Cellphones And Their Users

“Daddy, I want a new cellphone,” an eight year old kid demands his decently rich dad. “But son, you had recently bought one,” contends his decently rich dad. “The latest model that arrived in the market yesterday has a 10 megapixels camera. Moreover, I bought my last phone six months ago,” he says with all his effort to make six months sound like six decades. “OK, we will get a new one tomorrow. And give this old one to our gardener’s son. He was also saying the other day that he had got bored with his cellphone. And he wants the one with MS Office.” World in 2009.

Mobiles phones are as basic a necessity for the younger generation as controversies to Rakhi Sawant. If you don’t own a cellphone, the general notion would be that you are a son/daughter of an unemployed or something. His family conditions must be really miserable. He can’t even afford a mobile, you would hear someone saying. And if you don’t know about the latest trends, you are tagged ancient. You haven’t even heard about Nokia N60? You must be living in Stone Age, you will inevitably be informed with raised eyebrows.

For most people, buying their first cellphone brings a delight with itself that can only be compared to Bill Gates handing over his empire to you. As soon as the phone is bought, the urge of letting others know that you have actually got a new cellphone takes over. The easiest way goes something like this. You go to one of your pals who seems relatively free and talk to him for a couple of minutes, bring out your cellphone, (pretend to) watch the time and say—Oh God, I am late again. I am doomed. I will call you later. Hey I have lost your phone number. Give me your number again.” “Nice cellphone,” he would invariably say despite knowing that you would never call him. You are delighted. Mission right on track!! As long as he keeps mentioning that your cellphone looks cool, you don’t mind him calling you the ugliest creature in the world. “Thanks, bought it yesterday only.” Then you go on talking about all the features it has got. Fifteen minutes pass by. The guy in front looks anything but involved. You sense that. Now that your mission is accomplished, you tighten your tie, keep the phone in your pocket and leave in hunt of another soul who would call your cellphone great. After a week or so, everyone in your family, office and friend circle gets to know that you have got a new cellphone. Meanwhile, one of your friends apprizes you that a new phone with superior features has been launched. Now the cellphone no longer remains new to you!! Can I afford to buy a new one, your cellphone-obsessed-mind thinks. Next day, you stand in front of some cellphone showroom and ask yourself the same question. The next salary-day isn't very far away, you remind yourself.

Now a days, it's difficult to guess whether a cellphone includes camera or is it the other way round. A cellphone is now a multipurpose device---camera with all sorts of zooming facilities, FM radio, mp3 player, MS Office, palmtop and yes, I almost forgot to mention that it includes a phone as well!! The level of facility of course, depends upon the depth of your pocket, with the facility to call others being the minimum one. Wonderful. Sounds like magic. To me, at least!

There are guys who know almost everything about cellphones—the latest models, models introduced in US but yet to arrive in India, their elusive features, their prices, their reliability, their battery life—virtually everything. Living cellphone encyclopedia, in short. And you can find such guys everywhere. They might possess the most ancient cellphones but dare not question their knowledge in this particular field. If one is about to buy a cellphone, he need not surf the sites or decide right at the cellphone shop. He just needs to meet one of those guys and give him the price range. The living encyclopedia would put his index finger on his chin, look towards the window pane, calculate something in his mind and then tell you--- Nokia xxxx is your best deal. You can trust his divine words blindly, go to the shop, ask for Nokia xxxx and come back gladly. No site-surfing, no decision-making! What more—such guys are always ready to company you to the cellphone shop. Angels, they are.

