(11 Jan ’09)
I must be the last
Mumbaikar to own a mobile phone. Correction, it was thrust on me by the
powers-that-be where I work, so I still can’t claim ownership of one. Yes, now
I have two. To me, a couple of months ago, a mobile phone was a cordless
receiver in the palm of a friend who paced down and up and down and up his tiny
flat. He moved, hence the phone was mobile, I figured.
One day, up on the
sixteenth floor in my office building, I started at the sound of a rooster
crowing. It wasn’t sunrise, and it wasn’t a farmyard. Ignorant me, didn’t know
it was just a mobile ring. Pretty soon I learnt of asses braying, rockets
firing, snatches of Chopin’s classics, bhajans, patriotic numbers, clanging
bells, etc. I also heard one message-aaya-message-aaya-message-aaya disturb a
quiet afternoon in the library, after which the rules insisted on only
vibrator-modes. A funnier one was ‘it’s the phone, you fool, pick it up’. Now
there are ‘daddy’s calling’, ‘mom here’, babies wailing, babies squealing in
laughter and recording(s) in the voice(s) of the phone-owner(s).
For myself, I chose
bull-frog for one phone and tin-can-tune for the other. Then, for calls from
Boss, it’s a vomiting sound, for one from husband it’s water flowing (ah, when
it’s in a jeans’ pocket, heads turn), for calls from close friends, it’s the
signature tune of the company.
A decade ago, the most
irritating thing was the car-reversing tunes. Nights were disturbed by repeated
Saare Jahan Se Acchaa and/or twinkle twinkle little star or jai jagdish h’rray.
I feel very sad for gods, specially hindu ones, because they are called upon to
listen to their names (echoing horridly around heaven) at all times of
night/day, in bylanes, compounds, the highway, whilst parking…poor gods. Now,
the menace is the mobile phone. But, one wonders, how did we live without them?
hm?
Last weekend, at a
hill-station, I heard a familiar sound. The koel’s throaty call. I turned and
saw no one near me, I was the solitary figure on that kacchaa road. I swiveled
once more, only to realize that this was no mobile phone ring, this was the
real stuff. That’s how deeply the city has intruded into my soul. The upside is
that I’ve connected with so many friends from the past, in distant lands, that
the mobile really has shrunk the world. And smses have become a part of
literary events: I’ve taken part in two sms poetry competitions.
Smses remind me of the
messages that flooded my set after the Mumbai gun battle on 26/11. Against and
about regional political parties, against and about the media coverage and lots
of glory, glory, glory about the local cops. On this latter point, I have my
views. The three senior police officers who were shot dead did nothing brave at
all. They were bystanders who came in the way of the bullets. They didn’t know
who was shooting, the shooters didn’t give a fig who they were. Their deaths
were a big bonus for whoever was behind it all. And for that, some people have
actually asked for gallantry medals to be awarded to them? How silly is that.
The really brave ones were anonymous, not at all in the limelight, and the
officer who led them, who knew in that pitch darkness when he kicked in a door,
that there would be terrorists, murderers on the other side, waiting to blow
him to shreds. He knew he was entering his grave. Yet he did so without
faltering, and his loyal troops and colleagues followed him without giving the
itsiest thought to what might happen. They had a job to do and they’d do it
successfully. That officer is battling grievous injuries to his head and face
in a local hospital, well away from the media. He and his kind are noble and
brave, not the three cops who died. The latter may have done great deeds whilst
they were alive, and let’s remember them for that. Their death wasn’t heroic.
Let’s give this a thought. We in Goa must give it a thought, for the Paradise
may well be on the hit list. No point being complacent. I keep bringing up this
topic lest we forget.
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