England Diary Part 1: The Ubiquitous Letter Boxes

 

During my recent visit to the UK, what struck me on the very first day was the presence of letter boxes on street corners. 

I stood by to take a closer look at one of them near my lodgings and realised that it was a functioning one with a neat coat of paint and clearance timings distinctly written on it.

It had a regal appearance with an ornate top when compared with our bowler hat top letter boxes.

Before the advent of internet, they were the foot soldiers who kept the wheels of communication, both official and personal, running. 

They were the broadbands of that era.  From the central business districts of metro cities to the far-flung hinterlands, they stood steadfastly braving harsh summers and winters.

Royal Mail has a 500-year-old history dating back to King Henry VIII, and in India it is a legacy of the British Raj, established in 1854.

The coming of internet and mobile phones pushed them to the margins and in India these letter boxes soon started gathering rust and disappeared unceremoniously.

Hence, it was quite a surprise, tinged with amusement, for me to see a functioning letter box in the UK.

During my subsequent days of stay in the UK, I came across the presence of gleaming red 'Royal Mail' vans, many of them electric, at various parts of London and other towns I visited.

All this gave me the impression that the despite the internet and mobile phone, the good old 'snail mail' was still not a 'has been' in the UK, and it whetted my curiosity.

Later on, during my visits to some households, I noticed that all houses invariably had a letter box plate on the front door to receive letters. 

I also saw a pile of letters lying on tables near the house entrances. 

I noticed they were mainly official communications, mainly from the NHS and power supply companies.

During my conversations with my hosts, I got to know that many of the official correspondence continue to happen through letters.

So, I surmised that it is the official correspondence that was keeping the Royal Mail afloat. 

But I was in for a surprise while at a Tesco outlet near my lodging. 

There was a section for greeting cards, which almost reminded me of the 1980s and 90s India, when such a display of greeting cards was the norm at all book shops and fancy stores.

The cards ranged from festival greetings for Christmas and Easter to personal ones like birthday, wedding or even a job promotion.

Though the sale of cards may not be anywhere close to the pre-internet, -mobile phone days, it was encouraging to know that there still exists a market for such cards, and people value sending and receiving cards with the handwritten messages scrawled in it.

Something totally forgotten in India.

Brain rot: A malady of our times

Oxford University Press (OUP), the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has named brain rot as the word of the year. 

It is defined as deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, mainly as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging.

Though the term brain rot is nearly 170 years old, it is now being used to describe mindless consumption of low-quality, low-value content found on social media.

Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl said that brain rot in its modern sense, "speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time."

With social media having acquired a vice-like grip over our lives, we end up consuming excessive amounts of such low-quality online content. A major part of our day is spent scrolling Instagram, X, Facebook and other social media feeds.

Smartphones have proved to be a force multiplier in providing access to social media anytime and almost anywhere. These devices have become so deeply entwined with lives that it is the first thing we look at after waking up and the last thing we check before crashing at night.

TS Eliot’s Prufrock had claimed “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”. Had Eliot been alive today, he might have substituted Instagram reels and ‘likes’ for coffee spoons.

OUP claims that though the first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854, where he attacks people for not making enough mental and intellectual efforts while interpreting complex ideas.

However, the coinage later fell into obscurity. After languishing in the wilderness of dictionaries and thesaurus for over a century, the term has now suddenly gained traction in the digital era.

It has now caught the fancy of Gen Z and Alpha generations, who grew up amid the social media. OUP claims the usage of this term increased 230 per cent in its frequency from 2023 to 2024.

Brain rot beat five other phrases or words on the dictionary publisher's shortlist, namely demure, lore, slop, romantasy and dynamic pricing. More than 37,000 people voted to help choose the winner.

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