Salaam, Kalam

Thank you, Mr Kalam!

For maintaining a dignified silence throughout the drama staged outside the gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan;

For watching the chequered games of our political parties who are using the presidential election to checkmate one another;

For being the uninterested bystander as Mamata Banerjee performed her street plays in Delhi;

For being nonchalant when the West Bengal chief minister dragged Mulayam Singh Yadav to pledge his Samajwadi Party’s support for her choice: by the way, it was You, Mr Kalam;

For remaining oblivious to THE Congresswoman and her sycophants playing games in our democratic field and finally zeroing in on Pranab Mukherjee, who is desperate to come out of the sinking ship, also called the Indian economy;

For being non-committal from the beginning when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance proposed your name to score a point against the UPA-nominated Pranab;

Thank you, Mr Kalam, for standing by the people of this country;

For not budging from the pedestal, where you had placed yourself simply by being you;

For snubbing all those political clowns who claim to represent us.

Thank you, once again, Mr Kalam.

Post Script: I hope Mamata does not read this. I have called her tribe clowns. She may call me a Maoist and order my arrest.

Mobile revulsion

“Don’t lie,” a girl, sitting next to me in the public bus, snarled.

I looked at her, rather startled, my expression soon changing to that of amusement: I detected a wired device connected to her mobile phone that was peeping out of her bag.

A quick survey threw up an amazing answer: most of the passengers in the bus were talking into their mobiles. This was not a stand-alone phenomenon. Being a public transport user, I found this mass walkie-talkie spectacle in every bus, every train.

This mobile revolution has made all of us look like morons on the road, enslaving us all, reducing us to the lowest levels of insanity.

When we walk on the road, we see most of them talking aloud into their wired devices; most of them gesticulating with great intensity, totally unaware of everything around them. Without a dunce cap or those “mental inside” T-shirts, they would still qualify as deranged. So, passing cyclists now have the added responsibility of negotiating their way past these walkie-talkies apart from those impatient and rash two-three-four-wheelers.

We see bikers craning their neck to one side talking into their phones that precariously rest on their shoulders even as they flout all traffic rules. We see people talking on their phones while on the wheels, in blatant disregard to safety norms. We see pedestrians sauntering across busy zebra crossings as if they were in a park, their mobile conversation dictating their pace.

What we have got ourselves into is mobile insanity, mobile indiscipline, mobile helplessness; in short we have all become portable carriers of unruliness, chaos in their 2G and 3G versions.

The wise claim that technology has shrunk this world. Yes, it has blurred geographical distances. But hasn’t it increased distances among us? We prefer talking to people far and away, but do not feel it necessary to interact with those we rub shoulders with.

In a restaurant, very few tables will witness family time well spent. Most families look fragmented, with spouses on the phone, texting or talking. I recently saw two families sitting on a table together, apparently to celebrate someone’s birthday. But they were all talking into their respective phones. When the chef approached one of them to check when the cake would have to be delivered, he had to wait there for a good 5 minutes for the instructions because the guests and the hosts were all busy interacting with the world outside.

What is this mobile revolution getting us into? Is this a good idea sirjee?

I call this a mobile revulsion.