Smartphone: Connected or addicted?

“I am part of five WhatsApp groups, and sometimes find it so cumbersome to chat with all of them. I find myself chatting the whole day and it is tiring,” commented my friend, an avid smartphone user. I felt the comment sounded more like a lament.

This prompted me to think about whether I must buy a smartphone to stay “connected”. I own a conservative, 1200-rupee Nokia handset, which helps me take and make calls, send and receive messages and set the alarm for 5 every morning. It is rock steady even after having fallen from great heights a million times.

Coming back to chats, we are often faced with these virtual interactive sessions. Often, in the middle of some work, I hear the ping sound from the desktop (by the way, I am really old fashioned. I still do not own a laptop, happy with all my virtual connections through my desktop!) I always respond, though I must admit, it is sometimes done with a little reluctance as it would disrupt the flow of my work. I answer, not just out of politeness, but out of reciprocation. This is because I am equally guilty of clicking on my friends’ names that have a green circle next to it, indicating his/her availability. Sometimes, even when the circle is red indicating availability, though busy, I have pinged to say that “quick hi”.

I have been blissfully unaware that my virtual friend might really be busy and is responding out of politeness. And, what is more, I am unaware of the expression on the other side.  Then, of course, the chat never seems to end. The “byes, take cares, we must catch up soons” keep continuing, unless one of us abruptly pulls the plug.

When laptops replaced desktops, it made internet accessibility more mobile. And now, the smartphones/androids have made us all roving, active social butterflies. We are taking the idea of always being connected too seriously. Is this making us intrusive and ill-mannered?

Intrusive?  In a way, yes. We tend to intrude into the other person’s space, without realising the time that goes on in this cyber socialising. And, it can happen at any time of the day, night and late night. We do not even bother to feel whether that person is really free. We often assume and take their time for granted.

Ill-mannered? Again, yes. Virtual chatting can slowly eradicate manners among us. We tend to say things which we would have otherwise shied away from.

Virtual chatting can be dangerous, and sometimes even fatal. There have been cases of suicides after a virtual spat.  We tend to cross our limits as we are ensconced in our private space and there is no indication of any discomfort either in the form of body language or in the form of physical eye-contact.

Touch phones have made virtual interaction very convenient and trendy. College kids and adults often swim along in the (un)intentional flirting that goes on, which is often laced with sensual/sexual references. Lack of proximity helps virtual friends get that feeling of being “emancipated”. Sadly, that is only in cyberspace.

Another point is that this bunch of youth, which is so comfortable with virtual chats, is often seen to be pathetically backward in real interface. Small wonder then that they are unable to fluently communicate in the real world in a single language as they are often breaking into pitiable linguistic pauses like “you know”, “like” and “umm”.

Of course, I know I am opening up a can of criticisms as many of my friends will be hopping mad at my way of looking at things. The cyberspace has been a wonderful world where we picked up pieces of our childhood and found so many friends. So what is wrong with that? I do not have a problem with social networking at all. In fact, it is blessing that has made me run into friends I had lost touch with; my friends with whom I had shared my lunch in primary school.

Virtual chatting is my concern, not an abhorrent. Concern because it is time-consuming. I feel it is alienating us increasingly from the real world, reducing us into zombies, with our fingers moving back and forth, up and down the screen all the time, even when we are among “real” friends.

Having said this, do I switch to a smartphone when communication will be at my fingertips?  For the moment, I will stick to my old Nokia.

I want to stay connected, without being addicted.

Virtual bouquets and brickbats are welcome!

Rail’wayward’

If you wish to escape to Bangalore from the “unbearable” Chennai heat in the air-conditioned comfort of Shatabdi Express, think again.

The Indian railways’ recent decision to “upgrade” the coaches of that train by installing television screens in them, has, in effect, downgraded the sensibilities of passengers having to travel amid the cacophony of pure, unadulterated film music.

A travel by Shatabdi to Bangalore is anyway irritatingly punctuated by the catering department, from the sinful snack tray that ushers in the journey to the overloaded and overflowing dinner platter for that climactic ending.

But the torture is now magnified by the continuous cacophony of “fresh from the oven” raunchy film songs that comes packaged with provocative movements. What is very disturbing is that the railway ticket does not carry a U, UA or A certification. The coaches are indeed full of children, running up and down the aisle. Now, they have a distasteful baby-sitter, blaring raucous songs accompanied by gyrating pelvises and heaving bosoms.

The point is: Is film dance and music the only entertainment for us? Television channels observe even Gandhi Jayanti with “superhit” films, sponsored by videshi colas.
But why did the glorious Indian Railways succumb to this lewd temptation? The old and prestigious institution can surely sense aesthetics and introduce a low-volume, high-interest package on television. It could be a circus show, a gymnastic presentation, an animal channel, anything but these suggestive visuals. Is the Indian Railways listening?

Chaos or custom-made cities?

A river cruise takes me till the area where the sea takes over. The port is Malaca. The river is dotted on both sides with beautiful, old quaint buildings. Portuguese architecture vies for attention with stunning Dutch and English buildings along the way, as old-style bridges connect the opposite sides.  There is a connect, after all. The connect of the ancient and modern; of an antiquated post office building and an internet café; of the gastronomic excellence of a Nasi lemak and the ever-present pizza-burger; of ancient churches and the new temples of worship: malls.

