Brahmin spammas, spaamies and my fate

There are two ways to become wise.

#1. One has to suffer, fail and learn things oneself.

#2. One has to learn from the sufferings of others around.

In this case, mine was #1. Please read this long rambling. Your way of learning will be #2

Long back, when Sachin Tendulkar was playing ODI matches, I saw a mail with the tag [BRAHMINASSOCIATION] in the subject line. Clearly confused, I opened the mail to find what it was.

 srirama jayam.

dear sri seshadri avarghal.

may i request you to kindly circulate the information below in your matrimonial columns. this is for my daughter XXXXXXX. much obliged’, ``wanted groom for tamil Iyer Vadama bride,27 ,fair , good looking, jyeshta nakshatram, haritasa gotram.software engineer, working in usa,ca, green card holder. subsect no bar.pls contact mr p. Swaminathan telephone xxxxxxxx 

Was it a spam, really? I’ve only seen Dominos Pizza, EBay, ‘Step ahead in career’,‘You’ve won $1000000 money’ spams. This one seemed quite different. Have desperate people started sending matrimonial advertisements as spams, so that someone somewhere doing something will read it and the girl/boy will eventually get a perfect ‘sorgathil nichayikka patta’ (made in heaven) alliance?  Ada what man, seems like the story of the best over acting iduppu movie of this century, Kushi.

(Kushi is a must watch movie for foreigners, especially. I guarantee that they’ll start treating us, Indians with reverence and respect and even fear to stand in front of us and speak, dreading that we’ll start reacting the way the lead actors do in the movie). I deleted the mail and proceeded with my day to day work, which was of course doing nothing.

The next day I received 2 more e-mails with the same tag [BRAHMINASSOCIATION]. This time they had different contents. One was a fuming mail about how Brahmins are being ill-treated by a certain political party and another was about Sri Vaishnava Thiruthalangal.How is that I receive spams everyday from the same BRAHMINASSOCIATION? Baffling.I marked them spam and proceeded with my day to day work, which was of course doing nothing.

One fine day, as I was too bored, I opened the spam folder to check if there was anything interesting to read. Ok, don’t laugh. As you can find gold even from garbage, you can get entertaining information from Spam mails. To my shock there were 400 odd mails sitting there! All of them from [BRAHMINASSOCIATION]. What the f***..sorry What the abacharam abacharam!‘Select All Delete All’.And I proceeded with my day to day work, which was of course doing nothing.

Though Gmail deletes spam mails that are more than 30 days old, I continued doing this ritual of ‘Select All Delete All’ now and then. Spam mails are like mosquitoes. Even if they lie somewhere else and don’t bother you, deleting them gives you a mental satisfaction, just like the satisfaction you get by killing a poor innocuous mosquito sitting idly on a table.

Then came a day, I can never ever forget. The day when the daily tear off astrology prediction said ‘Nanmai’ (Bliss/Goodness) for my moon sign.

I received a mail that announced that all members can now post in the group [BRAHMINASSOCIATION].This  After little research, I inferred that this was a Yahoo! Group of 7500 people, where they can exchange matrimonial profiles, share some Gyaan about religion, temples, gods and goddesses. Since then, only the moderator was sending the mails and now, the generous Gentleman had granted rights to all members to post. Btw, his name wasn’t Arjun.

I did not completely understand it’s implication. Tube light me. Mails started pouring in, and they rose exponentially! 2,4,16… All mails predominantly had the same subject. They all wanted their e-mail ids to be removed from the group. ‘ Delete from group’, ‘ Remove my id’, ‘Unsubscribe me’.Different people, different text, but same story, like Tamil TV Soaps.

But, wait? Why did they all land in my Inbox? Had I not dug a canal and routed all irrigation water from this particular stream to the Sea called the Spams folder? Then I got it! Holy cow kamadhenu!

Until then, the moderator was the only sender. So, all mails were sent to the spams folder. Now that different people had started to send mails, so different senders, it wasn’t considered Spam mail. Huhhhhh!

I appreciated the Archimedes sleeping inside me. What a discovery. Okay, I will unsubscribe me from the group.Easy solution. With pride, I clicked on ‘Unsubscribe’ written in extra small font at the bottom. It sent an empty e-mail to the group to unsubscribe me. Subham. Problem solved. I closed the window and walked out of the room, like a boss.

Only after sometime, I found out that I hadn’t won the battle yet. The mail had bounced back. It said that I cannot be unsubscribed as I had not subscribe to the group.

“Only members of the group can post”.

WHAT THE ‘F’ABACHARAM!? WHAT THE ‘F’ABACHARAM!? WHAT THE ‘F’ABACHARAM!? WHAT THE ‘F’ABACHARAM!?

