I have always preferred readymade garments (RMGs) to made-to-measure ones. However, not all readymade items are my cup of tea.
After being a major exporter of RMGs, India is now fast emerging as a leading domestic player in the readymade sector of forwarding good morning messages with oxymoronic lazy man’s efficiency. For RMGMs, which, apart from being an abbreviation for readymade good mornings, doubles as an euphemism for forwarded good morning messages on an extensive scale. Though this represents a “sunrise” industry in more ways than one, I have little doubt that a reality audit would serve to showcase empirical levels of its popularity.
Despite my antipathy to the forwarded greetings culture, I find myself strangely drawn to the subject that has taken the world of laid-back minds by storm. The phenomenon usurps precious post-sunrise mobile moments, via primarily the WhatsApp route, thanks to relatives, friends, acquaintances and associates who sniff a virtue in forwarding forwarded greetings. Unlike RMGs that sport size tags, the RMGMs are a one-size-fits-all proposition.
The temptation of forwarding RMGMs has, indeed, assumed endemic proportions, particularly in the Indian context. No one bothers about who the originators of such messages are and so these are circulated with gay abandon.
It follows the merry-go-round principle wherein it would not be surprising if, like a boomerang, it returned to the “original” forwarder. Laws of karma, in a twisted sense, at times, are known to defy the mathematical law of probability. And RMGMs are no exceptions in this regard. They can and do return home occasionally, like penitent delinquents, to educate the original sender of the axiomatic small world truth.
I happen to belong, strictly speaking, to a yester generation when epistolatory love, running into several pages of emotional outpourings, were the norm. Given technological intrusion, that brand of romance has now taken a backseat, with love messages generally becoming cut and dry affairs, brief enough to fit into small mobile screens, oftentimes without the need for scrolling. Somehow, I can never quite figure how love’s expansiveness can be contained in one or two-liners in an SMS or Whatsapp format. Likewise, I find myself scoffing at a sister forwarding forwarded Bhaidooj messages to her blood brother, while stoically accepting that such WA messages can be regarded as bitter fruits of sweet evolution, meant to be gently bitten, e-chewed and eschewed soon after. However, even my broad stoical mind snaps when I am at the receiving end of forwarded good morning messages. It is perhaps the humongous scale of minds switched onto thoughtless automation mode, day in and day out, and not merely hitched to an annual one-off festive occasion that rattles me.
Returning to the vexed RMGM issue, very often supplementing the good morning greetings are add-ons with a philosophical import. The philosophical retrofitting clings to the basic message like icicles that do not melt with the first rays of the sun but continue to grow and glow through their torch-urous rights of passage. It, perhaps, serves as an appetizer to go with the good morning message just in case the morning tea and biscuits fall short of their avowed purpose.
somnath1955@gmail.com