The first Dutch ship to have landed in Malaca has been redesigned as a museum for the younger generation to understand the dynamics of a nation, born out of maritime trade relations between East and West. This southern Malaysian port is sleepy, but it had once been a hub of active trade, and one of the inspirations of European colonial ambition. Today, it stands as a mere reminder of the past. The aggressive sophistication of the present has conveniently swept those memories under gorgeous Persian carpets, desperately being preserved by standalone connoisseurs.

But this was one of the small pieces of Malaysia one can taste. The rest of the cities are like any other. The buildings, the flyovers, the malls, the brands, the food: there is no sense of heterogeneity. They all look alike. Probably they would in any city in the world, what with its indistinguishable flavours of burgers, pizza and mall “getaways” stocking identical brands . Is there anything native about a place today? I doubt it.

At least, the countryside in Malaysia has some pockets of pleasant distractions in the form of stray landforms and stuctures. But its neighbour, Singapore, was built, it seemed, in an assembly-line factory. The residential buildings and spaces look alike, the parks are mirror images; their cafeteria-food line-up almost clinically exact. It was as if a template was created and the city built on that. This clinical and too perfect a city can evoke a sense of boredom. Its lack of authenticity and the absence of nativity reflect an identity crisis, a personality disorder. Are all cities going this way?

Pockets of Indian cities, for sure, look the same with their malls, pizza-coffee-burger outlets and brands. But there are still native elements preserved in its chaotic nerve structure. Give me the chaos; I will choose it any day to the clinical precision of modern cities.

Water bomb's ticking

We pack our children’s school bag, doubly ensuring that they do not leave behind the two essentials: the lunch bag and the water bottle. But do we carry a water bottle when we leave the house?  Why bother. All we have to do is part with Rs 12 or Rs 15, depending on the “brand” of pure water, and we get to quench our thirst in “convenient” plastic bottles, stocked in every corner shop in the country. Right? Wrong!

We need to bother as the bottles we use and throw are all out in its bio-non degradable form, choking our planet’s dump yard. Recently, my friend had sent a picture of a heritage site buried under a mound of plastic water bottles. That was just a fragment of the bigger time bomb merrily ticking away in our planet.

Will it be simpler to just fill up a bottle whenever we step out? Just our little bit. I have heard people say, what difference does it make if one person does it? What about the rest? Someone has to start somewhere.

This sounds pedagogical? Sorry, cannot help it.

Today, drinking water flow freely at large conclaves and conferences, small gatherings, fat weddings and  family functions through mini packaged plastic bottles. What is even more frustrating is when even quarter-used bottles are binned. This is double whammy: drinking water flows into the drain and more plastic is added to the planet.

Our fitness freaks run marathons, well-advertised and sponsored by corporates, and leave behind a monstrous clutter of plastic water sachets, making our planet that much more unfit.

The world water day is on March 22 to remind us of the resource that is getting scarily scarce. But we do not seem to just get it. We start rationing water when there is a red alert on scarcity. Once the dark cloud passes, we resume scrubbing vessels leaving the tap on. We do not tell our children not to turn on the tap during the process of brushing their teeth, but only to rinse. Our children have enough and more of television and ipods; they can do without the water music as they wake up or before they slip into slumber. We indulge in the Jacuzzi-type shower (like we see those jaw-dropping men and women in ads). We scrub and wash our cars like they are hitting a night club. We water the pathway like there was a storm the previous night. We mercilessly throw the water filled up in our buckets two days back when there would have been a water crisis warning, saying it is “old”.

The water bomb’s ticking;tick, tick, tick. It is time to wake up to this alarm.

Green drain

Will our cities ever allow us to go green?

I have been thinking about this question over and over again as I walk to my College as a green initiative at least three days a week. First, there is no road as I come out of my house, so to speak. It is gravel, sand and stones just put together on undulating patches and the rest of what is there or not there is in pits, literally. Patches have been dug up in the name of storm water drainage and it has been like that for months.

This challenging stretch leads to the chaotic four-point crossing with a narrows fifth lane pushing itself for attention.

The Chennai transport corporation buses charge menacingly, disregarding the red light. The threatened pedestrians are then forced to retract apologetically despite the signal post flashing green over the walk sign.

The SUVs and Sedans along with the two- and three-wheelers complete the chakravyuh (the circled trap), frustrating the poor pedestrians’ attempts. And, senior citizens are in for a rude, insensitive shock as they are unable to importune their way across the ominous crossing to reach their nationalised banks to update their passbooks or collect their pensions.

Once I manage to go to the other side, as a person and not as a corpse, I am forced to manoeuvre around piles of garbage, left unattended by corporation officials. The trash strays into streets after flowing out of unkempt bins. If I am not careful, I might just about squash a plastic bag of smelly, discarded sambhar or assorted plastic rubbish or used poopy nappies or even used sanitary napkins.

We want to go green. We want to walk, we want to cycle; we want to take the public transport. We want to save fuel for the next generation. We want to reduce ravaging our planet. We want our next generation to breathe easy.

There is enormous temptation to take out the car to avoid the bad roads, the disrespect of vehicles to pedestrians and cyclists and walking on trash. We will fight that. But wouldn’t it be helpful if there was some cooperation from corporation and the government and a little compassion and show of concern by our motorists?

Coming back to the question: Will our cities allow us in our green endeavour?

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.