It’s a cell-out!

It’s amazing. It's dreadful.

When I look around me and see the fabulous developments in electronic technology, I am astonished at our dependence on it. Especially that neat little gadget called the cellphone. Laptops, music players, blood pressure monitors and the like are useful, personal and, more importantly, silent. Cellphones, on the other hand, are a public menace, both to the user and the people around that person.

Consider the scenario on any local train in Mumbai, the means by which most city denizens go about their business day after working day. In the ladies first class compartment - my haunt for about 30 minutes, morning and evening – you will find almost everyone with one hand to an ear, sometimes holding a mobile phone visible, sometimes seemingly scratching their scalps. The conversation they are engaged in will almost always be loud, long and lively, spanning the journey and beyond. And by the end of it, everyone in the vicinity will know all about the mother-in-law from hell, the maid who refused to wash the windows and the boss who made improper advances.

The chats are interminable, so protracted that I once asked someone what their phone bills were, on average. Turns out that there is a neat little trick involved. Call a number, whatever number. Then hang up. That number will call you back before you have the time to stash your phone in your bag or pocket or wherever you stash it normally. I learned how to do this only recently – the caller uses a cellphone to call the callee’s cellphone, on which the calling number registers. The callee then calls the caller back (thus becoming the caller, in turn) from a landline telephone, thus calling at a far lower rate, often not even needing to pay for the call, especially if the caller phone is one at work, which the caller calling the callee does not need to pay for. Phew. The alternative, of course, to this scam is to send a text message and wait for the call to come in…

And when it does, this is the way to behave – root about in your bag for your mobile phone. When you find it, let it ring its obnoxious tune for long enough to wake up your neighbour and irritate everyone else. Then press the right button, provide a second or two of merciful silence and, soon after, provide amusement and drama for the entire trainload of commuters with your conversation. That usually starts with “Haan, bol!” and then proceeds through an entire soap opera of heard monologue responding to unheard monologue, deafening unwilling listeners and dragging them willy-nilly into the life of someone unknown and irrelevant. You, of course, on the phone, are oblivious to trivialities such as people around you who do not want to listen to your assorted angsts and evil-boss stories. You also have no clue that the woman opposite you, who is trying to do a newspaper crossword, is glowering coldly at you. And that the lady across the aisle, trying to rest after a long morning cleaning house, before a long day cleaning up the latest pirated computer programme that needs to be installed, is darting looks that could kill in your direction.

Time was when I was one of the few people in the train who had a cellphone. Time is, now, when I am one of the few people who never uses hers. And now you know why.