I hurriedly hailed into an auto and tell
him “Bhaiya, station”. He nods. A universal signal here to get in. He reaches
for the ignition, turns it on, and we are on the way.
A routine begins here, usually. I reach for
my phone, check my e-mails, read the daily news, reply to “Gm” messages on
WhatsApp, WeChat, and other 100 other social apps (they were meant to make us
more social by the way, and all we have managed is get into a relationship,
with our PHONES)
Today, I felt a jolt. My phone, when I
reached for it in my pockets, was missing. I felt confused for a moment. I was
sure I had carried it. But then, I wasn’t too far from home. So I couldn’t have
lost it. I jogged back through the trails of my memory. Retraced my steps in my
mind. And then I saw it happen, in my memory. In my quest for that 100% battery
before I left for work, I had kept in on charge. And forgot to retrieve it.
Damn.
I was in half a mind to tell the auto
driver to take me back home, but I was already very late. If I missed the
train, I would get extremely late to work, tempers would flare, shit would hit
the fan. It was going to be a long day. But I will manage, I thought. I was
wrong.
Having nothing else to do, literally, I
focused more on the ride and the view outside. I heard the birds chirp as well
as the traffic horns that blared, even at that time of the morning. I noticed
the bumps and the potholed roads for the first time. The shops I knew on the
streets had changed hands (more than once maybe), new shops lined the once
familiar streets. More people were on the road than I could remember. The city
had changed.
It took a long 20 minutes (It wasn’t that
long when I had to reply to 3 e-mails) to reach the railway station. Time
crawled today. A faced a bigger quandary when I got into the train. Over an
hour of travel – and no e-mails, no internet, no music, no Twitter, no
Facebook, no chatting apps, no nothing. Having really nothing to do, I decided
to catch up on my sleep. Zzzzzzz.
I woke up to an announcement at a station.
“…se
aane wali local aath (8) bajke…..”
I looked at my watch. My watch felt
important today. Maybe after ages, I looked at it. Today it was not just
another office wear. Today, it told me time. According to my watch, I still had
about 40 minutes of travelling to go. I knew time was going to be a drag today.
And yet again, I knew not what to do. The
brief nap was refreshing. But I could nap no more. I stood up and stretched my
legs. Offered a stranger my seat. Maybe didn’t get a profuse thanks, but that
wasn’t the point anyway.
You don’t
need something, you give it to someone else.
I think that point has been lost on most of
us.
I stood rest of the way, but I wasn’t tired
or bored. I actually enjoyed watching the world pass by, as I stood by the
door.
Thankfully I reached office on time. And
soon, boredom started to kick in. There weren’t messages to disturb you or calls
to interrupt your work. We might actually have become people with no sense of
priority or to put it in a better way, belonging. We don’t belong to anyone at
any given point of time.
In a very connected world, we are all very
disconnected. We have our personal lives intrude and interrupt our time (May I
mention ‘paid’) in office. And let office work enter our homes with us.
Surprisingly, I got much more work done
today. It was a great thing to actually get into the flow of things and not get
distracted by a ‘ping’ every minute or other. And spoke more to colleagues whom
you hadn’t for some time, despite being a few cubicles apart. Ofcourse, they
suspect the sudden friendliness. Tell them you forgot your phone and the ladies
will reply with an all encompassing “Awww” and the guys will just laugh at your
face.
Oh, it isn’t easy though. Every once in a
while you look around to find your phone, just to realise you forgot it back
home. There is that feeling of emptiness around you. Suddenly you don’t know
what to do in those little breaks you take from work.
And as the day ends, you dread the long
travel back home, without music, without internet, well you know the list by
now.
The return journey was equally uninteresting.
Didn’t find a place to sit obviously. Just stood listlessly looking around,
observing others - heads down, their bright displays lighting up their
‘android’ faces (No, I am not referring to the OS, but the word itself).
15 years back, all would have been as
listless as I was today, people interacting with each other - talking, crying,
fighting, and beating up some (at times). But still not as aloof and cold like
now. Maybe if there is a fight now, it will be all over WhatsApp and Youtube
before I reached home and told my friend. And a few funny jokes made out of it too.
And status messages.
As I climbed the stairs to my home, I was
feeling a little different. When otherwise it would have been to charge my
phone, now it was of something else. Something like serenity. I wondered if
today was a sign of things to come. Whether I could do it for a longer period,
say a week, or ambitiously, a month? Would I be able to live thus. Disconnected
from everyone, but connected to life.
I entered home with these thoughts, the
experience of the day weirdly invigorating. But then, as my eyes fell on my
phone on the desk, the Gollum in my heart whispered “Precious, my precious”.
And I succumbed.
