Paromita Vohra Column: The P.S. types

There are two types of people Those who write PS in their emails And those who wonder why people write PS in their emails when they could insert it in the body copyPS belongs to letter writing something that was an important part of my summer vacations as a teenager Afternoons were spent writing long descriptions of my days Minor gossip about various crushes pretentious wondering about the state of the world and neatly transcribed sheets of poems I had discovered song lyrics that had blown my mind or passages I couldnrsquot stop rereading were poured onto beautiful stationery and sent off to friendsBut even after two sides of several pages were filled up there would always be that PS mdash post script for the nonletter writing generation of which there is certainly one now The PS was the one bit you forgot to write when you wrote it all Some letters had a PPS mdash post post script and a PPPS in extreme situationsFor PS types communication is its own reward a communion of sorts with self and others PS types sit at the table talking long after lunch is eaten their hands still dirty as food congeals on plates They are the ones with the long goodbyes at the doorndash always one more last thing to say who press the lift button and come running back with ldquoArre I forgot to tell you somethingrdquo And then send you an SMS from the cab homeTechnically one wrote PS because in a handwritten or typed out letter one could not insert a forgotten bit after signing it So it had to come below the main body Why when one can now insert a missed fact easily would people do it ask genuinely puzzled functional typesItrsquos not because theyrsquore bringing useless habits of another time into the electronic era The PS is a delightful means of acknowledging that communication is not only functional but spills over the functional into the emotional the aesthetic and intellectual all the time It serves as implication and ornamentation invitation and indicationThe PS is a symbol of things do not fit in neat categories that there is meaning in the miscellaneous It may not directly be in the flow of information in the main body Yet it is important Like a seed for a new conversation an observation that will unveil a rich vein of gossip it concludes communication not with finality but with an invitation to moreIt can be an artful flourish Its most popular example would be The Beatlesrsquo song ldquoPS I love yourdquo mdash saying the thing that is being said in every line almost as an afterthought to underline that it is the central point of the letter like a thrilling whisper made while passing each other in a crowdSome PS can also be BS yaniki bullshit written to generate false naturalness Recently a colleague wrote an email full of decisive instructions on a work group and ended with suggesting another colleague carry out her stellar strategy In a PS she explained why she couldnrsquot do it as if this was all earnest utterance and not the performance of superiority or a perplexing way to provoke annoyance No one responded Yaniki when you provide an invitation to read between the lines people will naPeople love to bemoan the passing of eras and the loss of certain ways of being But the thing is eras do pass and as people pass through them they take along the old things that serve continuing human needs in new timesParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevipicturescom