Mobile Phones
Blessing or Menace?
by Ashfaque Choudhury
Tring , tring sorry sorry , thats not the ring tone of mobile phones anymore. Its either a piece of music, a part of a song, or even some ones recorded voice. After swiping the screen with a few gestures, the best part follows. The part where one answers the phone. Whether or not the person on the other end can hear or not, each and every one around the person answering the phone can hear the whole conversation. People say hello in such a way that it seems as if this `Hello` is the last word in this world and it is not enough to just say hello, but yell Hellooooooooo!!
Many a times when we get a call from an unknown (wrong) number, the first line we hear after hello is: Who are you?? Which place is that??? Who am I? Well, you are the one who called! And why do you need to know where your errant call has landed in? Whats the point of that? What would you do after knowing my name or the place where I am? I will never understand.
A few days back, I was invited to a house for dinner. For the best part of that dinner, I could only see the hosts head _ he was so busy with Facebook that I could just see the top of his head. If I had stayed there longer, I am sure I would have been able to count the strands of hair on his head! At the end of dinner, throughout which we, the guests, were totally ignored, we all took selfies or groupies or something like that. And then the host posted them on FB, and on the caption he wrote: Thoroughly enjoyed the dinner, meeting up with all friends after such a long time. Well I could only see his head, so I guess I will have to learn to converse with heads from now on, otherwise, I dont think I will be able to savour any polite dinner conversation in the near future.
The best and the fun part of that dinner party was when his wife came in with the food. Even before she could open her mouth and ask us to help ourselves _ he shoved the dishes away and then started taking pictures of the items! And then with the same ritual, he posted the photos with a caption: yummy food! Oh Lord..how would you know its tasty? Taste it first!
On another topic, mobile phone sets these days are becoming so big that soon we will have to hire assistants to carry our phones. The one thing it was most needed for _ calling someone _ has vanished into thin air. No one calls, no one cares about calling anymore, its always used for texting or surfing the net. While doing so, we are destroying our relationships in the real world. The digital world has become so important to us now that we tend to ignore real people, and forget our manners.
Stop please have food and then write Yummy, stop inviting people over if you are only willing to make them see the top of your head. And stop asking who, or where, I am _ just take a good look before you dial, or rather, poke those numbers on the screen.
It is high time now for us to understand the fact that mobile phones were created by human beings, and not the other way around. So, stop giving more importance to our creation, and start showing some respect to us humans.
