A SEVEN DAY BLISS

Last week while in gym, a historic event happened for the first time in 10 years.. I lost my mobile.. With it, I lost all the contact numbers too. You all must be sympathizing with me, please don’t because it was blessing in disguise. Since the fateful day ten years back, when I decided to own a sparrow named mobile, the life had completely gone topsy-turvy. The initial excitement did not last longer when there remained no privacy and people could reach me wherever and whenever they wanted to. My dad, knowing that I have gone for a movie and the show will continue for three hours, he would call within and hour asking what time would I come back.

If ever I fail to respond to a call (I do have to do certain things in a day when I can’t respond to a call) people would get irritated and ask me why the hell I am not picking up the call. My boss would even go one step ahead by complaining in a way, as if that is the last truth of my life and I do not have the right to survive if I do not respond to her call. You can not even keep it switched off for long. The moment u would switch it on; people would demand to know why it was switched off. About a month back, a friend of mine called up home asking mom if I was ok. She got worried why he is asking like this. When I called him back he sounded frantic and worried on phone and asked me “Hey what’s matter with you, why your phone is switched off for last five hours, I got so worried” As if switching off the mobile is an indicator of my not being well, or to think in extremes I perhaps died.

My boss and colleagues think that office has a right over me 24x7 so they can call me anywhere any time. “After all”, they say “Managers have 24 hours' duty” Earlier I resisted saying this is my personal mobile but alas, that excuse also did not last long, as the HR decided to pay the expenses towards all the callsL. So I started using it for official purpose and one day a very funny incident happened.. My boss always gets upset whenever one of us wants to go on leave. On a usual stressful day in office my boss was very upset with me because I was on leave previous day. The same day another guy had to apply for leave but seeing my experience he could not even gather the courage to ask. So in the evening I sent him a message asking if he managed to get the leave. I wrote to him Y boss does this, doesn’t she realize we also have some priorities.. Well nothing was unusual in this, we all like to bitch boss…. And oooooops by mistake I sent the SMS to my boss instead of my colleague. And you can imagine the rest of the story.

Every morning, people start playing forward- forward through mobile, forwarding messages here and there. Sometimes I get same message from six people in one day. As if they do not have any other significant work to do in the morning. And if I do not respond, they complain, “We send you so many good massages you are so ruthless, you never even care to respond” Did I ask for one???. The height is, these days even we have started receiving SMSs saying “ Please forward to so many people and good will happen to you otherwise be prepared for any misfortune” so these threatening messages promoting some god father are no more limited to only emails..

On last 26th January, I received three messages wishing me “happy Independence Day”. I was so disgusted. Kya log hain… People have even stopped differentiating between Republic day and Independence Day and keep forwarding messages without even realizing it. When I corrected them, they applauded my intelligence. Heck, what a criteria of judging someone’s intelligence. Have you heard somewhere that these days people even break up their relations by sending an SMS to their partners?? What an easy way out.

And the most frustrating experiences of life have been the unsolicited calls from banks, credit card companies and showrooms. They can call you any time in the middle of any thing. I was never able to find out how the hell they get my cell number. If Murphy had been alive, his new law would have been, ‘One would always get unsolicited calls in the middle of meeting when the deal is about to be finalized with your oh- so important clients.’

So not deviating more from my current topic I was telling that last week I lost my mobile. The very next day I gave this news to every one in the office with great effort to show the ex-pressions of grief on my face. Oh god, it’s so difficult for a person like me to hide the joy within and disguise it with grief. Every one showed sympathy towards me.. “Oh Poor you… it must be so difficult” I felt like saying.. "These are the happiest days of my life".. Somehow I managed to stop my self from saying it or from expressing the elation. Boss was suddenly so sweet to me… She is now dependent on me to reach me. Every one wanted to know how I lost my cell. Some went to an extent of suggesting me to buy a cell of particular brand… Was the company giving them any commission or they were serving as brand ambassador??? One colleague even suggested me to go for a high end Pocket PC. I requested him to raise ‘Angel mobile fund” and I will buy whichever model he was suggesting. He never showed up after that.

So finally I was without mobile.. For almost seven days. What a bliss, no more late nights, no more complains, and no more calls to attend meetings on the holidays.. I was no more supposed to call up office if I was getting late by three seconds. Fortunately I had never given people my land line number. No one even ask these days… After all, they are so confident of catching hold of me through my cell..

Alas, the bliss of a life time came to an end when I had to go for official tour and my mom was after my life to buy a cell before I go as if she was gonna loose me if I didn’t have one. Poor thing she did not even understand that without a cell I would not even be able to elope with some one. So I bought a new handset and my seven days of freedom and bliss came to an end…