Of Smartphones and Dumb Actions

Dhak..dhak..dhak…. DHAP!  Then total silence!

The first three words were the sounds of my heart beating as I saw my prized smartphone fly away from my hands  from the landing of the first flight of steps to the hard, merciless floor down below. (I can still recapture its entire flight in slow motion). The fourth word was how it sounded to my horrified ears as it landed with a harsh thud, face down, 12 feet below onto the ground. ..And then it was total silence for a few seconds after which a flurry of activity occurred that chiefly included an SOS scream for my son along with a mad race downstairs to pick up my phone which was fortunately still in one piece; but no amount of first aid could revive its ‘touch’ sensor without which it was practically useless for all I could understand…

For once, I had to stand shamefacedly under the stern glare of my 17 year old son who is the epitome of carefulness. (He still has his favorite childhood mechano set preserved intact and I suspect that the big box of partially used colorful oil pastels stashed away in his drawer is the same one I gifted him on his 7^th birthday…). My favorite one-liner, ‘Learn from your elders’ backfire royally as he scornfully says “how careless can you get? Isn’t this what I will learn from my mother?”  Any other time and I would have given him a look to silence, but seeing the semi-comatose gadget in my hand, which had been a lively companion just a few minutes back, I swallow the heartless jibes and set off to the service center with a heavy, but optimistic heart.

Problem one was tackled. The bigger problem now was getting a replacement phone till I got mine back. Unfortunately, I did not have any spare ones at hand and the only way of taking revenge at my son’s barbed comments was by getting him to lend his brand new blackberry (without a blackberry connection)… and grudgingly he did, especially since I had to travel for a few days and moreover since his exams are on, he is mostly at home these days with access to the landline. Sweet of him, you would say, but little did I know as to what I was getting into! I now had to account for every speck of dust which could be seen through a magnifying glass on his phone… and I also had to share my phone with him, the requirement of which could be at just about any unearthly hour of the day. Well, beggars can’t be choosers, as the saying goes…

This is only a small part of the story. Apart from the fact that I had become sort of handicapped due to the loss of all my contacts (for some mysterious reason, this blackberry phone refused to acknowledge the numbers and other data stored in my sim card), I realized I had got afflicted with another serious malady. I had heard about the withdrawal symptoms experienced by drug addicts and alcoholics. To my horror, I was experiencing something on those lines.  How would I live without accessing my Facebook account every 10 minutes? What would people think if I am not available online 24 hours a day on Gtalk? Oh my God! How will I talk with my skype contacts? How can I remain unconnected with my whatsapp and viber friends? How would I know the news, weather, and temperature of various parts of the world? Talk about panic buttons and alarm bells!!!

It has been two weeks since my ailing phone has been shifted to the ICU of another specialty service center, awaiting an organ transplant. Surprisingly, after the first few days of acute withdrawal symptoms, I find that life is not as bad as I thought. To my surprise, I realize that I am in touch with all my family and friends who matter; my various projects and work goes on without a hitch and I find that it is perfectly alright  if I am not an active part of the online community. But more importantly, I realize that I am not that important a person as I deemed myself to be and neither do I run this world.  I don’t have to be accessible to the whole world 24x7. And the greatest advantage of this revelation is that I have so much more time left on my hands which otherwise would have been spent in social networking sites unproductively, posting comments which don’t matter to people in the first place, reading and liking highly opinionated posts and going through umpteen number of inspirational quotes, status updates, pictures, and messages most of which, I doubt, makes little sense even to the person who has shared it…

I hope to get my mobile phone back in a few days time, but more than  that, I am hoping I would  be able to remember these precious lessons and consider the gadget as just an electronic device for my convenience and not something which I need to be dependent on for my survival…

“You have left my phone lying face down on the bed! What if it develops a scratch…?” There goes the monster of my son again... For once, I have to agree with the writing on his tee-shirt which goes “ Life was much easier when apple and blackberry were just fruits…”