My cell wants to speak

A few days back my daughter sent a message on my WhatsApp with this text, 'Amma there is a missed call at 4 am, I am worried, extremely sorry for not picking up, had late night assignment, let me know your welfare, I called you up. You didn't pick up'. I checked my calls and saw the missed call. I was shocked and surprised. I had not called her up that too during those unearthly hours when all was well at the home front. It's natural for the children to get worried about their old parents living away from them in a different city. I had no clue how the call went and that too a WhatsApp call. I never go to sleep with my phone next to me fearing uninvited explosions. The phone was untouched in a quiet room. How it had bypassed the screen lock and dialed a number all by itself was an unsolved mystery. But the missed call was recorded in my call logs.

Needless to say, I had my head ripped off. This happened with me earlier too on a few occasions. People call me back apologizing for not responding to my call. Sometimes the calls were shown sometimes not. I felt ghost calls were often the result of automated port scanning, a bit like jiggling a bunch of door knobs to see which doors were locked. Hence, I embarked on detective work and found out that I was not special and it happened with many people. Their android phone made calls on its own to have a 'heart to heart talk', with another cell and to vent out 'his or her' feelings and emotions. Also, I read, mobiles felt happy when used with respect, love and affection they deserved and tend to work efficiently for years together. They worked slow when you put lot of work load on them, they get drained faster and sleep if you don't take care of them, sarcasm to be taken lightly as it is dark humor.

We all know that phones are incapable of making calls on their own. So, I sought Google aunty's help. She told me that there could be many reasons behind this, such as—someone playing a prank on you, you have been hacked, malware an issue for random calls. This can be the work of scammers while they are copying or cloning the numbers. I wondered why all of us became prisoners to this necessity. May be that is the reason they are called 'cells.' What started as a luxury was reduced to necessity irrespective of the status and position of the owner. Once upon a time having a land line connection was a status symbol. But now nobody wants it. Telecommunications in India had come a long way since 1995. 26 years back the first mobile call was made in India costing over Rs 8/a minute and the cost went up during peak hours. The erstwhile Telecom Minister Sukh Ram and the then Chief minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu were the first two individuals to establish mobile phone call in India. This changed the way we communicate forever and ushered in a communication revolution in India.

The initial instrument was thought to be sensitive, unpredictable and beyond repair. Neither we had trained technicians nor anyone understood the mechanics of the instrument. All adopted trial and error method. The phones were not affordable and were not within the reach of common man. The earliest phones had basic features to give you silent call alerts, ability to read 3 lines of text at one time, the then latest SMS service and user friendly, keypad.

My first cell phone was born out of circumstantial emergency when we were in Dehra Doon, where we spent 35 years of our precious life. We were living in Raipur away from the city. To reach my work place and back home I had to drive 16 kms. Dehra Doon is a valley surrounded by Shivalik Hills, a mountain range of the outer Himalayas. Whenever it rained heavily in the hills and in the city, Dehra Doon bore the impact as the streets got flooded. Once I got caught when I was barely half a kilometer from my house. I could neither proceed further nor could go back. The water current was very strong and the stream was capable of bumping and pushing the vehicle. It had a high velocity. I was stranded on a slightly elevated hilly road with a steep slope and water pushing my vehicle from all sides. I could not go down the hill as the flow and pressure would be more there. Could not think of getting any help under those conditions. Luckily the intensity stopped after 15 minutes as it happens in most hilly areas and I survived the onslaught of rain. The same day evening I became the proud owner of a mobile phone which was sparingly used. Getting it recharged was not that easy in the beginning as it was not easily available anywhere and everywhere.

Drastic changes have taken place in both the net working of wireless communication and the prevalence of its use, with smart phones becoming common globally and growing proportion of internet access done via broadband. People have become prisoners of their own phones. A smart phone is an addictive device which traps a soul into a lifeless planet full of lives. The cell phone is a device used for communication, a necessity that the world cannot picture itself without. Recently my maid lost her phone while travelling in a shared auto and my watchman dropped his, in water. Both of them were restless and lost cases in many ways and both were on the verge of getting, "nomophobia", fear of being without a mobile phone. It looked like my lifeline too was cut off as reaching them was impossible. I could not imagine my life running with halts and breaks. The next best thing was getting them two mobiles, with basic features, online, to save myself from agony.

Calculators, wristwatches, shopping, rummaging through Newspapers, magazines, looking for land marks while searching for a place, postal department partly is all outdated.

Alexander Graham Bell predicted and said 'There will come a day when the man at the telephone will be able to see that distant person to whom he is speaking. What a prediction! This feature proved a boon to humanity during the pandemic which brought the families together into a small frame otherwise being separated from their kith and kin.

We are living in a generation where people live in a free atmosphere 'live in relationship', but are not allowed to touch each other's smart phones because they are private. I still cannot understand why it is called a smart phone. 'I'll call it a smart phone the day I yell "where's my phone?!"and it yells "Down here! In the couch cushions!"