I was receiving mails because I was subscribed to it. But now, it said I wasn’t subscribed at all. Not a fair game, Yahoo! What do I do now? Mails kept flooding my inbox. More and more vexed individuals sent mails asking their mail ids to be removed from the group. Some were polite, some were intolerant, some said “me too..me too” replying to it, some Major Sundarrajans spoke hi fi english, some frustrated souls started abusing the group for sending too many unwanted mails everyday. Some respected mamas taught others how to unsubscribe themselves. But, others did not seem to pay heed to it. The matter became so serious that people were outrageously criticised fellow members who wanted to opt out. One subject was அடுத்த ஜன்மத்திலாவது அந்தணனாக பிறக்காதீர். (At least in your next birth, do not be born as a Brahmin). As if it’s all in their hands! The net result was that people kept fighting and eventually spamming each other. Poor souls like me (who’d not even subscribed) could only puzhungi puzhungi azhudhufy.

Every time after I deleted mails and came back, there were more. It pained. Just imagine, you meticulously sweep and swab a large beautiful white marbled room and leave it pleasant smelling and sparkling clean. And when you come back, you see that someone has sprinkled garbage all around like Gangaajal. How irritated you’d feel? (I’m not mentioning the mail or it’s content as garbage, it’s just an example. Naan Elleengo!)

Toooooooo many mails, replies, reply to replies, reply to reply to reply. After much thinking, I decided I would do what everyone else did. JUST SPAM BACK! Just in case the moderator is a nice guy mama and he removes each one of them individually, I would get removed too.

So, I typed a mail.

“Dear Moderator,

I had not subscribed to the group and I seriously do not know how my mail id got added to your group’s mailing list. I tried unsubscribing myself, but the mail bounced back saying I was not subscribed at all. So, kindly remove me from this group.

My mail id is  EmailIDShouldNotBeWritten@PublicSpace.com

Thanks”

I hoped and hoped and hoped something would happen. Littering continued every single day,every single hour. Had I been impolite in the mail? Did they not understand what I said? I should have probably written the mail the way the other people in the group write.

I clicked on reply all.

Style Change. Attempt 2

“Sri Rama Jayam! Subhamasthu!

Respected Bandhu! Adiyen Namaskaram! 

With the blessing of the Perumal and Thaayar, you people are doing a noble service of spreading knowledge about spirituality and religion, teaching truthfulness, honesty and jeevakarunyam.

Also, I appreciate your efforts of running the free jadhagam exchange service.But, I think I got subscribed to this group accidentally.

As these mails are  of no use to me, I humbly and kindly request you to remove my e-mail id from the group.

Thanks and Pranams

Dhivhya”

I believed that that time, this kind of a mail will bear fruit.

Couple of days passed. No response. I was clueless. Unsubscribe request mails kept coming from different members. Real Bad Headache! Why had this Yahoo! Groups stupidly subscribed me to random groups. Merissa Mayer Maami’s new strategy to increase membership and customer base eh?

Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. I will first go subscribe myself to the group. Let the moderator approve. Then I will become a proper member of the group unlike a benami or a zombie member now. Next, I will unsubscribe myself. WOW! And I did accordingly.Day after day, I checked my status. ‘Membership pending!’ I was getting real mad.

I scrutinized few mails that come, I somehow found from one of them, the name of the moderator and his mail id. I’ve sent a mail directly to him and now I sit praying to god.

At this juncture, I’m starting to worry about my luck and fate, pondering if I’d done sins that have pushed me into this black hole.

Introspection brought me this memory from the past.

1)I had been a prankster at college, trying to crack people’s passwords, to subscribe their ids to spams, interchange numbers and names in mobile phones etc. It was only a ‘try’. I’d never done them full-fledged. The mere thought..the intention…those evil things that had occurred to me are probably responsible for what’s happening. Cha!

2) For ages, old Idols, torn pictures and tattered photos of god at home which need to be disposed off are not thrown away,but kept at the back sides of temples. They lie there for ages and ages and one day they’ll vanish. And, me a blasphemous silly girl, had sent emails about god to the spam folder. Such a disrespectful thing to do!

Hey Larry and Sergey.. create a folder called  ‘Holy spam’. Okay?! All religious emails should reside there! My karma is chasing me and showing me it’s power.  See, your karma will also never leave you!

Always be good. Do good. Think good.

Oh, wait. What if I try to crack the group admin’s password?

Brahmin……BrahminAssociation…BrahminAssociationPassword… BrahminAssociationPassword123….Perumal….Narayana….SriRamaJayam…OmNamahShivaya…MuruganThunai

Note: I’m sorry if I had hurt Brahmins and the Yahoo group BRAHMINASSOCIATION. I know, You know, Everyone knows, it is definitely not intentional. This blog post is a way to vent out my frustration, stress and mental torture.

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