Life Sans Mobile Phones

The Wait at customer care centre of ‘Nokia’ seems to be unending and was getting on my nerves. Each passing moment was like a walk through a desert, a never-ending wait. My Mobile instrument had gone dead and here I was at the mercy of the Customer Care Executive who took the mobile handset; with a precision like a surgeon started operating it; he took the mobile handset along with his own time. With his every move on the handset, my Heart Beat started pumping. A few minutes later into it and then came the big bad Breaking news “ Sir your Mobile instrument cannot be serviced here and it needs to be sent to L1 and the same shall post servicing handed over to you not before two weeks, and sir the most important fact "all the data that was in the handset shall be lost”. What a caring statement from a Customer Care Executive. The way the message was conveyed - matter of fact, with no alternative solution suggested for saving the data, really broke me. Immediately my mind started wandering like the inaugural paragraph of Chandamama comic (Vikram and Betaal) – Dark was the Night and Weird the Ambience (atmoshphere). Eerie laughter of Ghosts followed by howling of Jackals and flashes of lightning revealed a very serious face. The thought of even imagining that I have lost close to 700 contacts and cannot retrieve them sent shiver down my spine; I stood simply starring at the customer care executive as a mute and hapless spectator who could do nothing except hoping a miracle of sorts that his Brahma vakhya does not turn true. Lot of un-answered question criss-crossed my mind. How will my customers / friends / relatives contact me? and vice-versa. It was all happening in a span of a minute. Suddenly my head started feeling tizzy and I had to drink two full-chilled glass of water to soothen my nerves. I felt terribly let down. With steps retracing backwards like a man fully drunk and not in his senses I reached home forgetting that it was from my office that I had come to the store. I started searching high and low to lay hands on a old Mobile instrument that was lying unused for years; Eureka I found it and inserted the Sim card and Lo!! walked out of my home like a man possessed. A man celebrating victory as if I have single handedly won the cricket world cup for my country. Still I did not have anybody’s contact number including my life- partner of 11 years. I could imagine how a new born baby would feel on the first day of his arrival - the world knows his identity but he does not know anybody. Which makes me ponder how much we depend on an instrument called Mobile Phone and how it has spoilt our habits. How we all have become a slave of this. I remember earlier we used to remember lot of phone numbers or jotted down on a small diary and now for each and every thing we fully bank on mobile memory forgetting that we too used to or still has one. With the invention of mobile phone our writing habits are also fast fading because a Mobile instrument has all the possible facilities in the world. We become so impatient when for a longer duration we do not receive a phone call and in between start staring at the mobile phone wondering whether the network or the battery is in its place. Its arrived The Mobile Phone and it is there to stay. It has become a necessary evil. With a mobile instrument at your disposal you can be reached at any point of the day; the caller is least bothered whether you are in the right frame of mind to speak to him. It doesn’t matter whether you are having your lunch, sleeping or whether you are attending a funeral. All mobile etiquettes goes for a toss when you are immersed in a movie / concert / social functions, suddenly the mobile insturment rings and the receiver happily oblivion to his surrounding starts disturbing others by speaking loudly for others to hear (intentionally/ unintentionally unknown). Another example is when we are air borne. The poor crew members keep on requesting passengers by repeatedly announcing passengers to switch off the mobile phone as it interferes with the navigation system but we are least bothered with the security aspect. You need to feel the fetish of passengers who announce their arrival prior to the flight coming to a complete standstill. We can hear continuous beep of phones and majority of the passengers get thoroughly immersed in their conversation either informing their arrival at a new place and conveying the same back home. Let us imagine a scenario dozen years back when there was no mobile instruments we were traveling and existing that time too. In today’s context the richest person in the world will be the person who does not own a mobile handset but still exist. He is free from all the tensions of the world. The mobile phone unfortunately in today’s world has become part and parcel of common man and ironically I can say that today the basic necessity is not confined to only the basic three needs i.e. Roti, Kapda Aur Makan but we can gleefully add one more necessity evil – the damn mobile phone (OOPS I should not call it Damn lest it gets angry and conks off again) ({also see the attached video about multi-taksing i.e conversing while driving}------------- oh no not again.