Social epidemic: The WhatsApp lilac land

Nothing short of madness—this WhatsApping. It has taken over the nation; nothing less of an epidemic were the tootling of pings or pongs puts the poor Pied Piper in the shade—and Pavlovian-like we dip into the breathless pipeline of images greeting you with factory-fresh, rightoff-the-rack, soon-to-go-stale messages, jokes and what-not, as brain-dead, for the most, as cyber-mice. (However, here it is necessary to add that it is not about the intellectual latitude or vapid vacuousness of the missives, but WhatsApp-holism that is hammering the brain flat, laying it in deep-freeze not to be taken out like frozen sperms for IVF purposes.)

I sense the knives are already out but take this on face-value, I wear not the cloak of a Judge nor speak with a cut-glass diction. Statistics validate the reality that we, Indians, take not the cake but the bakery, as far as WhatsApping goes, and this perennially squint-eyed dipping into the next nano-second image can best be likened to intentionally, willfully giving ourselves away to head-munching, mini-monsters on rampage. Before proceeding, a short detour: we all know of selfies which are taken ten times over in a day, not by our teenagers with solely a quantifiable attention-span for their I-phones, hoisting a plethora of Apps, but in this case, age no bar.

So changing your DP on an hourly, daily or weekly basis, is the natural norm. (Who can do away with the call of nature, correct?) So if you are holidaying in Goa you have to show off your draw-string dress and bow-trimmed high-heeled sandals on the sandy beach, of course way away, from the ocean. Selfie Sticks, snap the sea while simultaneously ensuring that your high-end heels remain water-free. DPs capturing your birthday, anniversary, your new hair-do, your latest touristy tryst—a Swiss Chateau, the backdrop broadcasting your Schengen Visa. Then they are those Holier-Than-Thou WhatsAppers who at 5-ish in the morning think there are religiously-bound to send you bhajans and aartis, which take a good five minutes to open up, then the same amount of time to visually chorus Hare Krishna or whichever God is the flavour of the day. (More often than not, these Evangelists do a Jekyll and Hyde, as the day progresses sending across the planet explicitly sexual jokes and videos of the same genre. Pharmaceutical companies be warned: Viagra to be put out to grass!) Back to these, “early birds catch the worm WhatsAppers”, I, in the process, of putting my phone initially on vibration, then on mute, finally to switch the mobile off, have earned the wrath of the brigade who believe that I am too hoity-toity, toffee-nosed to either let their at-the-crack-of-dawn pedicured trotters go un-open or do not reciprocate, as in an exchange-gift ceremony fashion or simply choose to remain mum. WhatsApps are, after all, supposed to be revered with hyper-attention.

However, the Vigilante are not ones to take defeat—with ruffled feathers march on waiting for the non or sparse user to buckle under the multiple bombardments, `to return to the fold’. Fold?! Troops of Shepherds bringing back their lost flock. How do you bring back someone who is not lost, how do you return to a flock you never belonged to? This mouse-squeak voice lost in the hubbub of more breeding rabbits in WhatsApp lilac land. Either you end up towing the line, mindlessly recycling the ping ponging to quell the digital indignation that spills spitefully into everyday workaday life; ex-communication solidifying the air. Or do away with the WhatsApp altogether. The one you use to talk on a one-on-one with a friend or send the those were the days picture album you have created for a brother separated by a lifetime and continents... And more often than not, you utilise your WhatsApp for professional queries—it being far easier than e-mailing etc. In other words, you either remain on the treadmill or get a new number while retaining the old one, devoid the WhatsApp bubble but naturally, and give out your new number fitted with the facility to the exclusive few and you might have cracked the code...Chances are slim since now the TwoPhone-You is under the radar. Besides, being omnipresent WhatsAppers can sniff a betrayal from atop a mountain. Phone Number Two smells of foul play—so they have been excluded from the club! What do you take them for brain-dead and noseblind?? (The former, yes, the latter, no...) As an illustration, view this, Venue: India International Centre, `Use of mobile phones and laptops not permitted’—the apprising metallic placards placed on each table in the Lounge and Dining Hall but this protocol not applicable for WhatsAppholics, pardon my political incorrectness, WhatsAppers. They will be, cross-eyed, chuckling, chortling, grimacing, groaning at a video blading over their phones’ runway like yesteryear’s Concorde. Winging it straight away to a band of co-partners and if the lapse between receiving another stretches half way through their latte the throng is first bored out of their minds, after which withdrawal looms thick. The cure, or should it be called solution: take the initiative and go online. This, while in between talking to the human seated across you—the one you had a lot of catching up to do with. Pray tell me, whatever for—is one not ever online with the said person invited to bond with over coffee. Exchanging digital jokes at an arm’s length away? We have become consciously captive, and there is a snowflake’s chance in this climate, that we will hold away even for a length of a while from being hoovered into the next 3-D visually bright bilge, even if it clinches the sliding off of the brain! Who does not know that caged tigers cannot be rewilded?

Then there are those HolierThan-Thou WhatsAppers who at 5-ish in the morning think they are religiouslybound to send you bhajans and aartis, which take a good five minutes to open up, then the same amount of time to visually chorus Hare Krishna or whichever God is the flavour of the day.

Dr Renée Ranchan writes on socio-psychological issues, quasi-