Cell-ing Dreams

For a student who vehemently refused to use a cell phone, our writer comes away appreciative of it, finally

NISHANTH S CONTOOR

Everything has a first time!It was something that I had decided never to do. I did not want it at all. How could you? I had asked myself. Having been taught to stand above the crowd, how could I be in the crowd today?

Yes, that fateful day had arrived. I was given a cell phone. I could see it staring at me from my palm. Black, with a silver border and a flip which lit the background light, brightening the screen, every time I opened it.

I was told to put it in vibration mode for the ring tone irritated many people around. I did not understand. It was just a tune of a Christmas carol in the month of February, that’s all.

I would carry it in my pocket everywhere. Another responsibility, like we teenagers had any less!

My life suddenly changed from that day onwards. No more peace of mind. Every time you thought that you could give full concentration to a task at hand, you would get a phone call, thus keeping you busy for the next few minutes. And on top of that, people trying to sell products when I did not understand how ‘a’ miraculously became equal to ‘b’ in Calculus. Not being able to sit without moving restlessly (Recall that vibration mode. Each time a call came, that phone vibrated in my pocket as if somebody just gave me an electric shock), I had one roller coaster ride.

Be it exam time or otherwise, day in and day out, it was the same story. I wondered how people felt incomplete without their cell phones. How they felt that something was missing if they did not have it in their palms when I felt something extra was suddenly added to me, pulling me down to the ground and tying me to it while I had been free as a bird all the 18 years of my life.

But then, one noble friend of mine gave a some noble gyaan. “It’s all in your mind,” she said. “Start by keeping it in your bag and then slowly keep it in your palm when you get used to it,” was her advice. And I thought it wasn’t a bad idea, after all.

But alas, it did not work at all. I had finally decided that this pest had to go. I could not tolerate this torture and harassment any more.When the time had come for it all to end and the return of that peace that I was waiting for all this time, this person calls up from the radio to tell me that I had won a goody bag and also puts me on air! It was that message I had sent the other day, you see.

Then I stared at my phone. It had done me good in spite of all the things I had said against it. I clenched my phone tightly in my hands, never to let go of it ever again