My cellphone is my lifeline, people are often heard saying. They just can’t imagine taking their hands off their phones. They might be right in front of their homes but they would still call their moms and say—‘yes mom, I am coming. I hope my food is ready.’ Some of the cellphone users have lots of money in their wallet (may be in their dads’ wallet) and they would participate in every contest that needs sending an option by sms. By the end of the day, they discover that they have sent 50-odd messages with no success in those contests. And there are people who call their mates whom they had talked in person 15 minutes ago and usually the chat goes on till eternity as if they hadn't talked to each other for centuries. And there are few (like me) who keep cellphones just because they are asked to. They don’t actually need them but they use them as clocks. Yes, clocks!! They often forget to carry their cellphones with themselves, put their phones in silent mode while going to sleep and calls they miss embarrassingly outnumbers those they attend. Someone calls to one such person and says—hi, what’s up? And the inevitable reply is something like—“Nothing’s up, everything is down. Come to the point. Why did you call?” These are the kind of people whose phone bills struggle to cross Rs. 100 mark per month. Telecommunication service providers try their best to allure such people to use their cellphones more often but they just refuse to talk. For them, cellphones are strictly SOS messaging protocol. When one of such persons (read: Abhieshek) goes to pay his sub-Rs100 bill at the service provider’s office (in case, it’s post paid), the bill collector almost bursts into laughter and is tempted to ask—‘How much did you actually spend to reach our office? I reckon it was threateningly close to your monthly bill. Wasn’t it?’ Thank God, the bill collectors are polite and understanding enough to refrain themselves from asking such mortifying questions. I love bill collectors!!

Yaad Nahin Main Yaad Nahin

zameen nahin, main aasmaan nahin
tinkaa nahin, main jahaan nahin

khush nahin, main khafaa nahin
dariya nahin, main hawaa nahin

jeet nahin, main haar nahin
nafrat nahin, main pyaar nahin

prashna nahin, main hal nahin
vada nahin, main chhal nahin

dur nahin, main paas nahin
dhadkan nahin, main saans nahin

mook nahin, main awaz nahin
zaahir nahin, main raaz nahin

jal nahin, main aag nahin
sur nahin, main raag nahin

jalaa nahin, main bujha nahin
ujdaa nahin, main sajaa nahin

kundan nahin, main kaath nahin
dhan nahin, main raakh nahin

jashn nahin, main shok nahin
mukt nahin, main rok nahin

manzil nahin, main raah nahin
hassi nahin, main aah nahin

behosh nahin, main ehsaas nahin
zinda nahin, main laash nahin

chalaa nahin, main thamaa nahin
prithak nahin, main ramaa nahin

ujala nahin, main raat nahin
tanha nahin, main saath nahin

bas ek pal mein simta hoon
aur fir, yaad nahin, main yaad nahin...

Lost In Colors

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”—Juliet says Romeo in Shakespeare’s arguably the most famous play, Romeo and Juliet. Had Shakespeare’s soul not departed for some romantic sessions with beautiful angels somewhere in the heaven above, today—in 2006--he would have certainly acknowledged the importance of names. Names of different shades of colors, in particular.

People have time and again made me believe that I am hopeless when it comes to distinguishing subtle variations in colors. Wait a minute. You are not assuming me to be color blind, are you? To clear the fog, let me tell you that I can perfectly distinguish black from white. OK, OK, I know even the color blinds can do that. (I was just testing your general knowledge for a change.) But I can even distinguish red from green and blue from yellow. See, now you know that my eyes haven’t deteriorated a bit. Though it’s a different matter altogether that I find it difficult to differentiate between Sky Blue and Persian Blue.

“I like this red color of you sweater. It’s my favorite color,” I told one of my female friends over a cup of coffee. I didn’t know I was asking for trouble. I should have rather said—“I like this color of your sweater. It’s my favorite color.” (Almost) Everybody knows how particular females are about colors. Sadly, I had never come across any such universal fact. “It’s not red, it’s Crimson,” she almost roared back with a how-dumb-you-are look. “Whatever!” I whispered, trying to divert her attention towards the cup of coffee. “You don’t even know what color this is and you say this is your favorite one! Now that’s ludicrous,” she said with an overwhelming delight on her face. I knew instantly that she had not had someone for last few days to make fun of and somehow I found myself imagining how helpless an about-to-die deer felt as it saw a hungry lioness pushing it into a corner. Needless to say (but I would still say), my position was not any better than that of the almost-dead deer. “What’s in a name, what’s in a name,” I flinched. I just hoped that she had had some amount of respect for Shakespeare and his sayings. She went on to count different shades of blue and red on her fingers and wanted me to learn at least a few of them. But how can she expect a guy to learn hues of colors who often struggles to recall his mobile number? Too much of an asking.

