Category: Writing

She looked all around the table. They were having dinner. However, the only two body parts involved was the right hand and the mouth. The left hand was holding a device. It was at such times she wondered how useful it would be if we still could eat with knife and fork. At the very least, these damned devices wouldn’t be on the dinner table.

Her husband of twenty five years was scrolling through his BlackBerry, probably catching up on office email. Her elder son was reading some book on his Kindle. Her younger daughter was busy texting someone furiously. In between, the daughter and son would look at each other and smile. The son or the daughter had probably exchanged a joke on Whatsapp. She too had a mobile phone but did not feel the compulsive need to be have her head stuck in front of her flat screen.

In the future, a doctor might probably diagnose her having a Screen Attention Deficit Disorder or something. She just could not stare at the screen for longer than a few minutes. She would then feel this urge to have a human to interact with.

As time passed on, she saw this spreading. More and more people on the bus she travelled on had their heads stuck in the screen. People in crowded buses had also begun the habit. Some even didn’t know who they were standing next to! Even at work, the friend she used to chat to wind down at work had also begun reading books on Google Play now!

It was everywhere. She had forbid the devices on her dinner table but when her husband had broken the rule, she could no longer enforce it on her children. She worried that her kids would grow up not noticing the birds and the bees, the flowers and the leaves. She felt she had the right to worry about this.

“Mom,” her son called out. He was looking at her and she realised that he had noticed the change in her expression as she went through her thoughts.

“You must write all what you thought about as a blog post.” Her son smirked knowing that he had followed her thought.

“If you put down your devices, I will tell you my thoughts.”

This may or may not be a true story.

I tied my shoes carefully, made sure that the knot was snug and then got up. I had forgotten the ear phones of my mobile phone. I switched on the tracking on my RunKeeper app and began walking from my building out to the outer ring road in my residential colony. I did this every morning.

I was irritated at having forgotten the ear phones. My right brain thought that this might be a good opportunity to look at the surroundings and take a fresh look at the environment around me. My left brain asked me to consider counting my steps. In the end, I just concentrated on walking as fast as I could.

A form emerged in front of me, which was at quite a distance. It was perhaps a girl, looking at the way she was dressed. My pace increased automatically. I was definitely not walking at my fastest pace. Now, I gained distance behind the girl. It was not as if once I catch up with her, I would ask for her number or ask her out for coffee or even breakfast. I just wanted to look at her. “Why?” wondered my left brain. “To appreciate beauty,” said my right.

I walked faster and faster, but as I gained on her, another form caught my eye. It emerged from the corner of my eye and was slowly but surely overtaking me. He was definitely older than me and when he looked straight at my face, I recognized him as my father. His look seemed to tell me, “I am twice as old as you are and yet I walk twice as fast as you do.” “You are just projecting your thoughts on him. I am sure this is not what he must be thinking,” said my right brain. I ducked to the side pretending to be tying my laces. By the time I was up, he had gone a good 200 meters ahead of me. At the turn he looked at me, glared and walked on.

I reset my target on the girl. By that time, though, a strange phenomenon happened. I felt some thing falling on my hand. Not crow shit, I hope. But it wasn’t. My eyes confirmed. It was water. My stride broke half way.

“This isn’t the monsoon. If I remember my eighth standard geography texts correctly, the monsoon is to hit Mumbai around June 10. This might be the pre-monsoon shower. Wish I had setup the rain gauge on the terrace..” the left brain was thinking when I cut it out.

Slowly the intensity increased. Other walkers were perplexed, not knowing what to do. This was a strange thing to happen and they had forgotten how they had walked during the monsoons last year. But, then again it didn’t rain all that much during the monsoons last year. Since I was walking under the canopy of trees, the full blast of the rain did not hit me. At least not yet.

“What a beautiful sight! The clouds had covered the Sun. It has darkened a little. People are so confused not remembering what they did. Wonder what photograph would appropriately capture this moment. The first rains!” the right brain was thinking when I cut it out.

I pulled out my phone and immediately tweeted out and sent a notification on Facebook. This came naturally to me. And then, one guy among the walkers remembered. He swerved to the side to the shelter provided by an overhanging asbestos sheet in front of a grocer’s. Then, as if everyone had an epiphany together, each one moved into the shelter. I noticed, with disappointment, the girl walking into the entrance of a nearby building as I ran a short distance under another asbestos sheet.

By the title, I did not mean the famous James Bond movie of the same name but something a colleague at work told me was his life philosophy. He described this philosophy to mean that he would never say “I will never…” in a sentence but would only respond in the negative to a given situation. What he means is that in another set of circumstances he might not have responded in the same way.

I, on the other hand have responded several times to situations by taking extreme stands. I either wholeheartedly agree or wholeheartedly oppose an idea or a course of action I am taking. This is true in situations where I am passionate about the subject. It doesn’t apply to my relationships with other people, though.

To give you an example, I quit Wikipedia late last year vowing never to return. I had issues with some members with the Indian English Wikipedia community members. I think I believed in the movement passionately enough to think that it would collapse if such individuals made up the movement. However, I soon re-joined Wikipedia realising that the movement was not defined by these few individuals besides how much I enjoyed actually editing it.

Late last week I announced that I would be quitting Twitter. I observed how my brother was caught up on his phone and how little attention he paid when my parents or I spoke to him. Sometimes, he did not even realise that we were talking to him. I envisioned myself as something even worse than that when I do this.

However, when I announce my intention of quitting, it is half hoping that announcing it will help me stick to the resolution of quitting a platform. The situation changes and makes it even more difficult for me to return because of the thought of my announcement of quitting a platform and how I would appear to people. It would seem to people that I am the sort of a person who makes decisions and does not stick to it.  Not everybody might think like this but my perception of this being a thought process is so strong.

Which brings me back to why the philosophy of never say never again. I will try and not announce that I am quitting the platform. So, with that huge post, I am happy to report that I am back on Twitter!

Going through the huge archives collected from time immemorial comes the fact that some of the poetry from high school seems to have survived my burning ritual. I laughed out loud at it and wondered how I was stupid about writing these things at all. Everything looks stupid in hindsight. At the time I wrote it, I probably gave it the attention that an engineer gives his space crafts with multiple last minute checks.

The book which I am penning now has a full outline ready. It needs flesh and blood and that will probably start tomorrow.