the world.
• India is 4th in FB usage next to US, Indonesia and maybe UK.
• The reason Indonesia is ahead of India is because politicians, bureaucrats and influential members of the society there have been early adapters of FB leading to a spectacular rise in following.
• In India, Mumbai and Bengaluru rule the roost and Hyderabad has yet to catch up big-time.
• It means Hyderabadis are not spending time online so much despite the fact that the India headquarters of FB is in Hyderabad.
• Twitter has about 100 million users although active users could be less than 50 million.
• Twitter’s founders also may not have had an idea about the unleashing of its potential.
• Every day about 200 million tweets are put out on twitter by its users worldwide.
• In order to document the social commentary that happens on twitter every second through its tweets, the Library of US Congress – the largest library in the world – now creates an archive of every tweet out of twitter users worldwide. This is done to serve as an archaeological reference for future generations of how generations of today think, feel and react. It will serve the same historical relevance as relics of the past from places such as Harappa and Mohenjodaro serve up now and then.
• The funny thing with social media such as Facebook is that productivity goes down as more and more folks spend time on these sites. You plan to use for 23 mins, you end up spending 23 hrs. You plan for 10 mins, you use up 10 hrs. It will be a challenge to maintain a balance between online networking and your work-life balance.
• There are social and family pressures building up because of this obsession with FB and other sites. But the damages are mostly self-created; you have to find that balance between online and offline mode.
• Even though you have more friends online, it doesn’t mean you should not maintain personal touch with your friends outside of online social media. Never lose touch with physical world.
• What is good about FB and others is that the feedback is instant and immediate.
• However, we have to realize that 99 per cent of the stuff that’s put on your walls never gets read really.
• Linked in is another site that’s growing for serious-minded people. Linked-in maps is the latest sensation which helps you manage your career, not just talk about it.
• Google + has come at a time when FB has monopoly and promises to address the privacy issues and puts your social circuits in compartmentalized circles. It will be difficult to dislodge FB with just 10 million users so far. But Google+ made two unsuccessful attempts with buzz and orkut earlier and will not easily give up.
• There are many sites which track what are called private conversations between folks on FB. For example, “What the Facebook” is one such site which gives exactly what you want to search on FB. You can search for “women who are shaving the legs”. And it will search for all the women who talked about “shaving their legs”. It will do a live search of live searches.
• How does one become socially more influential and enhance one’s social image?
• Sree offers some tips. You may find some on FB- @sreetips or on twitter @sree.
• Some tips are commonsense-driven: Make your posts subscribe to any of these attributes:
• Useful.Helpful.Relevant.Timely.Credible. Entertaining.Occasionally funny. Informative. Crisp. Insightful.
• If you have any of these attributes while you post, your posts will be well-read.

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