Love in the time of the Cell phone

The cell phone, as we will all agree has revolutionized communication. Our love lives have also not been shielded from it’s effects. In fact it has been changed forever.

Communication between lovers is a subject of much interest. In old times it would be the pigeon with a message tied to one of it’s feet. They would wait long hours pining for a reply from the elusive beloved. Then came an age where the servants, attendants and pages came in very handy. Instead of attempting a rendezvous with the lady the young man would seek a private moment with the attendant of the same lady only to covertly slip in a note into her hand with a couple of coins. Then of course came the age where you would befriend his best friend or brother/sister just to share a moment with him. Decoys are aplenty when the lover really puts his heart to it.

Nowadays love has taken an all new dimension altogether. No more are the lovers shy. She does not hide her lover’s secret letters in her bosom, or he does not hide a lock of her lovely hair in a pendant around his neck. Now they show off the fact that they are in love.

Coming back to the cell phone then…

For simplification sake I am representing the situation from the point of view of a girl. I am sure my readers can give inputs to the other perspective. So lets imagine this girl, who is talking to a significant other quite often on the phone but does not want nosy relatives (namely noisy kid brothers, tell-tale aunts etc.) , what would she do to hide this fact? Either the number would be bare, i.e. it would not be saved. But if you are calling an unsaved number too many times for your own good it is sure to raise some eyebrows if you have really nosy relatives. So she does save the number in the name of a very common girl-name, you know the sort of name girl you are sure to have been acquainted with at some point in your life. Some examples for ready reference – Upasana,Amrita,Sohini, Puja, Priyadarshini, etc.

Another phenomenon is the use of the hands-free device. Now as the name suggests if you are using the device your hands should remain free. But for a lover whispering sweet nothings on a public conveyance moving through a busy road it is a bit of a problem. The mouth piece of the hands free device is dangling near the collar, the ear piece is also poised in the ear rather precariously, much like the gracious ballerina on a tip-toe. With such minimal contact you can neither hear anything nor say anything which the other person (who is in an equally appalling position) can hear. What this leads to is the person pressing the earpiece inside the ear and stopping short of eating the mouth piece, which is held in position by the other hand. Hence, instead of being “hands-free” the device is successful in being “hand-engaging” ( no connotations please ).

And what is funny is that the content of their conversations is quite in a loop during such adventurous journeys.

“Hi, I am at so-and-so place, how far have you reached?”

“Hey, morning, will you be free for lunch today?”

“I have a client to attend today, how much work do you have?”

With a few service providers providing interconnectivity for free the lovers talk for hours on end even if they do not have anything to say, suckers for freebies that we are. I know people who do not disconnect the phone ever. They keep it connected all the time, anytime they would want to talk, they would take it out of the pocket start jabbering. I remember talking to a friend over a cup of coffee, and she suddenly picked up the phone from the table and started talking. We asked her what the deal was and discovered that the phone was connected all the while. It is like having someone hear whatever is happening in your life all the time. It is the closest I have gone to Orwellian eavesdropping.

Another friend of mine spoke to his girlfriend so much over the phone that even when they met he would not say bye when they bid adieu but “rakhchi” (which is Bangla for “I will hang up now”)

The communication is great and all that jazz, but at the end of the day are we losing that personal touch?

It’s just a phone, it’s not who we are.

Acknowledgement: My fellow passengers in ST6