How Lovebirds Communicate

Lovebirds, Beautiful word. Is not it !

I have seen a few bunches in my existence.

At school. At college. Among friends . Among relatives. In bus. In Trains. In Aeroplanes too. Everywhere and anywhere.

The thing is how do they communicate when they are apart.

Well, time has tasted various ways from time immemorial.

Lets start with the birds themselves. Naadan Parindey aka innocent birds if you insist.

There were times centuries back, when real, actual birds, Pigeon Post, acted as speed posts, albeit taking hours or days to reach. The girl would reply her beloved in a parchment, wrapped it and tied it with a thread on the birds legs. And off went the bird travelling vast plains, green valleys, treacherous terrains and chaotic rivers to reach the boy living miles away. This was the way of people during ancient and medieval period and also in ancient folklores.

During the recent decades, two very fascinating methods gained popularity. They were Letters and Telegram.

Surprisingly, letters have ruled for almost five thousand years from the time of Pharaohs to Asokan Empire to Mughal era to modern 21th century. Ancient  times had doot (messenger) who used to carry scrolls. But for lovers, its was a small piece of paper through some common friends!

With the advent of Post office came the beloved postman. In India, a person dressed in khaki shirt and khaki pant with a khaki cap carrying a khaki sling bag in a green hero bicycle was synonymous with the postman.

There are even Bollywood songs dedicated to the Postman. In the movie Swades, SRK's big caravan while entering the village nearly toppled the postman, Nivaraan Ji, from his cycle. Nivarran Ji, the postman in his free time was also a kushti wala (wresteller) and had a friendly duel with SRK in the climax.

A very epic movie was based on letters. It was Sirf Tum released in the last year of 20th Century. I do love the movie a lot, like a lot lot. Our generation the 90s generation, will definitely remember the song Dilbar sung by Alka Yagnik and danced by Sushmita Sen. I am not talking about the new remixed version Dilbar-Dilbar song. I do not understand why make remixes of such eternal songs that just dilutes the original appeal.

Fast forward, in this movie, Sanjay Kapoor and Priya Gill never meet. He finds her lost purse on a trains and sends back to her address. And this starts with a thank you and gradually they start writing letters. Eventually through letters they fall for each other. They never send there photos with the letters. Just the letters. I was thunderstruck that time by how by just reading each others letters can make people fall in love. They have never seen each other and yet they felt love blossoming. Such is the anchorage of love. 

The movie was a grand box office success. And why not, that decade has been the best decade of our Bollywood lives. This present decade just cannot beat them. Call me old school, but it is what it is.

Making a juxtaposition, comes the letter sent electronically. I mean e-letter or e-mail. Typing a letter and sending it through email lasted lesser compared to its physical letter counterpart. Still people had their moments. Early 90s saw it as an emerging trend but it popularity dwindled. Email's meaning diversified and any kind of long message sent electronically became an email.

The second most influential was Telegram, popularly known as Taar in India. It survived in India for 163 years finally shutting down operations in 2013. Telegram, we can say, was the first ever modern SMS. Sort Messaging Services. and it was best for long distance. 

We were even taught in school to write telegram message. "Write a telegram message in seven words." Words counted money so it had to be precise and yet short. So the husband working in a far away land would telegram his wife.

Of course, the landline telephone is another nearly obsolete communication device. The boy would try calling the girl through landline. But her father would pick up the phone and there would be no voice from the boy. 

The Papa says, "Heloo ! Heloo!" and cut the call.

Phone rings again, Papa again picks up, "Heloo! Heloo! Who is it? Why are you disturbing?"

After some time a third ring would come. This time the daughter picks up and their heart beats gains speed. The Papa asks, "Who is it?"

The Girl would lie to her father. "My saheli (friend)  is calling for studies."

And the romance would continue with father thinking it is her friend!

The trouble with father and mother spying on their kids vanished when the modern SMS came into being with the advent of Nokias, I mean the 00s feature keypad mobile phones. That time we did not call them feature phone or keypad phone because there was no smartphone. It was just mobile phone or cell phone and it was our very own smartphone. Touch screen smartphones swept away these robust old phones.