People generally have one and only one color as their favorite. But he may not choose everything around him painted in that particular color. For instance--Someone like me, whose favorite color is red (may be crimson!!!) will not like his formal trouser or shoes to be red-colored. Going a step further, I won’t like my hair tainted red either. Similarly, no matter how crazy a person is about blue (say Persian Blue, to be very specific), she won’t like her lipstick blue. But there is no shortage of frenzy creatures in this world. You will see them every now and then. Anyway, let’s go ahead.

I had seen people around me wearing kurtas of different colors (now don’t ask me the particular shades). I found that cool. Even I am a human being (oh yes, I am!!) and I also have desires. So, the other day, I went to a shop to buy cloth piece for my kurta. The shopkeeper showed cloth pieces of different colors and shades. I didn’t like any. More colors. No success yet! I had seen someone wearing a blue-colored kurta and wanted something like that. More colors put in front of me. But I am a difficult person to please! After rejecting some genuine, honest effort from the shopkeeper, I could sense frustration in his eyes, as if saying –For God’s sake, will you now leave? He was about to cry as I insisted him to make one last attempt. “What exact shade do you want?” he finally spoke as he wiped sweat along with all his patience from his forehead. Now that was one hell of a question for me. I could calculate the rate of mass transfer in a packed bed (IIT says I am a chemical engineer, though I have never accepted!!) but shades—not my cup of tea. “Something in blue would do fine,” I told hesitantly but politely. I didn’t want to make that poor soul cry. By the time I collected the receipt, the owner of the shopkeeper had made me learn that it was called Ultramarine. I felt embarrassed. I recalled the giggling face of that friend of mine. I have decided to teach Shakespeare a lesson (read: kidnap all his angel girlfriends) if and when I happen to visit heaven. There’s surely something in the name, I tell you. Don’t believe the words of that 16th century ancient guy. He bluffed all of us. A rose in 2006 called by some other name may not smell as sweet.

Physical Features

I receive an amused look whenever one meets me for the very first time. Though people try to conceal their awry sense of joy, I have got so used to that particular subtle look on their faces that I invariably catch those glimpses effortlessly. It’s not that I am unbelievably good looking or I possess attractive physique that introduces a smile on their faces but the fact that I possess an embarrassingly slim body structure makes them do so. To make matters worse, an abnormally large face rests over my shoulders and a pair of hands that can be detached by applying minimal force hangs below the shoulders, imparting me the looks of an alien. If you have no idea how an alien looks, do watch some movies like ET or alien v/s predator and if you are a die-hard Bollywood fan, you can always watch Koi Mil Gaya. Now if you are through with the movie, you can move on with the post. No, no let me tell you that I don’t look exactly like an alien if you have already started painting my structure in the canvas of your mind. But I must confess (I am almost into tears!!) that most of my features do resemble those of an alien. Similar height (just managed to cross 5 feet a couple of years ago), similar large eyes with pupils adamant to come out of the iris, voice difficult for others to understand and an above-average intellectual mind (that’s what I think)!! To add to that, my sense of dressing isn’t very different from that of aliens. Can you imagine my structure now? People often ask me what I generally eat in a day and they get an idea what not to feed their kids to save them from attaining alien-esque features.

Some of the people who really feel sorry about my physical features often suggest me to eat properly. They regularly let me know that if I continue like this for few more years, I would inevitably vanish. They suggest me to eat the amount of food in one meal that I generally have in 2 days. What they fail to understand is that a small belly lies in a small body. Enhancing my appetite is something that is beyond my control. I love food but I can’t eat much (Drops of tears are falling on the keyboard!!).

Most of the people I regularly come across are well built, possess height around six feet and hence, they see it as a moral responsibility (towards me, of course) to make me realize of my gradual drift towards un-human physical features. Every time I see a well-built person, the first thought that comes to my mind is--can I afford a fist-fight with him? The second thought that crosses my mind is—-I can’t!!

