I'm not ok. R u nt ok 2?

PUBLICATION: INDIAN EXPRESS
Citizen’s Diary -2006

Here is a list of reasons why mobile phones should be wiped out from the face of this earth:
You can’t even pee in peace because the phone’s ringing and you `have’ to take that call –your mind is conditioned.
You can’t even pee in peace without the caller asking, `Where are you? Are you in the loo?” For heaven’s sake, what’s your problem yaar! Why don’t you just get on with it?
It brings out the beast in you. Especially when you are watching Saif and Vidya Balan playing the piano in Parineeta and suddenly the pot-bellied stranger’s mobile rings and he (who’s already usurped your armrest) says, `Ah baba, I am in the theatre, watching Parineeta…no, no you tell me, I am not busy at all…” BUT I AM. I am watching a movie and do you mind? You suddenly feel this urge to be Tom and Jerry and want to squish the pot-bellied stranger’s head right into the piano and watch the notes play on his head!
When your are ill your friends don’t send flowers but an sms -“Hw r u feelin?” Miserable, of course. Miffed at the impersonal attitude you don’t reply.
When your friends are ill, you don’t call but send an sms, “R u feelin ok?” And you feel miserable when they don’t reply.
You wish SMS hadn’t been invented at all, then you wouldn’t have made a fool of yourself by sending a loooong text msg proposal to that dishy guy who stole your heart only to receive a reply -`Sry, bt Im nt rdy. Bt tks anwy’. Face to face conversations always comes with in-built censorship based on common sense unlike text msgs. And you will instantly know that a guy who spells `Sorry’ as `Sry’ is just not worth the effort.
You have lost the art of communication, thanks to text messaging. You have been reduced to a mumbling Marlon Brando in God Father (at least he mumbled full sentences).
You realize you are getting on with age when it becomes increasingly difficult to decipher msgs like: Am, fln g8 or u r stpd or wtn 4u
You realize you are digressing when your written communications consist of words like rply, msg, tmrw, g8 mtng u…
During a busy day you take time off to wonder whether your burning auditory nerves has any connection to the news report that you read the previous day -`Constant use of mobile phones might cause cancer of the auditory nerves’.
At a lunch meeting you and your friend talk –not to each other though but to the little thingys that’s attached to your palms!
Your date spends more time looking at the mobile than at you –he’s waiting for that important call, you see!
The car in front of you is swaying and you think the guy at the wheel is having a heart attack. Not at all, he is simbly talking on his mobile, giving you a heart attack.
Above all I want mobiles to be banned because I am driven over the brink with Tom, Dick and Harry and Gita, Sita and Mita calling me constantly and harassing me to accept their free offers of credit cards, mobile cards, housing loans, car loans and other assorted loans! Don’t call me, unless you want to offer me George Clooney gift-wrapped!

For all the above reasons and more I want the mobile phones banished from this earth. But then I realize that the little silver box in my hand has also salvaged many situations in life. Like when my mother called me in the middle of the day, when I was miles away from home, to tell me that she wasn’t feeling “too well” and wanted to say “Good bye”. Thanks to my phone I was able to call for help quickly. Seeing my mobile in the car seat next to me gives me a strange sense of confidence and security especially when I am driving back home, alone in the middle of the night. It is at times like these that you realize that technology is a double-edged sword. You gain from it when it improves your quality of life and when you don’t allow yourself to be dictated by it. No other gadget has had people dancing to its tunes like the mobile phones. We have allowed ourselves to be ruled by it. It has made us more aggressive, insensitive, and impatient and above all ISOLATED! Think about it and you will realize how we have allowed ourselves to be isolated by a gadget that is meant to connect people! We have only ourselves to blame. Any one who is incapable of using technology responsibly has no right to use it at all.