Jun 22, 2009
Strange are the ways of modern technology. You often believe that the gadget in your palm is there to make your life a bed of roses, a total breeze to let you zip through your day. But take a breather once in a while and reflect – our mobile phones are brimming with names and numbers, yet, how many of us care to really keep in touch with our loved ones?
Some month ago I read an interesting story in Archie comics. Veronica, the only daughter of a her stinking rich father, gets a new mobile phone, the only one in her middle-class gang of friends. While she’s still showing off, calls come in plenty. Not for her but for her friends Archie, Jughead, Betty and Reggie, each of their parents or friends calling up to ask favours. By and by everybody leaves and Veronica is left all alone. Moral of the story – the device helped her, not to get friends but to take them away. It was the beginning of isolation of the individual from the society.
Oh, we all know how it is – life is moving at such a break-neck speed that our friends and family must simply understand. But understand what – that we do not have five minutes out of the 24 hours for a person we love? That we cannot afford to lose time in talking without reason? Or more importantly, listening? The day still has 24 hours, but ironically, modernity has reached a stage where instead of leaving us with more spare time, it has only shortened the days and lengthened our woes. The workload has become such that whatever little time we get we prefer to spend with the present friends rather than catching up with old ones.
Just consider where mobile technology has reached today. Long, long ago (or was it just about a decade ago?) it was that marvellous device that was simply used as a portable phone making you accessible anytime, anywhere. Now, it is used for anything but calling. Games, pictures, music, internet, TV, radio, ask what you will and you have it on that little contraption they call mobile phone, or rather, a smart phone.
My own case, I have to admit, is such. For me my phone is more like a companion, a friend really, with which (or rather, with ‘whom’) I can play, browse the net and listen to music. There is no question of boredom when my phone’s around. Yet, like many, I hardly use it to call or even SMS. I have numbers of all my old friends, but other than silly forwards we hardly get to see our names in each others’ phones.
Of course, when I say all this, I do not take into account all those wonderful people for whom making calls is still the most important feature of a phone - most buyers today, especially the youth, look for the phone’s camera or music qualities rather than its network reception.
It is a similar case with social networking sites like Orkut. Your contact list is full of people who scripted your childhood and school life, yet, you remain as distant as strangers. Instead, you prefer to chat with actual strangers and after a time get bored even with them. Time was when letters were eagerly written and keenly awaited. When I look through some of the letters from my friends that I have preserved, I just wonder at the irony – I have the email ids and mobile numbers of those very friends, yet I kept in touch when I had neither. Writing a letter is more of an effort than sending an SMS, yet, somehow, it was easier to make time for writing letters.
Other than the usual excuse we give of the world being so much more competent and demanding, what reason could we give to this failure? Yes, it is a human failure, one among the many we have. One of the reasons could be, whether we like to admit it or not, that we tend to take people too much for granted. Your friend’s number is always there in your phone, there is always a tomorrow to call him/her up, so why bother calling up now? No, not now, when your favourite serial is about to start. And oh, you can always send a message through Orkut, but then you simply forget. Never mind, what’s the hurry anyway? Nobody’s expecting your message.
And moreover, it is common to think of some long lost friend or acquaintance having a hidden agenda for calling you up after so many years. Why would anyone call after five years just like that? That also becomes a reason not to call – he/she will surely think you are calling up to ask some favour, so better not call. For all you know, your friend might have even forgotten you.
(Now I don’t think Anil Ambani and Hrithik Roshan would agree with that, yet it is strange how Hrithik in the Reliance advertisement has numbers of his old friends even though 10 years have passed…hmm…was he simply waiting for Ambani to start Reliance GSM service to call them up? And could our own reasons for not keeping in touch be as flimsy?)
People just drift apart, the society becomes more individualistic day by day and each has to forever struggle for survival. Yet, in this struggle do not forget those who gave you a shoulder to cry on once upon a time or helped you climb over a wall that you just couldn’t reach. Grab that phone and call up. That is what I need to do.
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