I just called to say ‘Hi’

Divya Dutta

I called up one of the creative directors of the film I had recently worked on. I had gotten along very well with her during the making of the film, so thought I would say ‘Hi’. 

When I called her up, she seemed surprised. After the greetings she asked me if I had called for something specific. When I said I just called to say ‘hi’, she didn’t seem to have digested it. In fact she was a bit taken aback. I was too. I realised in today’s fast-paced, need-oriented world, mostly no one calls anyone without a reason. We do our basic polite talk and then suddenly jump to the work talk. That’s how matter of fact we have become. In that process we forget we are people with feelings. We started treating ourselves as work objects. We feel important when people need us. We too mostly call or interact with only those who we have work with... the rest, when they bump into us somewhere we politely say, ‘Long time, no see. How are you?’

Those ‘how are yous’ are also just polite talk. No one actually bothers to know how the other is actually doing. We just treat each other as sources to get our jobs done .

Do we realise in this process of becoming literal robots, we are becoming lonelier? When there is no one to share and when someone really wants to chat but all you get is a hurried, superficial, ‘how are you’ and back to work chat, who do you offload all that you are going through to?

So, then we jump into the social media world. We write our posts, share our feelings—directly or indirectly, expecting to find solace and some acknowledgement there at least. We count likes to know how many people are interested in us. You must have heard of so many youngsters getting into depression cause of lack of number of likes on their posts. It’s not funny. They are lonely, searching for that feeling of belonging with strangers on the social media, with unknown faces, masked identities. At least someone acknowledges them and their feelings, and they feel like they are not alone.

Do we remember those times when guests and neighbours used to come home unannounced, just to chat, with no agenda? Bas haal chal poochne aaye. If anyone does that in today’s times, it will be considered blasphemous. We have taken it from the western culture to call and take appointment as everyone is so busy.

I’ll not lose hope though. I’ll continue calling a few acquaintances just like that... bas haal chaal poochne ko... and I do hope I don’t see them taken aback for being treated as human beings and not work commodities...

(Dutta is a Bollywood actress)