Funda cellphone ka...

Two contrasting stories on cellphone/mobile usage caught my eyes today. Both stories were featured in BBC: "Cancer doubts remains over mobiles" and "India state bans mobiles in class". I am not sure if mobile causes any harmful effects to brain or causes cancer but as the studies shows, it doesn't atleast have any short-term side-effects except for annoyance to the rest of the world. I don't have problem with people talking on their mobiles but am not interested in knowing what one saas thinks of her bahu or vice-versa or a boyfriend faking lovey dovey feelings for his girlfriend in full public view or as some mms scandals have shown...oh well haven't they shown enough.

In India, according to some reports and as BBC article shows, cellphone has become one huge fashion accessory, with an average Indian changing their cellphones every 18 months compared to 36 months for a North American user. It is also interesting to see the different ways in which cellphones are being used around the world. Japanese use it to buy their groceries and hang their little toys on the cellphone for fashion, Indian like playing the latest Himesh number as their ringtones, Americans like slim sized phones and Canadians...err...well they just like to carry a mobile if they can afford the bills since we get charged even for incoming calls/smses.

Anyways, all the above fundas now don't apply to me. Why? Oh well, coz I have given up my cellphone for good-ol-landlines. I have been using cellphone for past 8 years and the question is why to leave now and how is the life without a cellphone. To answer the first question, well me and my brother had 2 cellphones when we were away and that was good way to keep in touch and all. After moving here, we thought we will give up one cell and keep one landline but when our last two bills came for $400 (Rs. 16000), it was time to end this cellphone crap and so we both gave our cellphones and took one landline.

Now, how is life without cellphone? Hmmm...not bad actually. Now whenever we take a call at home we know that we don't have to count the minutes on our hand or risk being screwed by the cellphone company like we were before. Also, because we both are out of house most of the day as I come home at 10:00pm and my brother in the evening, cellphone was a waste since we are not allowed to use cellphone at work/school. Although, there are some things that we miss about cellphones, one of them being sending smses but we already have so many different ways to contact people like, orkut, facebook, email, phonecall etc. that we don't miss it that bad. Although, I miss sending smses to few friends from work (you know who) :D Another thing that can be a concern is that since I come late at night from the downtown area and take subway, it is usually good to have a cellphone in emergency situations but the subway system have got free emergency phones, if needed, and so that's not a big deal either. Apart from that, life without cellphone is pretty good.

I am not saying that everyone should give up cellphone because in most cases it has become a necessity esp. when you need to be connected for your work. It is also a good revolution for India because it cuts-off the bribe-seeking middle-men who took 10 years to give us our first land-line and that too with some chai-paani. Also, in a large country like India, where call charges can be dropped to pennies coz of huge number of users, having a cellphone makes more sense then having a landline.

Anyways, my favorite cellphone story is the one based in India 10 years ago . It was the year 1997 (or1998) and cellphones had recently made entry into the Indian market. An average cellphone costed about Rs 50,000+40,000 (insurance). I was at my mechanic, getting my scooter fixed. A huge Punjabi guy comes in his Bajaj Chetak, talks to mechanic about his scooter problem and looks at me standing there to get my scooter fixed. Suddenly out of the blue, he takes out his new cellphone (size of a shoe-box, no less), looks at it in an admiring way like a lover looks at his first love, presses some buttons, smiles and keeps the cellphone in his pocket. And I say in my heart, "Damn, these Delhi people got one more thing to show-off". Little did I knew...