My First Cellphone…..[The Inception]
The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
When a 13 year old demands for a cellphone from his/her parents,the parents first try to analyse why their offspring came up to them with such a demand?the reasons might be :
- His/her friends have it and to match their so called status.
- to play games on it.
- to make calls.
- or simply to showoff.
Many parents try to gauge the pros and cons.If the pros victor over cons their demand is well met with and in no time a cellphone is handed over to the offspring And if not,they are very well left behind crying for it with their cries turned to deaf ears.
My case was pretty different! I never cried for a cellphone. In-fact i never thought of carrying a cellphone.I had a couple of friends who owned a cellphone using them as a ‘show-off’ tool needlessly,forcefully!!whenever i used to see them attending phone-calls which mostly originated from their homes,i thought they just got a dogie-chain round their necks which was pulled every half hour by their parents.
As time passed,i started feeling myself lucky and developed a sour taste at the very own idea of owning a cellphone.Being the only lucky child of my parents,i enjoyed the invaluable gift of absolute freedom.That meant no needless grilling/interrogation/cross-questioning(all the 3 words mean the same).Just like a free-bird was i.but the only problem arose when my performance dropped in my studies.The best part of my life was i had my parents working in the kitchen in shifts cooking their best dishes as if they are competing for the ultimate ‘chef of the house’ title.I used to enjoy their cookery and when i noticed that the competition is getting a cold-feet,praise one of them in front of other and the fire is on again!!!
so coming back,being a free bird meant going out to roam for hours and hours exploring more and more area around my house.this area around my nest ranged from the clean industrial areas(i know it sounds like oxymoron but that’s the truth) with unused roads and dirty,overpopulated slums around the industries to the hep high society area where every the life was totally different.something like ‘din dussehra,raat diwali sort off’.
Since i explored so many people and so many places,i made friends with all the three sects of people.Now to keep a good social life,more time had to be spent outdoors.since i had working parents and no one else to take care of me at my place,i used to go hiking to these places!Being a lonely child,i made friends.lots of friends and contacting each other required a contact number but still we never missed a cellphone.Our traditional methods did the job of a cellphone quite well.we used to decide a time and place to meet.If someone failed to turn up,send a search party for him which would either keep howling outside their bedroom windows or dragg him(generally its him in such cases) out of the house.Tis was the traditional way of calling a person very much unlike dialing 12 unique digits of numbers to sum up to 10 on the dialler which is done today.
If i had a cellphone at that point of time,i would have got constant calls from my parents which would have a harassing effect on me(the one like getting tele-marketing calls offering home-loans,personal loans and insurance.)thus disturbing my so-called social networking.
The good thing was even my parents thought the same that i did not require a cellphone.If i required to contact my parents,there was a fixed line available at my place.They even thought that i was incapable of handling a cellphone and taking care of it as i had managed to lose an antique camera.it was something unique and uncommon.It had the flap like thing at the center of the rectangle shaped box.when you opened the flap there was a small rectangle camera inside it with the lens larger than the small camera itself.
I was regular in signing up for the educational tours which were held in the diwali vacations by my school.In standard 9,the tour was of kerala, a southernmost part of India.whenever such trips arrived,more than me my dad used to be excited like as if he is the one going on the trips and not me.Mom,on the other side was a regular protester saying that is was a waste of money and that they were renting in on a week on anxiety.Dad was wiser than me and mom(sorry mom!).I did not realize then but i do now.Those trips have become milestones of my life, in my life.
A few days before Kerala,my mom became anxious,started worrying and wanted me to cancel my trip.she didn’t care about losing the entire trip cost which was non-refundable but she did not want anything bad to happen to me if i went to Kerala.
For this,dad devised a plan.he told mom that the i am not being sent on the tour but on the other hand,the story was different.he decided to get me a cellphone!!!.…to be continued.
AnPrabhu for you. 
:)…interesting!!! unlike usual stories of begging, pleading to parents for the gadget…:P
LikeLike