Mera Phone ka balatkar

I have a problem with phones. Sometimes I want to flush it down the toilet. Sometimes I want to leave it at home. Sometimes I even put it on flight mode. Why? Because its constantly following me, i have to answer when it rings, reply when it beeps and keep checking whether its been flicked from me on the public bus.One day I left it behind . It felt like freedom. The next day, I got lost.

I miss those days. Those days when only one out of 100 people had a mobile phone. It resembled a large box-like phone with a long antenna. People who used these were either businessmen or real rich guys. We all used to ogle at the advanced technology.

Ask anyone a list of things that they cannot live without, invariably 90 percent would mention the mobile phone. However, the mobile phone has long outrun what it was actually built for – making calls. All of you owning ancient models which don’t have cameras, wifi and internet settings must have endured enough looks of disdain from the smartphone owners(No, radio does not mean yours is a smartphone)

Coming back to the point, making calls is the least used feature in the phone.  You browse the news, send an email or text a friend. Why waste money on a call when everything can be done without a hint of human contact. Just like Sibal condemned Free speech and the court accused Facebook and Google of not filtering its content, the Govt went ahead with another god-forsaken idea of having a limit on the number of SMSes one can send in a day.

I cursed and cursed. Not that it matters to me. I don’t even text a lot. But now I don’t get to know that a class is going on until half an hour into the session. That, my friends ,is the point of no return. No teacher is going to let you in and neither will he/she believe a ridiculous thing that you weren’t informed about it because your rep( student leader)  exhausted her last sms for the day.

In some ways this regulation is like a knight in shining armour.

Before TRAI, I used to get a minimum of 5 “Good morning “ texts in a variety of styles. Do they send this CWOT( Clear Waste of Time) texts to everyone in their contacts or just me? I think it’s the former rather than the latter so its not going to be the end of the world if I don’t respond likewise. 

Btw, Im a horrid conversationalist.  I cannot prolong a conversation with a cute guy even if you begged me to. I will send the occasional “Hey” and “Whazzzups “ but that’s as far as I can go. If I don’t continue the conversation, its more likely because I DON’T know what else to say. That does not allow you to bombard me with “What else? “ and “What did you have for dinner?” because frankly I know you really don’t care whether I had squid,chicken or a whole cow .

After “Whatever” and “What else?”  the most annoying texts that one can receive is the letter “K”. I would have taken the pains to detail out a beautiful plan for the weekend ,where to eat ,what to wear,how much cash to bring and most importantly who else is coming. And you reply with a single letter K  as though you are Aamir Khan and doing me a huge favour by even replying. Save the act,mister.

Whoever created smileys would never have known that one day the entire SMSing generation will be misusing it right,left and bang on. He should have patented it, could have been a rich man by now.

If you didn’t think smileys made much of a difference ,think again.

Have you ever sent a msg without a smiley that got misunderstood for something else just because you forgot that one smiley?

Like this.

“Shut up and never talk to me again !!!” could be the starting of a big fight

                whereas
“Shut up and never talk to me again !!!” could save your life

What I learnt – If you are kidding about anything, put atleast 1 smiley and a LOL ,ROFL or LMAO ( they’ve lost their true meaning ages ago. Just fillers for conversations “What are you doing?” “Lol reading a book”. Whats so funny about reading a book? ) just to make the point clear. Not many understand sarcasm or jokes in texts. So might as well make it spell it out for them so that you don’t spend your next 10 minutes explaining that your previous message wasn't an insult.

Im not an old woman with the phone around my neck in a pouch. Neither am I continuously staring at my phone waiting for your reply.  So if I don’t reply ,it’s because I am a)BUSY b) BUSY c)BUSY.  Okay I’m not at that level of busy-ness but if I could reply, I would.

I don’t know if this kinda texting is regional but whats with the “Hmmmmmmmmmmm”. Do I reply with another “Hmmmmmmmmmmm” with more m’s. Or are you are humming a tune?
 No ,wait. You don’t know what else to use as filler? Send an OK  or rather, don’t reply . That would do.

Keeping with the fact that texting is just words on a screen, its pretty hard to figure out if the person on the other end is serious, sincere,joking or playing a prank on you with a bunch of jobless friends (been there,done that), my advice is to do all the serious talk by making a call or even better , a face-to-face conversation.

This smsing is a talent I just don’t understand. 

JKL