The Long View Letters
Issue 05 (June 14, 2026)
Mind the Gap:
(Notes on Presence)
In November 2012, the staff at London’s Embankment Station were approached by a woman who identified herself as Dr. Margaret McCollum. She wanted to know why the iconic voice advising commuters to ‘Mind the Gap’ had been changed. It had belonged to her late husband - the actor Oswald Laurence. Even as London Transport digitized and updated the announcements they played across stops – Embankment had still hosted this formless presence of her late husband. Until now.
Deeply moved, the staff searched for a CD of the recording and gave it to her. Then they went a step further. A few months later, Laurence’s voice was reinstated.
Since then Dr. McCollum continues her ritual of returning to the station when she longs for the presence of her husband. I imagine her closing her eyes and smiling when she hears the three words he sampled six decades ago.
***
It is a Sunday in May. I’ve posted illustrations of three divine figures with animals on my WhatsApp status. The final one of the triptych is Swami Vivekananda at his monastery in the outskirts of Kolkata. His saffron clad figure is surrounded by ducks, deer, and his dog Bagha.
A few minutes later, in the archived chats, I see a message from a former colleague – we will call her K. “Hellos,” reads her reply to my story, “I was in Belur Math last year 😊”
The text feels out of the blue to me. I haven’t heard from her in a while. Before I can reply, she continues by asking me how I’m doing. Then, “Let’s catch up on calling one of these days.”
Now, my brain begins to do the paso doble. Before this can escalate, I reply, “That’s wonderful. Belur is a special place.”
For context, K and I worked together for one year over a decade ago. When I say together, I mean - we shared a floorspace and a few post-lunch walks. Then she moved on to another organization. Soon after, she married and left the city.
In all that time we hung out once - in 2018. I imagine it might have been the only time we ever got on a call.
K was never one for extracurricular activities either. The workplace was a mixed demographic with mostly young people. While she was still there, the universal corporate ritual of Friday evening drinks began. I didn’t drink but I would go along because of the jokes and the appetizers. K would politely decline. With time, the invitations grew less insistent and eventually became perfunctory.
So, now when she asks to catch up – I wonder what we have to catch up on. Is it the last eight years? Will a call impart a particular elasticity to the moment, expanding its membrane to absorb the diverged past and the distant future? Has science made it possible to reverse engineer entropy?
I wonder if she has a questionnaire ready, like the 36 questions to fall in love. Maybe there are 17 questions to get all caught up. They must include – where are you working? How are your folks? Are you interested in chanting?
I assume because I do not know.
Maybe catch up is code for the things she wants to tell me instead. A couple of years ago, she had texted me out of the blue (it is evident that most texts feel that way to me), and asked if she could share something personal. I replied belatedly, “Sure. What’s up…” Silence ensued.
Why would a woman with a gaggle of cousins, a husband, book clubs, and chanting circles seek to unburden herself to a former acquaintance? I imagine it is the Intimate Stranger phenomenon. From her perspective, I could be a spectre - distant enough to be harmless, transparent enough to see right through.
From my perspective, she is a spectre that is beginning to haunt me as I sit on my bed staring at the phone.
I come up with, “My schedule is a bit wonky so I’m not sure about a call but happy to catch up on text.” And as if to indicate I’m up to speed, I add, “See your posts about meditation these days. Very cool.”
“Yessss,” she replies, “Sounds good.”
The conversation dies there.
***
***
The ‘I’ in the internet is for perpetual is-ness.
In 1884, the industrial revolution dragged the people out of local time zones into standardized national grids. Now, the screen revolution has pushed us into an abyss of timelessness.
For K, popping up in a near-stranger’s phone, asking to catch up feels possible because the internet provides proof of life and ease of access. It also erases time.
On a screen, I am still the person talking about monks or dogs or books. Now and then I share a comic interlude. What is made invisible are the eight years in which I have tracked Saturn’s transit over my moon, collaged scraps, and lost most of my friendships. Its grid does not have a slot for the street dogs I’ve named, a map for the backroad I walk with them, or any ability to index endless early drafts. The screen doesn’t show that I now know how to say no.