But I was not the same during my childhood days. Though I was born with a relatively bigger head than most other children, my good enough physique--firm arms, strong calves-- reconciled with it. But as days passed by, my weight refused to increase while the rate at which the size of my head increased knew no stopping. Result is in front of you. These days, with hardly any serious work to do, I amuse grown-ups and scare kids. That is one job I am really good at. If you can’t recall the last time you had laughed, do meet me. Your days of laughter are not far away.

A Spectrum Of Commentators

During the ongoing Champions Trophy in India, Harbhajan Singh misjudged a catch and just when it looked that he would drop the catch, he somehow managed to hold the ball in his hands inches inside the boundary rope. Incidentally, two old foes Tony Greig and Geoffrey Boycott were on the air commentating. “Harbhajan Singh has got under the ball. Ooo…he seems to have made a mess of the catch…. I think he has dropped the ball…Or has he caught it?? Thank god, he…” said Boycott. “Harbhajan Singh has taken a blinder. One of the best catches one would have seen in the recent past,” screamed Tony Greig on the microphone interrupting Boycott. “But he made a simple catch look spectacular. Didn’t he?” yelled Geoffrey. “But he did manage to make it look spectacular,” argued Tony Greig with a chuckle.

Cricket commentators are a different species altogether. They come in all shapes and sizes-- their accent and use of words making them popular or unpopular. They always try to come up with something new every time around. Some fail while some of them do succeed in entertaining their listeners. The addition of females is the latest development in this fraternity. Commentators who talk sense are the most popular. Unfortunately, someone like Navjot Singh Sidhu who talks a lot with a handful of non-sense submerged into it also get popular. Let’s study the characters of these entertainers. To start with, people like Ravi Shashtri and Barry Richards stick to the happenings on the field and read the game wisely and hence, they give the listeners a better picture of the game. Their enthusiastic approach and smart analysis make them popular among listeners. Sunil Gavaskar, Ian Chappell, Harsha Bhogle and Sanjay Manjrekar also form a part of this group. Richie Benaud is one commentator who holds a special place for himself in the commentary field because of his great knowledge of cricket and composed voice. Then arrive the likes of Tony Greig, Mark Nicholas and Mike Haysman who have actually shifted their focus on making the art of commentary entertaining. These are the people who have actually made commentary an interesting job. They exaggerate events and tend to infuse fake exuberance into the listeners. Interestingly, their inspiring voices do tend to succeed in doing so. Cricket is after all a means of entertainment!

After all these men comes Geoffrey Boycott who is a die-hard fan of technique---be it batting, bowling or catching! If you ask him, someone like Sehwag is an ugly scar on the beautiful face of cricket. During India’s last tour to Australia, Sehwag played and missed quite a few deliveries outside the off stump. See what Boycott had to say. “This lad has got a rubbish technique. Even my mum would play these deliveries better.” When Sehwag played crunching cover drives on the next two Brett-Lee-deliveries, Boycott says—“Ha ha, this guy has made a mockery of what I told a couple of minutes before. He has got great hand-eye co-ordination. He doesn’t need any coaching book technique.” In the very next over, Sehwag comes out of his crease to a MacGill-delivery and gets stumped. Boycott says—“Just hand-eye co-ordination can’t take you too far in such a competitive form of the game, son. You need to learn quite a bit about batting. Crickeet is no child’s play.”

Then there is a whole bunch of other English commentators that includes David Lloyd, Ian Botham and David Gower. They have a special liking for their national team. If debutant Robert Key scores a century against a hapless West Indian attack, they start seeing him as a potential threat to Mcgrath and Warne in the next Ashes series. There is no cricket more important than Ashes for this group of commentators. And by the time Ashes ends, players like Robert Key are seen packing their bags with face-hiding batting averages of 15 in the series.

