01 January 2014, 04:48 PM IST
Have you been ringing in the New Year? Or rather, has your cellphone been ringing in the New Year for you? Or beeping in the New Year. Or trilling in the New Year. Or whatever other noise your cellphone makes to indicate that you've received a text message.
My cellphone has squawking - yes, it squawks to tell me I've got an SMS - almost non-stop for the past 24 hours or so. Some of them are what have come to be called 'pesky' commercial messages from property dealers and the like trying to sell people 2/3/4 BHK flats in Greater Noida, or Lower Parel, or whatever.
But for the most part the SMSs my phone has been receiving on my behalf are from people wishing me a Happy New Year.
Now, it's always very nice to get messages from people wishing you happiness, that rarest of rare commodities, more precious than even gold and onions in these dismal times. And I'm very glad, and reassured, that there are so many people out there who think so well of me that they've taken the time /trouble - not to mention the expense - of sending me a New Year greeting.
Some of the people who've sent me these messages - and who continue to send them, even as I write this - are known to me by name. They're friends and acquaintances. But there are a whole lot of SMSs from people whose names are totally unfamiliar to me, and I haven't the faintest clue who these people are and why on earth they're sending me New Year salutations.
Nice of them, of course, whoever they are. But puzzling all the same. Are they politicians canvassing voters in view of the forthcoming polls? Are they people whom I met at a social get-together someday and who somehow remember my name and cellphone number though I haven't the foggiest idea who they are, let alone remember their phone numbers.
Anyway, good cellphone etiquette demands that all SMS messages - unless they are 'pesky' messages about 2/3/4 BHK flats - must, immediately be responded to. Particularly if they are messages wishing you Happy Season's Greetings.
So I've been giving myself a strained right-hand thumb sending off Happy New Year responses to all those largely unknown people who've wished me a Happy New Year.
And I'm pretty sure the same thing has happened to you. You too must have got Happy New Year greetings from all sorts of people whose names mean nothing to you. And being a polite and well-brought up person you've replied to all those messages, wishing the sender all joy and happiness for 2014.
So where do all these messages come from? Do they come from outer space, from alien beings in flying saucers trying to communicate with us Earthlings?
Or - perish the suspicion - could it possibly be that cellphone service providers send out these greetings at random to all subscribers, hoping that at least some of them will send back a reply, thereby earning the service provider an extra rupee by way of revenue?
Think of it. Think of all the money mobile network companies make over festive seasons - Holi, Diwali, Eid, Christmas, New Year, you name it - by millions of people sending out greetings, often to perfect strangers.
So while you and I have been ringing in the New Year, so have our mobile phone service providers. Except in their case, what's been ringing is their cash registers.
Anyway, here's wishing you a very Happy New year. And this isn't a ploy to get you to send a greeting in response.
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