The Group Chat Exodus Syndrome

Arjun left

Vijay left

Shwetha left

Bablu left            

Harish left

Ramesh left

Tom left

Dick left

Harry left

The above few words of unintelligible gobbledegook may initially give my readership an impression that I am either high on narcotic substances or that I have gone bonkers atleast for the nonce. But wait. Hold on! Aren’t they smacking of a rather familiar refrain that we have got accustomed to in the past couple of years?

Ah! Now you may say “Oh yeah! Now I get it. These fellows have just had it enough and thereby called it quits from some WhatsApp group”

Yup, you are absolutely spot on. I have just quoted verbatim the text impression you might have seen or envision on your mobile screen when a group of buddies create a sort of digital exodus once the purpose for the WhatsApp group has been exhausted.

But, I for one, find the above phenomenon very amusing and sometimes even a bit annoying. No, I am not questioning the rationale behind quitting. No man with a shred of sanity prevailing within will ever do so once the raison d’etre for the group’s existence ceases to exist, unless he finds it a rather convenient platform to practice soliloquy. It is the blistering speed at which the mass migration occurs, as if propelled by some high octane fuel that really peeves me!

It seems as if quitting the group first is considered a matter of prestige and honour. In the race to exit, the winner isn’t going to be awarded a medal nor or his competitors behind at close quarters going to be showered with encomiums by the press. Then why the bloody hurry??

Recently, whilst attending a pair of successive classes of some drab subject, lasting more than 3 hours at a stretch, I endured a period of unbearable ennui sitting in the first row. Finally unable to stomach it no longer, I logged onto YouTube on my mobile. Desiring some real carnivore action atleast in the virtual world, to neutralize the effects of unmitigable boredom in the real world, I watched a video titled ‘Slaughter in the Water’, where a mighty pack of ravenous crocodiles effects a gruesome carnage on scores of hapless godforsaken wildebeests when they cross the River Mara in Central Africa during the Great Migration. As the horrific bloodbath ensues, a stampede of gargantuan proportions begins midway through the crossing, where the wildebeests literally fight it out in a dog-eat-dog slugfest in an attempt to outpace each other, overcoming croc after croc till they cross the river of blood and finally climb ashore to safety. All in all, a 6 minute viewing of sheer macabre which no man with finer sensibilities would want to watch. A more-or-less similar emotion engulfs me when I see my buddies enter into a rat race to quit the WhatsApp group as if a crocodile had entered into it!

Atleast in the case of the video you get a sensation of solace and some consolatory peace to see that, though a few wildebeests met their miserable ends in the crocs bellies, most of them survived the gory ordeal. But here the very group of buddies, after going about their divergent ways enter other WhatsApp groups and start chatting away to glory. Then once the group throws in the towel, the exodus begins again and the vicious cycle continues. In other words it isn’t as if the very reason of quitting a group symbolizes the reticent persona of its members!

Recently, yours truly and a group of friends decided to dine outside in some fancy restaurant. Since many of them were supposed to join in from different destinations, I instituted a WhatsApp group to facilitate the process of coordination. The group saw a lot of activity initially with minute details such as venue, address, whereabouts of those in the intention of not replying, etc. being disseminated. In due course the 12 of us, like a jury, were seated around a huge round table licking our lips and waiting to devour the contents of our plates. But even before the order could be placed with the waiter, I chanced a look at my mobile to see 5 of the blokes already relinquish the group! Halfway through the gastronomical affair another couple had evacuated. By the time we finished and left the restaurant, another trio had called it quits, leaving me and one friend languishing rather pitifully!

I am the sort of person who typically delivers the valedictory speech in the group such as “Thanks a lot guys! Had a great time” or “Nice dinner folks. See you soon”. I perilously lurked close to being labelled as crazy when I started typing something on those lines, when my guardian angel, in the brink of time, prevented me from pressing the send button reminding me that a personal chat message to my solitary friend would suffice. I can be pushed about to some extent but certainly no further. I certainly don’t possess the wherewithal to sustain a 2 member group chat!

On several occasions, it so occurs, as in the case above that, all of us go Dutch with the result that monetary transactions, a barter of a few tenners here and there, have to be settled. This is when, those blokes who deserted the group a tad too early realize their folly, but their ego prevents them from requesting to be re-added to the group. The result - A new group that answers to the name of ‘XYZ Hotel Night Out – Expenses’ is created. After the usual rigmarole in which friendly jousts for currency exchanges are witnessed and once the accounts have been sorted out with everyone filled to the brim with absolute satisfaction like the chief exchequer which has completed a perfect clean audit of the Governments voluminous spends, another mass exodus begins and the same ruddy circle continues.

