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!!