Last Sunday, an NGO called Mitr Foundation hosted a play called ‘Aapki Soniya’ in Hyderabad. A sequel to the extremely popular ‘Tumhari Amrita’, the play had just two characters (Farooque Sheikh and Sonali Bendre), minimal furniture (just about two tables and chairs) and umpteen letters. Basically, it was a play where the two characters just read out letters sent to each other; hand-written letters that have become such a rarity today.

The generation gap was subtly brought forth in the response that the play got from different people. While the younger audience kept chatting away in the midst of the play, apparently bored with the snail mail communication between the two characters, the older audience seemed to relate to the concept of hand-written letters. In fact, an uncle of mine could not resist commenting, “These are letters and not e-mails.”

While the younger generation may vouch that e-mails, chat rooms and online communities have helped them keep their social lives alive, the older generation may vehemently disagree. My own experiences tell me that with e-mails et al, I have stopped communicating with the people I used to via letters. My cousin abroad and my Goan friend in Delhi have not stopped complaining about the lack of communication between us. Well, we used to write letters and send greeting cards to each other and now no longer do. So now my postbox is like an old beleaguered lady whom no one wants to visit. In fact, the only time that I actually write letters is during Rakshabandhan and it does make my brothers happy as it remains personal (I cannot CC the same letter to all).

Online communities are not my cup of tea. My friends and brother have been telling me that I would find my old school mates at such sites. But the point is that more the time I spend at such sites, that much less time I have for my family and existing friends. So does it make sense to spend so much time making new friends when I get to meet my old friends just once in three months?

Parents cannot help but complain that their college-going kids spend half the day at college with friends and the remaining half with friends on the Internet. Communication among family members seems to happen only when required, they crib. In fact, many have to “find” time to spend with each other. So do virtual networking sites really enable social interaction? Your guess is as good as mine. Ironically, technology has become indispensable today. The fact that you are reading this on a website proves the point. So while we cannot ignore its existance, I guess we can just try to ensure that virtual networking does not happen at the expense of our existing social network.