And then there is a man called Navjot Singh Sidhu who speaks nothing but non-sense. When he had initially arrived in the commentary field, he did a decent job with his catchy one-liners. But as time passed by, his one-liners became an overdose and irritating. In the recent one day game between India and England, England was bowled out for mere 125. During the break between the innings, when asked how much chance England had actually had, let’s see what he said---“England faces a deep, dark tunnel in front of it and it has no other option but to walk that tiresome, painful path towards the end of the tunnel where a slow, inevitable death with bright, cruel teeth waits for it. Sorry my dear friend, miracles are called so because they don’t happen too often. No matter how hard England flocks its feathers, it can’t escape defeat in this match.” When Charu Sharma asked the same question to Ian Chappell, he answered with his typical Australian flair—“I don’t know why Sidhu said so much about the probability of an English win. For me, the simple answer is zero.” Sidhu was embarrassed. Dean Jones has tried to give Sidhu a run for his money in the field of non-sense commentary and has succeeded to some extent as well.

Michael Holding is better known for his Caribbean accent more than anything else. “Adaam Gilchrist is playing just the kind of innings Australia wanted at this juncture” seems to be his favorite sentence. He is usually so obsessed with the pace quartet of the West Indies during the early 80’s that every other fast bowler looks mediocre to him.

Some commentators have special liking for some players. ‘Saurav Ganguly—the prince of Calcutta’ is Boycott’s favorite despite his horrible technique while Sachin Tendulkar must thank Tony Greig for helping him acquire semi-God status all over the world. Jacques Kallis owes Mike Haysman a can of beer for enhancing his popularity and Imran Khan always has a sea of praises for Younis Khan.

The two female commentators from South Africa seem to talk sense in the microphone. One can only hope that they would add a new dimension to commentary. People like Rameez Raja, Jeff Thomson, Arun Lal and L Shivramkrishnan don’t have anything special about their commentary skills to talk about. They are paid just because they know the game and speak a bit of English.

Commentator, as a group, surely form a nice spectrum with different colors in it.

Matrimonial Problem

As I write this post, I feel more or less determined to hold moderators and owners of certain yahoo groups by their collars, drag them to the court and ask My Lord to allow me to hang all of them for their grievous crime. And since My Lord would inevitably say that he might take a minimum of 10 years to come up with any sort of decision (as Indian courts usually do), I feel like teaching those moderators a lesson in my own surreal ways. They have catered me several sleepless nights by sending enough scary invitations for joining their absurd yahoo groups. If that wasn't enough, I often find myself waking up suddenly in the night as I pull myself out of a dreadful nightmare(if at alI I manage to sleep), thanks to the role these moderators have played during last six months or so. Now I know what people called mental molestation.

Though I consider myself a strong enough character (mentally and certainly not physically as everyone points out) to handle issues on my own, these frequent invitations to join matrimonial groups have certainly taken a toll on me. There is no greater elation when I open my yahoo messenger and it says 'you have got 1 new mail'. The frequency at which I check my mail doesn't allow yahoo messenger to state that I have got more than one mail. And there isn't any more deplorable moment when I open my yahoo mail only to find a matrimonial group invitation. It's like end of the world for me. The names of these matrimonial groups are as irritating as their contents--agarwal2agarwalmarriage group, Letsmarry, MarryBigBeautifulWomen etc etc. I don't know why they think that I am an Agarwal! And if the lady is so beautiful, why would she marry me? I possess neither Bill Gates' money nor Tom Cruise's looks. Apart from all that, though I am legally eligible to marry as I have already achieved that coveted landmark of 21 years of age, I am currently not in a mood of marrying, you know. (Blushing)Lolz!! I have just started my life and I have no plans to ruin it so soon. I still have some sense left in some corner of my brain.

When I told some of my mates about this farcical and equally derisory problem that I am facing these days, they all laughed at me saying that I must have given my email id to one (or more) of these groups . But I am more certain than an Australian victory over Kenya as I say that an idea as weird as pasting my own id in any matrimonial site can't even come close to my periphery of thoughts. Though I must confess that I have certainly given some fake ids for getting some pirated softwares from internet. "Pirate, he is a bloody pirate," I can listen some software engineer screaming somewhere in Bangalore. None of my concern though. I have much graver issues like matrimony-case to tackle these days! I even tried to block these addressed and called them spam but these addresses somehow manage to breach spam protectors and chafe poor users like me. If any of the moderators of those groups is reading this post, I urge him/her to look for better candidates to send your unsolicited mails. I am genuinely not interested!! For those who don't know, this is my favorite one liner! I had once used it when a girl had proposed me. O yes, you read it correctly---A girl proposing a boy! Now you know that it doesn't happen only in movies. Real life, as they say, is much more exciting than reel life. Anyway, do I need to tell you what the consequence was when I told her that I was genuinely not interested? I leave it for you to guess!!

