Learning to Love the Social Media

I text, write emails and use , Facebook on my laptop and Whatsapp on my mobile. For me the social media carry both hopes and fears.

I am grateful to the proprietors of Facebook for contact with long lost cousins and distant friends. To people who are shut in or whose loved ones are on another continent it must be an incalculable boon. But I recall a lunch with some of our grandchildren. The room was eerily silent. Their heads were bowed and they were tapping away at their mobile 'phones. Exasperated my wife threatened to throw the devices in a bucket of water. The intimacy of the remote had stolen the tenderness of the immediate. The precedence of a text can weaken the respect that should be shown the person in front of us. People post pictures of the meals they eat but I cannot help wondering if they are so busy recording and sending that they fail to share the experience with the folk they are with or fail to fully relish the experience for themselves.

Facebook has the potential to raise unexpected barriers. People post about sports and news local to them without a word of explanation. Incomprehensible posts are thrust on to an international medium. This obstructs true communication. Other posts are incomprehensible for another reason. Some friends do not realise that neither body language nor tone of voice is conveyed by Facebook. It leaves me pondering what is explicit and what is ironic.

I note that many posts shared are slogans often prepared by organisations. I fear a danger here for understandably these posts are not nuanced and meant to be striking. Is this becoming a substitute for thought? It is a danger that predates the social media. The press has already tempted us to react in head lines rather than argue carefully from a reasoned moral and philosophic position. This has reduced much of the essential debate in our society to a shouting match and this is not The social media where we do not need to look our protagonist in the eye tempts us to be less well mannered than we would be normally. The advent of the social media could be the dawn of a new age for reasoned argument instead it may be tolling its death knell.

Another of my fears is the decline of certain literary modes of expression. Is the letter, that hunting ground of the biographers of the great, dying? We no longer write a letter but we dash off an email. Not all politicians write articles. Some of them tweet. My fears are just that. They need not come to fruition. The potential of the media is the destruction of intimacy, reasoned debate and careful literary expression but used aright they could also serve their preservation.

We go to a Hindu Wedding

I was full of wonder as I left my comfort zone to witness what to me was an unknown drama. We boarded a tiny but covered ferry. Rain threatened. We landed after a few moments on a tiny Island on the Thames; stepped up to a grey paved area before a modern building to the right. We were on Raven's Ait

I expected to see my sister in a sari,, She was the mother of the groom. But here was her husband Stephen and son Kevin, father and brother of the groom, both in Tamil dress. This was a reminder that a Hindu wedding involves the joining of families , not just individuals. Preparing for what I thought would be a lengthy rite I asked for the loo. My nephew Kevin swathed in clothes of cream and gold led me to a house in the shrubbery. A figure emerged from a side room. She looked as though she had climbed off some colourful Hindu bas relief, henna, gold and a bright sari. The figure greeted me “Uncle”. This was the bride who was to marry my nephew, Ian. Having greeted her I went to the main building to savoury snacks and to waiting for it all to begin.

I remember the event as we do most of the past, in snap shots. I am indebted to whoever wrote the superbly produced leaflet describing what was going on to us puzzled non-Hindus, for filling in the gaps.

We entered the Britannia Room. It might have been in a village hall anywhere in England,; but it had been adorned. Flowers encased the aisle and at the front an arch covered over and before with mainly white flowers There were over ten of us in our immediate family party.. We were urged to go further forward but shyly we wanted to stay in a row together. I regretted this later. I would like to have seen more of the ceremony.

The band came first They were loud and during the first part of the ceremony I did not pay much attention to them but my grandson stretched over to me and said.” They are really good”. He is a musician himself so I began to listen carefully and discovered a treasure trove of riffs and harmonies. Ian walked down the aisle with a teenage escort. Both were dressed in matching smart Tamil dress, Ian's hat had fan like structure on the front. He was in a jacket that buttoned to the neck. I remember cream and gold and purple.

For the first three stages of the wedding the groom was without his bride. He was welcomed, sanctified and blessed. At stage four the bride arrived with her entourage and in stage five she was transferred from her family to the groom's. She then received gifts from Ian and his family including a sari. During all this I became aware of was the chanting of two priests using Sanskrit and Tamil. They sat below the married couple who were on a dais. The bride then left the hall and changed into the sari she had been given.

On her return the music rose to a crescendo. The ritual became personal with gifts and food being exchanged. After this I noticed a bright flame burning from amongst the decorations. The couple processed around it three times. It was during the first circuit that the couple were reminded of their seven vows. It is these seven vows that made me think about the meaning of the Hindu Wedding ceremony. ( to nourish each other, to grow together in strength, to share our joy and sorrow, to live in love,to care for our family, to remain life long friends and to attain salvation.)

The rest of the ceremony was one of celebration. There was even a competition between the bride and the groom for a ring at the bottom of a basin of coloured water to predict who would be the predominant partner.