The Quiet Between Two Rings of a Landline

A rotary phone – the slowest and somehow the most peaceful form of communication.

This was the early nineties. Most homes didn’t have a landline. Mine didn’t either. And strangely, nobody thought it was a problem. If my father came home late from work, the family didn’t panic — we simply assumed: traffic, work, or he met a friend, in that order. My mother didn’t have a “Find My Kid” app. Her version was: divine trust and a loud voice.

My brother and I would disappear into a gully or a friend’s apartment complex for hours. We walked to the library, roamed three streets away to play cricket, and trekked half a mile to Malleswaram 18th Cross ground — returning home at 6:30 or 7, covered in dust and joy. Parents assumed kids would eventually wander back home the way cows return at dusk. No drama. No helicopter parenting. Just life moving at its own calm pace.

Postcards and inland letters — the original long-distance messaging apps.

With no phone at home, the only way to talk to relatives was through postcards and inland letters. Postcards were basically the 1990s version of tweets — short, public, and open to anyone who felt like reading them. Inland letters were more premium: more space, more privacy, and more emotions tucked inside each fold. Every exchange took a week or more, so you chose words carefully. You wrote with intention. And still, I remember running to the postbox multiple times a week. Somebody somewhere was always writing. Conversations moved slowly, but they were steady and warm.

Then landlines arrived. A luxury at first. Local calls were affordable, but STD calls? Every second felt like a financial decision. Not everyone had a phone, so neighborhoods developed a culture of shared connectivity. When we lived in Kasturi Dhama Apartments, there was a family in the adjacent block whose father worked in Davanagere. Whenever he called, my brother and I became the human notification system.

“Rama! Radha! Your father has called! He’ll call again in five minutes!”

If they didn’t hear us, one of us sprinted to their door. We never considered it a nuisance. It broke the monotony of homework. It meant someone would drop by, and the house would feel alive for a few minutes. These tiny interruptions were mini-festivals.

Then mobile phones arrived — a true leap. But I didn’t own one until my second year at Bosch. Even when I came to the US, I did my first couple of semesters mobile-free. Around then, the internet crept into our lives. Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger — continents suddenly shrank.

And then 2007 happened. The iPhone. Smartphones became smart. I still remember reading a comment when Apple announced that FaceTime could host 32 people:

“Why would I FaceTime 32 people? I haven’t had 32 friends in my entire life.”

Today, everything is instant — and yet stress is higher than ever. If someone doesn’t respond to a message, we imagine the worst. If we don’t respond, guilt sets in. Then hesitation. Then silence. One day becomes a week, becomes a month, and quietly a friendship dies — not from conflict, but from accumulated awkwardness.

Meanwhile, everyone looks alive on social media. Instagram and Facebook have become the new living rooms. People announce vacations, promotions, brunch, and curd rice with equal enthusiasm. Someone posts curd rice and asks for the recipe, and every South Indian has to resist replying: “Take rice. Add curd. Mix. Congratulations.”

Attention lives in likes. Depth evaporates. Heart-to-heart conversations shrink.

I don’t want to go back in time — I love the convenience. But I dislike what it’s done to our attention spans. No one wants to read beyond two lines. AI writes long emails from a single bullet. The recipient feeds the email back into AI for a summary. So why write the long email in the first place? Somewhere along the way, meaning leaks out.

But handwritten letters? They never lost their meaning.
I still remember the letters from my grandparents, uncles, and aunts — the carefully chosen words, the warmth in the ink, the love folded into every line. There was sincerity in the slowness, a patience we no longer practice.

We’ve gone from postcards to pings, from trust to tracking, from waiting to refreshing. But one thing — thankfully — hasn’t changed.

Words still matter.