Long time, no e-mail so I thought I will drop you a quick little note... How is the mini-sabbatical going?

Are we poor now, because of no paycheck?

Sheila

PS: Something smelled VERY good in the hallway the other day!

Imam Bayildi getting baked -- that's what it must have been. The cookbook says the Turkish holy man was so overwhelmed by this redolent creation -- when it was first presented to him -- that he swooned in sheer delight. Translated it means exactly that, 'The Imam fainted.' Sheila did not even knock at my door, must be made of sterner stuff.

Sheila, my neighbour, is a communications manager for a large New England bank. We zap messages to each other when things get dull at work. It seems like the right thing to do, particularly since we hardly ever run into each other anymore. Last spring, she made friends with my parents who were visiting from India. She is slightly absent-minded -- forgets her house keys on some days. I am sure she was happy the folks were around in the evenings whenever that happened to let her into the building.

This summer my parents are going to stay in Madras and brave the heat, the election madness as well as a particularly severe water shortage. And what with my forced little break -- and no paycheck! -- I am trying to change the way I stay in touch with them. Of course, that does not mean I am planning on letting fiscal discipline come in the way of filial duty.

When I came to the US as a graduate student, I had very little money to spend on long distance calls. I wrote letters describing everything in the New Land in great detail -- the sights and sounds, the people and, whenever possible, I sent pictures as well. In turn, they sent their love in a thin airmail envelope with perfectly aligned philatelic stamps. Snail mail served us well. And the telephone company offered lower rates on weekends.

A call home was just the perfect way to complete a seven-day cycle. Only once, the end of the semester exams made me oblivious to everything. I failed to keep my weekly rendezvous. Ten days into this forgetfulness, I logged in at school to check my mail. My Inbox had a short, anxious message -- the FROM address was that of an Internet kiosk in Madras. It was my mother checking to see if everything was okay.

The economy of words and the absence of punctuation reminded me of telegrams. Of course, there was a reason for it. My parents, like most people back then, believed they were being charged per word. I called eight hours later; there is that time difference to keep in mind. Long distance worry must be a terrible thing.

Apparently, a framed picture of mine had come crashing to the floor when the maid went about sweeping the living room. Thud-dam! Both the maid and my mother had watched way too many melodramatic Bollywood movies to ignore the portent of that random event. I had not called in ages. Everything pointed to just one thing -- I lay dying somewhere, alone. The situation was desperate enough to warrant the use of a new technology!

Once I landed a real job, I could afford to call home more often. I joined legions of desis unwittingly vying to make the phone companies rich. They seemed to have the same rates on all days now, so I could call at the drop of a hat. And I did. My folks moved back to Madras after retirement. For the first few weeks, I called their neighbours. My mother would come to the phone -- all breathless -- from her short dash across the thresholds. Once they got their own line, we were back to our routine of chatting away at 70 cents a minute. Our habit of letter writing was all but dead.

On my last vacation to India, I tried to talk them into buying a PC. I even gave them a quick tutorial and set up a free Internet account on my laptop. Of course, I hadn't realised how deep-seated their techno-phobia was. They made all sorts of excuses: The place is really dusty, there isn't enough room in the house, there are frequent power cuts , blah, blah, blah...

Oh, they did not refuse point blank, but the indications were definitely there -- they would sooner bring a ferocious pit bull home. I did not think much was going to come out of it but then, yesterday, I received an e-mail from my parents... from their Yahoo! account.

The message itself was not cheery, but I smiled at the thought of their eight-minute trek to that cybercafe. There is still hope. Why did they refuse to acknowledge thus far that e-mail is the next best thing to telepathy -- instant and inexpensive? Given that neither of them was particularly quick at the keyboard, it must have taken them a good half-hour to type out those three paragraphs. I beamed at their valiant effort.

When I called them, my mother said, "No, no, no. We did not type it ourselves. You know we are getting old. Appa is a little arthritic even. We gave the matter to the lady there. She was through in no time at all. She is very nice. If you send messages anytime to their centre's address, she will give a printout to the shop boy. He will bike down and deliver it right away."

At that instant, a picture came into my mind.

Outside the village post offices, or even the one at Andheri in Bombay where I used to live, I have seen writers with low, sloping desks sitting under the shade of the leafier trees. Peasants or their urban counterparts sit at their feet as humble supplicants. They are illiterate and can't write their own letters. The whole mailing process then becomes a collaborative effort.

Everyone around gets to know all about the sender's life, down to the last detail. The articulate ones in this genial gathering even recommend a turn of phrase here and there to improve the correspondence, unless the writer is assertive enough to silence them. And, of course, there is the inevitable wit to enliven the already interesting proceedings.

Well, maybe the woman at the kiosk did the job with the customary objectivity of a stenotypist, but I don't think this is going to work for me. I simply can't get that cozy, rustic tableau out of my head.

What do I do now?

Forget about speed and revive the practice of snail-mail? Have the folks sign up for typing lessons at this age? No, that won't be fair. I have already reduced them to the level of those unlettered peasants.

Long distance affection is a terrible thing

If you can convince 'em, join 'em. Vijayasree Venkataraman now writes pen-ink-paper letters to her parents.

Illustration: Lynette Menezes

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