Whether by prompting us with memories, or reducing lives to trends, the internet reads people as data points. Markers of change and transitions – engagements, holidays, illness, scaling Mt. Everest, are locked into a grid, curated by algorithms, and displayed accordingly. In this way our lives are turned into products for the shelves. The shelves are always lined. It matters less whether with your life or mine.
The internet puts us on display for all of time.
***
The oldest unbroken living scriptures in the world are the Vedas – four in number. The root of the word is vid - ‘to know.’ The second Veda, called the Sama, was composed between 1200 – 1000 BCE. Today, scholars say it consists only of hymns of the first Veda set to a meter. Even so, it is the origin of Indian classical music and liturgy.
But once, scholars believe, it had 10,000 branches. If the Sama Veda were a large hall in which you and I were standing, we would see innumerable shelves lined with its bound verses.
However, since material decays quickly in the Indian heat and humidity, the Vedas were not preserved in leaf or stone. Instead, they were memorized by priests. Learning passed through lineages. When one family died out, the branch of knowledge entrusted to it perished too.
Today, if we imagine ourselves standing in the same hall, we will find most of the shelves empty, caving in.
***
Growing up, we moved places every three or four years, due to my father’s work. This was before Facebook and Instagram. My friends and I would write letters for a few months or a year after either of us had moved. I still remember the pale blue inland letters, the friendship bands sent via post. Gradually the letters would grow more intermittent as the names we referenced changed. We had transferred to new classes, made new friends, had thoughts about our new teachers. Soon the connection frayed and then snapped. We had too much growing up to do.
As a child, it was the only way of life I knew. But now I wonder if this experience taught me to expect that most friendships expired, that friends came, as the oft-quoted Insta saying goes, “for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”
In the perpetual is-ness of the internet, both reasons and seasons seem to have become synthetic. People may ghost. And they may rise from the dead with an audacity that deserves to be studied.
***
It is not my belief, or my argument, that friendships should die a natural death when their time comes. In an ideal world, I would keep every single one of my friends - from the one with whom I made leaf chutney during kindergarten lunch breaks to the one who jammed her fists against her ears when the teacher asked questions to the class to the one who drives me up the wall now.
I wish that Wi-Fi connections were enough to sustain them; I wish the self were a stable and responsible Gorilla glass display predictably responsive to the laziest touch.
This is the lie that the internet seems to sell us. With one tap, it defines engagement. With one scroll, it shows us 90 seconds of an opinion and convinces us that this is all we need to learn of the subject. With one swipe - a working phone number is confirmed, and the internet claims that the connection remains as active as the radio-electro-light waves between us.
The 'I' in internet is the indent between information and intention.
***
In 2022, a year which I have labelled annus horribilis borrowing from the late Queen, I learned that it takes 200 hours to become close friends. But to become friends we can start with fifty. At the 90-hour mark, we would begin to spend time together voluntarily.
However, it is not just the number of hours that matters, it is how we might fill them – with in-jokes, rants, and whatever else pleases.
Being thrown together, as we were in school, did not inspire friendship even though we showed up wearing the same colours, scratched our names on the same wooden desks, and shared our little lunches. It was filling each other’s slam books and cycling around the cantonment roads in the evening. It was taking time to resolve arguments after dinner on phones that had wires.
Facebook and Instagram generously offered many an opportunity to rekindle those friendships. I found my best friend from when I was 10 now living on another continent. Our politics were different. She is now a mum who works for the world's largest online retailer. I am, among other things, a curmudgeon. Our memories were vivid but we had to scroll too far back in the past to see them.
Would we call this a connection?
***
What is the internet without our imperfect remembrances, without the sweat and tears we pour into the ritual of knowing someone, of loving them?
It seems to me nothing more than a Ouija board.
Warmly,
Skendha
The Long View Letters
P.S. In the spirit of rescuing ourselves from the algorithm's shelf, I’m keen to read a diversity of voices. Would you bypass the feed for a moment and share your favorite essay/poem with me?
P.P.S. And if any of these letters have intrigued you, sharing them with someone else is the best way to help this corner of the internet grow!
P.P.P.S. Happy New Moon!
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