I used to see lovebirds purchase SMS packs from the Paanwala (street paan vendor). 100 sms per day, 500 sms per day, 1000 sms per day or exaggeratedly, if I may, 10,000 sms per year ! 

There was constant sending and receiving of SMSes. The phones would beep every now and then. The SMS tones most common was "Taat-Taat, Taat-Taat". Some would custom install different alert tones. This was the second generation of Short message service. 

These SMS packs still exists in this decade, but people seldom use them.

Another was talking through cellphones. Lovebirds would continuously talk for two-three hours late night. Some would sit by the balcony while some would couch on stairs. The trend was very prevalent in those times. It still exists, but the popularity has decreased. Instead of two-three hours, it has reduced to 30 minutes to one hour. Some couples, still thrive to keep the tradition alive.

With access to better internet facilities, third generation of SMS emerged. The Chat. There were different chat platforms. The most common were Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. If you had a computer or even when you visited an internet cafe, that was it; long online chat conversations started all day and all night. The small green bubble by the profile name would indicate that he or she was online. 

Then came the modern big bang, the Smartphone, installed with chat apps. This is the fourth generation of SMS; they were FB messenger, Viver, BBM, Instagram chat and WhatsApp. The run was won by WhatAapp mostly. And now it is very much ingrained in people lives. apart from SMS, photos and videos and what not can be sent. The very meaning of SMS has been altered. Everything not SMS, has been incorporated into SMS. This is the modern day SMS.

A bit in a small scale, but it is gradually picking up is video call. Skype is among the oldest while WhatAapp video call is the latest. With unlimited internet packs, it has become so simple and comfortable to just click call button on the touch screen and there you are looking at each other's live faces. As we live and breadth. 

What the future holds triggers a lot of expectations. With each way of communication there are perks and disadvantages. 

Say for instance, SMS or chat, we just type things. There is no emotions involved in it. An SMS cannot convey emotion to that level. Smileys and  Emojis might have solved to some extent. But we do not know if the sender actually means through the particular emoji he or she sends. It may be genuine or it may be for the sake of it. If we would have written actual sentences in SMS, perhaps emotion could have been deciphered. But we do not. we shorten everything, LOL ryt. You might be now ROFL.

While speaking on phone has an upper hand. Voice helps to deliver emotions at a great level. The emotions with the voice are nearly real. Yet there is a catch, we can act through our voices. Still it is a powerful tool to understand emotions.

Video call is perhaps the best. Of course we can act up and make false laugh or false cry. But when we see each other, we can, most of the times catch, if a person is acting otherwise. The body language says it all.

The movement of eyes and mouth, the facial expressions, the gesture of hands and all that can convey powerful emotions. and we can know if it is real or unreal. So, video call is the best to fall in love, provided, you have adequate internet pack 2 GB per day!

Perhaps if you can type full sentences while chatting, it may convey some emotion. How about using  a lot of punctuation also. Too much right?

Yes, it is too much, that is it. We simply do not have time to do that. We cannot do it. We will not do it. It is like we want to convey a lot of emotions in just one minute, but the emotion part never happens in reality. It becomes just words types in shortest possible way.

Does it convey love properly or it just becomes an obligation? You decide.

When we say we do not have time, it is a line we are fooling ourselves with. Time does not stand before us, we have to catch it  and make best possible use of it. If we really care about a person, we are going to have time for them no mater how much busy we are in real or pretend to be busy.

Try watching a 3 to 4 hours long film. If you can , at a stretch, you are capable of taking out time. You can try Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, Swades, Sholay, Saudagar, Hum Aapke hain Kaun, DDLJ & Veer-Zaara. There is a reason why they were made these movies to have long running time. So, if you are able to, you can give time to your love.

As I quote a verse from song Mitwa song in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna
"Love will find a way,
Janniye, Heeriye
Mitwa
Love will find a way, Every-way, Every-day
Love will find a way"