Mobile the New Friend

In continuation to the last post Distraction. This is the latest one that could not have come forward if I never had an eye-opener from my friend Avinash Tekra. The geek or nerd or call him by any name the person who is always learning new skills and had made up a resolution that would be spending on himself to acquire new skills every year. Quite interesting hmmmmm. But Tekra is someone we will discuss some other day but today it is the discussion we had a week back.

Will start with a question how many of you are the culprits who use their mobile phone while sitting with friends, enjoying a cup of hot coffee or maybe dinner. How many of you are the culprit of using the phone instantly if the person in front of you stops talking to you for nearly 15 seconds. I think the majority of us fall in this category.

It was Saturday 27th Feb when my friend visited me home in the morning and being preoccupied with work I had to gently refuse to give him time which he calmly understood stood up and said we are meeting in the evening and I nodded. As decided we met at 4:30 in the evening and decided to walk and talk. Solan being the town where we stay is a busy town but the beauty is that you come out of the hustle and bustle as soon as you cover 5 km to any side. We crossed our old school and walked and discussed a lot of things. (Sorry can’t mention all of those here. Boys talk). We reached a small park named Mohan Park(A small park to have an evening walk and a beautiful view of NH22 with lord Shiva idol standing tall in between) and as soon as we reached there I took out my phone and started checking any updates. Bang the discussion started and the following points came out:

1.      when we are with someone and he/she has given us his/ her valuable time we should respect them and their time.

2.      If we both stopped talking, my patience to be with me was only 15 seconds.

3.      if we receive a call and had to answer it that not end over there we always go and check our updates or any notifications.

4.      we ignore the person and this is not a sign of respect towards the person who is among us.

5.      mobile has taken a major time and part of our life and we are online socially active than actually socially active.

6.      how many times have you feed someone on road, but we speak or forwards social cause messages like they are our own.

After discussing for over an hour and a walk of 6 km we felt hungry and decided to have something and concluded that we will visit the same place we used to visit when we were students. Himalayan coffee house and after reaching there I made the same mistake checked my phone on which Avinash pointed me and we both shared a healthy laugh. What we observed over there was :

1. nearly 15 people were sitting in 6 different groups.

2. nearly 50% of them, though in someone’s company was busy on phone.

3. Eating and gluing their eyes seemed to be new normal.

4. the regular chit-chat laughter was missing.

though the Dosa and coffee were the same that we used to have 20 years back(Prices off course have changed)

The discussion continued and we were sorry for the youngsters who had chained themselves to the new friend who is always there for them but won’t be when they need a friend in need. (Seldom you find good friends)

Mobile is with us nearly 90 % of the time of the day still is it required, is it needed. Will conclude this post with a few question and a special thanks to my nerd friend who gave me a new perspective of life.

·         do we need technology that much that we are using it?

·         Is this technology taking us away from being a human being to netizens(new and fancy name but do we need it)

·         Emotional bonding and feelings are not needed anymore or we are in a fix to have the maximum number of online followers than real-life people to talk to.

Think will be waiting for answers or more questions.