Life in the cell phone age

The evening was as balmy as you could ask for in Chennai before summer sets in with its full fury. The colonial architecture of the club house formed a suitable backdrop to the lawn on which dined out the members and guests of one of the best pedigreed clubs in town.

The gin and soda, adequately chilled with dollops of ice, went down exceedingly well and all seemed right with the world.

Except for the not-at-all-old couple at the table nearby. They also were pretty much OK except they barely talked to each other. The lady seemed endlessly on her cell phone, which seemed unfortunate but not at all exceptional, but what was decidedly so was that the gentleman with her didn't seem to mind.

He smiled contently to himself and occasionally said something in response to what the lady was saying on her phone.

On the couple of occasions his cell phone rang, he walked over to a corner of the lawn to complete his conversation. Thus went their entire evening in which they barely uttered a dozen sentences to each other but between themselves spent 90 pr cent of their time speaking into cell phones.

And they seemed a happy couple communicating well with each other.

The park where I walk in the morning is next to a management institute whose classes begin rather early and the youngsters who wish to spend a personal moment with each other come earlier before classes to the park and occupy many of the benches.

The other day I found one of them snuggling a little closer than was permitted by the unstated social norm of the neighbourhood and whispering what would have been sweet-nothings in an earlier era.

But as I got closer and passed them I realised what they were really up to. They were sharing ear plugs to a cell phone and conversing into it happily, thus making it a threesome with the person at the other end of the wireless connection.

No need for them to quietly grope for the other's hand before shifting closer on the park bench. It was the cell phone that was bringing them together, without effort or clumsiness - seamlessly.

An entirely new era of human interaction is upon us and its defining and driving spirit is the wireless handset. The day begins with the alarm clock going off, as it has for long, but that alarm is set off by the cell phone. Naturally, it does matter up to a point who you get to bed with, but the must on which there can be no compromise is your cell phone.

To verify my hunch that a significant social change was well on the way, I consulted our college-going daughter who is in Delhi and she was ready with loads of examples of how the cell phone was an absolute must, whatever else there may or may not be in a young girl's life.

There apparently is a new way to get rid of a boy who has overstayed his welcome. Let an innocuous call come in and the girl jumps up and says into it: Oh, don't tell me, that's bad, I will be over right away. By which time the caller has, of course, realised that this is to get rid of the fellow around.

While this is innovative, the prize must go to a friend of hers who has solved the problem of misplacing her room keys. She has attached them to her cell phone. When both are missing, call from another cell phone and let the ring guide you to the chhupa Rustom.

Momentous and heartwarming news is on hand for parents who do not know how
to get their child to go off nail-biting. Don't worry, it will end as soon as your child will have a cell phone in hand to remain preoccupied with.

In fact, courtesy the handset, we may be seeing the end of fidgeting, people not knowing what to do with themselves when they have nothing to do or must wait for something.

And when non-nail-biting youngsters go on their first few dates, they will not be tongue-tied and clumsy. At any given moment when someone does not know how to keep the conversation going, the cell phone will come to the rescue, by way of a call coming in or suddenly remembering that a call must immediately be made.

This brings me to what is even more serious for the future of human society. First, e-mail killed the art of letter-writing. Now the cell phone has ended boredom and solitude. You are never alone, never at a loss for not knowing what to do, so long as you have your cell phone next to you, with an active connection, pre- or post-paid.

So how will this generation and the next discover themselves if they have no occasion to sit and stare?