I reach home and just as I tuck into the bed, with no hurry whatsoever, I enter the various transient WhatsApp group chats I had been a part of during the day for one last time and lug myself out of solitary confinement. Before closing my eyes, my poetic mood now buzzing on all cylinders, I mentally weave out a quatrain and it goes:-

With technology in the age of millennial

Our behavioural changes have become perennial

With the spawn of the digital era

We have truly entered a world of Ephemera

The Solar Connection

Disclaimer: This piece should have ideally been written last year. This year, quite contrary to horrific expectations on my part, has been the best and warmest winter I could have hoped for. A heartfelt thanks to El Nino and the other weather gods who have heard my prayersJ

I turn to my watch and to my horror I see that it’s just a quarter to five. I hastily finish the cup of Garam Chai, the quintessential elixir of life, which Bablu Dhaba supplies year around to keep its IIFT faithful going and moodily retreat back to my hostel room. It seemed like an eon had passed but it had only been a couple of hours since I had last consulted my watch. What with a class to attend, a quiz to give and a couple of submissions to make, these being only a prototype of variety that the vicissitudes of MBA life had to offer, it seemed as if time flew like the dickens.

A reader of the more shrewder type would here stop me abruptly in my tracks and demand, what is it that could have contributed to the aforesaid horror that I am experiencing. He would argue and rightly so that fate may bestow different boons and curses among the various species, nature nurtures in it's bossom, but its impartiality with regards to time is unquestionable. Nature has provided the same 60 minutes in an hour, he would say, the same 24 hours in a day, so on and so forth regardless of man or beast. ‘Time hath waiteth for none’ seems about to be the mot juste. So what on earth has caused me to wear this gloomy disposition one is inclined to ask. To the above, I will readily attribute my morose countenance to the fact that, the sun which had atleast been peeping through the clouds just a while back had vanished into oblivion, as a result leaving the scene like one of those maudlin black and white Bengali plays from the 1950’s where the hero hums a mournful dirge, giving the general feel that the world as a place was up to no good and its denizens had no other option but to bear the burden of sorrows.

This, I quite unabashedly admit, is more or less the feeling that I have experienced during the wretchedly cold winter days in Delhi. And I strongly hope to be pardoned for it. I mean, look at it this way. A bloke having, for a couple of dozens of years, lived in a city such as Chennai smashed by the sun for a good 10 months of the year, his climatic acumen never swell for he has never experienced much of other vagaries of the weather except sweat, heat, and an occasional spell of showers. Take this bloke out of his natural habitat and throw him in a place thousands of miles away where the mercury rises not more than 17-18 degrees during the winter months, the minimum plummeting to the depths, and the sun more often than not makes a consolatory guest visit, you can excuse him if he throws his head between his hands writhing in agony. The change in temperature I believe so has similar effects in the case of fauna as well. You don’t expect to suddenly fly in a polar bear which is happily fooling about in the arctic and expect it to start becoming the life and soul of a beach party near Pondicherry!

At this juncture, any befuddled neutral observer would question me, is there any worthwhile reason that makes me practically look upon sun as the tree on which the fruit of my life hangs upon. While I am no practiser of heliolatry, it is true that anything that disconnects my prolonged contact from sunshine, puts me nearly on the verge of despair. To this I can only think of a possible answer. Those who have had the opportunity of being closeted with Sherlock Holmes nerve-wrackers or Agatha Christie’s goosefleshers would be pretty familiar with a psychological phenomenon called the Stockholm Syndrome or capture bonding, used in the context of situations of hostage crises, wherein hostages begin to empathize and even passionately side with their captors (Svengalified?) to such an extent that members of the gendarmerie actually begin to scratch their heads and wonder whether it is worthwhile to be a part of the rescue party! An almost analogous relationship, I feel, started between me and the sun ever since I stepped into my teens. The sun might have beaten down upon me black and blue, lent more hues of black colour to my skin tone over the years, made me fall of bicycles and resulted in me reaching destinations bathed in sweat. My shirts were made typically incapable of being worn for more than a few hours at stretch, school bags made heavier by 3 monster sized water bottles to keep quenching my incessant thirst and I once even nearly made it to the obituary column thanks to sun stroke. But this undoubtedly resulted in one thing. I got acclimatized to the sun and heat so much that, I eventually started loving it.

Friends often feel I ought to be certified in a mental institution when I say that, I feel like a beast of burden having to bear the weight of several layers of clothing till the winter gives out. I loathe being jailed inside a couple of rounds each of woollen clothing and thick bedsheeting when I call it a day. I detest with considerable vehemence that I am forced to spend more time in bed, quite contrary to the normal view in these parts where a perfect winter day typically amounts to being one where maximum hours have been clocked between the sheets. One of the few magical attributes I share with Napolean Bonaparte is the ability to fall asleep the instant my head touches the pillow. But during winters, even this inexplicably eludes me, with the result that I have ended up becoming a somnambulist not just once and often hit the mess at 8:15 AM sharp with alarming regularity, much to the exasperation of the chaps when I announce ‘Bhaiya, Chai please’!

Nothing much to do I guess, than wait for a few months till the sun rides back majestically on top of the sky and is back to what it is doing best. At 45 degrees, I feel compelled to borrow a delectable piece of Browning's poetry and it goes - "The lark's on the wing, The snail's on the thorn, God's in His heaven". Life is much better and that is when you catch me in mid-season form J