Guest 5 - Meet Akshay

Hello Everyone!!

Haven't done a guest post for long time here. So here is my blog dost Akshay Iyer of Reflections of Passions. He is a journalist from Mumbai with a passion for photography and history and has a crazy love for trains. We came to know each other through my blog and we are friends since. :)

Check out his blog for some awesome facts about Mumbai that you never knew,some unknown places and treasures that he and his camera have spotted.

Without further much a do, lets get to what he has to share-

Hang Up:

I was recently attending a panel discussion on media regulation and censorship and the crowd consisted of youngsters and a few grown-ups. We were eating, chatting and generally having a good time except for one of us who spent all his checking his mobile phone messages and then typing out long replies and completely ignored one key member who was seated opposite him who was trying to conduct a conversation.

This man kept testing my patience for nearly an hour and when I couldn’t resist keeping quiet and he began tapping out a message even as another friend was in the middle of telling an interesting story, I piped up indignantly: “I am sorry, but clearly the people you are messaging are more interesting than all of us right here. Perhaps, you should be having with them instead!” To his credit, the gentleman was suitably abashed at being called out on his behaviour. He turned a deep red and muttered unconvincingly about how it was his daughter on the phone. He then put his mobile phone ostentatiously, promising that he would not check it again in the course of the evening. Yet, when he thought nobody was looking, I caught him checking out the display surreptitiously, to make sure that he hadn’t missed on any calls or SMSes.

My irritation—and that of my friends notwithstanding—in the cold light of the day, I have to admit that none of us can afford to be overly judgmental about these things. I am the first to confess that I am as much as sinned against as sinning. In fact, it was only a week ago that an old friend, whom I was meeting for lunch after nearly three years, accused me of being a mobile phone addict because I kept checking on the delivery of some urgent SMSes that I had to send out. So, I guess I shouldn’t be holding forth about the trespasses of others. Honestly, I just cannot resist certain things.

Come to think of it, what is it about mobile phones and us? Why are we always looking at them anxiously, worried that we may have missed an important call during the nanosecond when we weren’t looking? Why do we seem unable to disconnect? Why can we never switch off the phone completely? Why have we developed such a symbiotic relationship with our phones that we appear unable to exist without them? Why are we so addicted to our phones that we suffer from withdrawal symptoms on the rare occasion when we part from them?

I still remember the feeling of utter helplessness that engulfed me a few months back when I lost my phone while trying to board a bus. It felt as if I had been disconnected completely from life itself. Nobody knew how to get in touch with me for nearly a week though my friends had my name on e-mail and Facebook. Going by the extinct concept of phone books, I didn’t know how to call anyone. After casting about desperately, I was reduced to e-mailing people to send me their numbers. All the time I was in agony, fretting about the fact that I didn’t have access to the radio, music and all the important calls I was undoubtedly missing, convinced that there must be some work or family emergency when I had been rendered incommunicado.

So, please do not get me wrong. I do understand just how important mobile phones are to us. You can call the airport from the car to check on the flight status. You can keep tabs on kids these days no matter where they are. In a medical emergency or in case of an accident, you don’t have to go around looking for a phone booth to summon help. Our parents can get in touch with us at all times and after a late night out as you take a taxi home, it is a reassuring feeling to have a mobile phone in your wallet or pocket so that you can call a friend if anything untoward happens.

I know all this, yet the tyranny of mobile phones is beginning to get me miffed. Is it really necessary to take calls when we are in the midst of an important business meeting? Do you have a loud conversation on the mobile in a restaurant where everyone else is trying to have a quiet meal? Must the loud ring of your phone disturb everyone else in cinemas, at the theatre or a book reading session? Can we not switch off our phones even when we go visiting a sick friend in the hospital?

I am sure that life did go on before the mobile phone was invented. We managed to catch flights on time, make restaurant reservations, keep in touch with family and friends, even checked our e-mails long before the mobile phone became an essential tool of modern life. So, why do people act as if they cannot figure out how we ever coped in its absence? After all, it was only a decade ago we managed perfectly well without it. Could we really have become so dependent in such a short passage of time?

I guess the short answer to the above question is yes. Sometimes, it does make sense to do without something you feel is essential to your life—if only to prove to yourself that you can. Maybe, it is time to ditch the mobile phone for an hour at a time. I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to go cold turkey just yet. I’m guessing nor are you. What do you say?