Once when I was 10, I went to this hospital where the lights were pretty dim and nana wouldn’t let me read the Sherlock Holmes book I had brought with me. I was pretty bored and the book was exciting, so I just peeped in every now and then. And how blissful it felt, just to forget everything around you and just be in the world of the author. To forget the bully at your school, the friend who you just found out to be your backstabber, the parents who fight every other day and make your home hell, the teacher who beats you just to let her frustration out because her husband dislikes her because of the big mole on her lips.
Today, I am 20, I don’t carry my books with me and I don’t care about the lights being dim either. I have a magic thing in my pocket, actually in my hand most of the time. It’s smaller and lighter than my Sherlock Holmes book and even more magical… or so I have begun to think. It’s what people call a cell phone… or a mobile. I love my mobile more than any other of my possessions not because it’s cute or expensive but because of what it gives me 24/7 –it never lets me be alone. Hold on! oO... *Realization strikes*
Yes, it never lets me be alone in all senses possible. Everybody in the entire world has every right in the universe to inform me about things I wouldn’t wish to know about at that particular moment. Such as a teacher who upon getting an academic rush upon his clock striking 12 at night passes it down to the CR who delights us with the news of a quiz the very next day… hellO!
Second, it makes me an utterly irresponsible person in people’s sight if I don’t reply to their messages within an hour or so –‘wow, that was a quick reply’ is the sarcasm-filled response I get from people I reply to an hour later just because I fell asleep replying to their last message which inflicted me with utter boredom by its lameness. And man, I think I have much better things to do than to clutch that small black box like a kid who holds on to his teddy bear at moments of insecurity.
Third, it nullifies the whole purpose of a time-out kind of thing. E.g. I go get locked in my room to ‘get some fresh air’, after a while someone knocks, I ignore, pretending to be asleep, after a minute my cell rings –wth! What did u say; I should have turned it off before? Err, I don’t think I can use the same excuse of the battery running out or the phone being on silent every time!
Off course, the littler the little black box gets, the cooler it seems however, I think the cooler we think the box to be, the less cooler our lives become for various reasons, a tiny number of which I just mentioned above.
Indeed, it turns out to be a super saviour at many a needy times –I bet you can remember a dozen of them right now –when the little black box comes to the rescue but I think we need to rescue ourselves from depending a little too much upon its-little-black-boxness.
hmmm....sure...i'll rescue my self ...starting from tomorrow!!! ;)
ReplyDeleteI love it...its so true!!!!!! u have put my feelings into words!!!...why ppl expect me to carry my cell with me like u knw its life saving drug or wat!!
ReplyDeletesure, leaving the cell at home makes me feel like losing a limb!
ReplyDeletethere was this one time i had to go without my phone for around two days. this was a time when i was ADDICTED to the phone. not that i'm not addicted now, but there had come a point in my life when i could not FUNCTION without the black box cos it had all my notes and to-do lists and alarms and all. it died, and i was left helpless and utterly lost. but you know what, those two days were THE MOST peaceful days of my life. no tension about what alarm being on snooze for the 20th time, no tension about having received a text that i must respond to within the next fifteen minutes. it was bliss :D
ReplyDeleteyes, that bliss, mal, is simply inexplicably awesome.
ReplyDeletesadly, we can't really do widout our black boxes nemore.
LOL thats so true =D
ReplyDeletenicely written!
i think almost all of us can relate with what you've written.
ReplyDeleteit was a nice read :)