Let the unknown remain anonymous
After
the meeting I asked her what is the best time to talk to her. She
said, “Any time, but send me a text message first.” She also made
a point to assure me that she would see my text message as my number
was saved in her mobile phone. Pointing to her mobile she said that
she never reads text messages from unknown numbers and showed me the
crazy number of unopened text messages in her phone's inbox.
She
told me that she performs a weekly ritual of deleting all the SMSs
from her phone - without opening them. I have known people not taking
calls from or calling back unknown numbers. Even I do so at times.
But not reading SMSs from unknown numbers was something I had never
heard of before. The normal practice is that if you are calling an
unknown person it makes sense to text them and then call up or wait
for the person to call back.
But
Lutyen’s Delhi has its own kind of people and their ways. Not
reading SMSs from unknown numbers is perhaps a new phenomenon, which,
in effect, means that a certain segment of people are unapproachable.
From
the lady’s point of view, I think she is right in her own way. For
people who are extremely busy often find themselves in a SMS-overload
situation which they are unable to cope up with. The DND (do not
disturb) facility does little to address their plight. People swamped
with large number of SMSs have no option but to improvise or adopt
policies which often means that basic courtesies and manners take a
back seat.
A
very senior bureaucrat in Delhi, who hails from Kolkata, has devised
a novel way of his own to manage SMSs from unknown sources. Whenever
an SMS is sent to him, you get fixed reply, “Please email me at
…………… email ID as I cannot remember so many SMSs…..…”
Another
very common fact is that the people who have E-mail IDs of their
company always insist on asking for private email IDs, which mostly
happens to be Gmail in India. This shows a general lack of faith in
the official email ID and at times rightly so since emails are
delivered rather late depending upon how the local servers are
tweaked.
In
the West, people are very clear about whom to give their personal or
official numbers and the same goes for their email IDs. But here in
India things are very different. We still have to learn a lot.
Everyone is keen to get both the personal and official numbers and
email ids.
Journalists
often prefer emails in their Gmail IDs as well as the media group email
IDs and forget reading the messages. They don’t even get the time
to delete them. Few of the journalists maintain two to three Gmail
IDs.
I think, to read or not to read your texts and emails is a debatable issue and I will leave it at that.
I think, to read or not to read your texts and emails is a debatable issue and I will leave it at that.
ess
bee
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