Like everyday Suman got up in the morning at her usual time. But the very first thing she would do post washing her heavy red eyes and face was to check her Facebook wall and the notifications if any. This has been the custom of her life for two years now, and that morning as well the custom was followed with complete sincerity. However, something inside had grown weary of this practice.
She browsed her Facebook wall. The first update was her neighbours status. Eee!!! OMG Awesome weather, wow, loving it..:*, 4 likes and 2 comments and that is how she came to know that the weather outside was actually very pleasant. The neighbour was a forty year old man by the way. She scrolled further, there was a picture of an infant on ventilator, in a hopeless condition and beneath it, it was so written:1 like= 1 prayer, 1 comment= 1 help, 1 share= child’s life. 12,000 likes, 15,000 comments, 40,000 shares. “ Fools, do they really think that a like, a comment or a share can save the kid’s life, he might as well be dead by the time likes cross a 20. Why do people post such stuff at first place?” She scrolled further and found a picture washed in sepia colour shared on the wall via Instagram, it was a full view of a girls face, with an abnormal pout. The description above was as if for the people who miserably fail to understand English grammar. It so read:
Bombay#Starbucks#Awesometimes#Nostalgia.
Suman reasoned that what she might have meant was that, that she had been to Bombay, Starbucks in particular after a very long time and she was feeling great and nostalgic about it having made memories there. Only if somebody could have told it to Suman, as to where was Bombay or Starbucks, even nostalgia in that picture, those hash tags looked lovely. Yes, they felt as if a man was gasping for breath or was drowning before letting those words out. All that was there in the picture was nothing but a duck face uploaded to get likes and comments. If that was not enough there was a watermark at the bottom right corner of the picture in Calibiri font, Ranjith Silva Photography, as if he had captured some rare scenic beauty thrown open in a valley. Nevertheless, Suman thought that Ranjith must have been real proud of his photography and wondered whether he and his DSLR ever went beyond clicking pictures of girls for their FB and Instagram uploads. Way to go Ranjith. 220 likes, 111 comments, already.
Her 12 year old cousin had put up a status, “I need a man who makes me smile forever and tells me I am his princess.” The prelude to her cousin’s update read Ayesha Singh is feeling lonely . Suman scoffed at it and spoke, “ Yeah. Why not Ayesha? Maybe you can go and finish your homework first and then you can watch some cartoons on TV.”
Ping!!! A notification flashed on the screen and Suman disinterestedly clicked to see who else was so bright as to check his FB account, first thing in the morning. Somebody had sent her a candy crush request. Another notification, somebody had tagged Suman and 150 others in his own selfie
and shared it on his own wall, just now, 5 likes and 6 comments. Suman who had 1713 friends on her account immediately untagged herself. Fed up and vexed she shut her notebook down. She stole a glance at the screen of her smart phone, it was a Sunday and only 8 in the morning, she decided to go back to sleep, when all of a sudden her phone went Ding!! Ding!! Ding!! A hundred times. 15 messages on WhatsApp, 10 on Viber, 5 on Hike. How much on earth did she chat?!! Do these people every sleep? She put her phone on silent and then she stretched herself on her bed and pondered looking at the white ceiling of her room. She saw it as a revelation to herself that people are more bound by their cells, notebooks and the internet than each other, even their emotions are now
conveyed through emoticons more than their own voices, which are meant for the errand.
What panic one feels today when his or her cell phone loses network, or ceases to work! How irritable we grow when we get no access to the internet and life as if comes to a standstill. The 20 year old Suman deduced that it was wrong to believe that internet is a utility while in fact we are forever slaves to it. People did live normal life before its advent too. The very thought suffocated her and she decided that, that Sunday her smart phone is not going to decide the course of her life. So, for one day Suman decided to switch off her cell phone and go ahead with the rest of the day. It was not easy, within 5 minutes a compelling need to find out who called or who messaged, if anyone did, started to engulf her. A feeling of abandonment and isolation came over her, but she resolved to stick
to her decision and headed out of her 1 BHK for the streets in the neighbourhood. As she walked towards the nearest CCD, she realised that in the absence of any distraction her eyes observed the milieu around her more proficiently, while at other occasions her eyes had been buried in the screen in pursuit of communication. This too was a sort of communication, sauntering past the chirping birds settling on the wires, watching the foliage of the neighbourhood trees rustling with the breeze, hearing
the sound of morning wind fusing gently into the ears, observing the plain and simple houses around and telling to oneself something or the other in the head. This is a communication we might not want but we all need once in a while.
Suman reached the coffee shop and ordered a warm cup of mocha Cappuccino. She took to a table, a yard or two away from which was another table. On that another table sat three friends, they looked like, but each with a cell phone and each pair of hands texting incessantly, the world around them didn’t seem to exist not even each other. Suman was reminded of her own time with friends, where something similar took place on most occasions. “ This is what the hangouts have come down to.”
She murmured to herself. A couple too who had just joined the adjacent table took to similar practice and a moment later she realised that shop was nearing silence despite being replete with people. She left the coffee shop in utter dismay, whatever happened to in person conversations. “ Zombies, all of them.” She decided to call her friends and her hand reached for the pocket of her tracks as if in a reflex, only to realize that today she had decided to leave her cell phone in her room. Yes, her cell phone would always be the most important thing to carry out half the things she plans to do, she realised and then went for a long walk thereafter. It occurred to her that her parents might have called too and they might be worried if her phone remains switched off for too long, but then she brushed it
off thinking that her experiment with herself was only for one day and she would tell them about it if they happened to be very anxious about her being out of contact. She thought that every person must do this to himself once in a few days if the risk of losing out on important errands is not too high, but then important means different things to different people.She was tired when she came back and sleep got the better of her. In the evening when she woke up, she found that she had forgotten to switch on her cell phone and when she did, it was over flowing with notifications more than ever. “ This is just sad.” She told herself, “ but somewhat important.” She added as an afterthought. Deep within she was a little relieved to have her phone back in her hands , feeling reconnected with the world, and found that however much the internet or social media is replete with stupidity and dumb headed users, however virtual it had made our lives, there is truly no getting away from it or living without it, we need it to exist. There is nothing much one can do about such predicament but can at best try reaching out for the real and visible world of people and places, of trees and winds, whenever the opportunity presents itself. With a most pensive frame of mind Suman, updated a status on her wall
What a generation of fools are we!!
Ironically there were users who liked this status too.