Bloggers' Addiction

There is something peculiar about bloggers that I have failed to understand since the day I was introduced to blogging. Very similar to the case with any other form of addiction, the addiction of 'blogging regularly' brings a certain amount of insanity with itself. When a blogger runs out of topics to write upon, s/he tends to look all over the place for an issue or two. The best source of topics that strikes such a one-post-a-day blogger is newspapers and news channels. No matter how ignorant a blogger is about a particular hot topic, s/he always tends to post something related to it on his/her blog. The one case that was in the cauldron few weeks ago was that of Pluto being stripped off its coveted status of being called a planet. Now how the hell does it matter to a common person whether Pluto is a planet or not? But bloggers have needs of their own. They tend to pour in their views and opinions over anything and everything. Very similar to what I am doing right now--pouring my views over insane bloggers (with I myself being one of them). Anyway, coming back to the topic, I came across scores of blogs which talked about what exactly being a planet means, which parameters essential for a piece of rock to be called a planet are and blah blah. They went on writing pages over the history of Pluto and how dramatic the discovery of Pluto was. Bloggers showed their immense love for this ex-planet and urged the scientific community all over the world not to snatch away the planetic title from Pluto. Poor Pluto must be feeling deeply indebted to all its protagonists out there on the earth. She ought to visit the earth just to know how her popularity has peaked up during last few weeks.

Second such case was that of a person called Steve Irwin who eventually died doing what served as his means of living. Blogging community all over the world paid tribute to him and his heroics with 20-feel-long crocodiles. Bloggers showed such deep concern over the demise of this man that it actually made me wonder if Steve Irwin was one of the terrorists US government is looking for.
When I googled to know who he was, he turned out to be a person who fought with crocodiles. People cried lakes on their blogs writing how eagerly they waited every week to watch his show, how popular he was among their friends and how interested they were in their combat with crocodiles. I tried to visualize the excitement on people's face as they watched that cowboy trying his best to defeat a gigantic crocodile!! I failed. Their fake concern over the death of his crocodile hunter was nothing but an honest attempt to satisfy their hunger to update their blogs. As far as I am concerned, all those bloggers cried crocodile tears!! Didn't they?

By the way, I did manage to write a post without having anything particular or serious to talk about. Kudos to me.

Educated Raavan

Sculptures of Raavan, Mehnaad and Kumbhkaran were erected hastily on Dussehra afternoon. By the time, the day drifted towards its end, the three sculptures were set to fire one by one with Raavan being the last casualty. Crackers installed inside them made deafening noise, huge spheres of smoke gained height above the burning sculptures, sparkling chunks of burning paper floated between the layers of air and baneful smell of gunpowder diffused into the atmosphere. A large crowd entertained itself by being a part of this evil-burning ceremony. With Raavan turned into ashes, the mob retrieved back discussing how harmful the rays coming out of crackers are and how polluted Delhi-air has become over the years. Two women talked about how their in-laws have made their lives miserable. Children accompanying them, oblivious to their talk, were glad with the sight they witnessed and asked each other who the two sculptures on either side of Raavan represented.

Raavan, despite being such a learned creature, an avid Lord Shiva devotee and a conqueror of entire cosmos, fell prey to evil and eventually couldn’t save himself and his family from fiasco and the wrath of Lord Rama. Today, we remember Raavan as the face of evil. What did those Vedas, Puranas, Upnishads teach him? Virtually nothing! That is perhaps why education has evolved over the years just as a medium of reading newspapers and getting a good job. It is only attitude that can help you gain some good name. Education— philosophical, religious, spiritual or any other form---is useless unless you don the right attitude.