Mobile Phone Mania

I am not going to say about all the ill effects of mobile phone. I feel this is one invention, I wish had been invented a little earlier. I love my mobile phone and all the things I could do with it. My mobile phone is just not a phone. It is a companion. Besides helping me keep in touch with my loved ones via a call or sms, it helps me do many things. I take pictures of whatever fancies me the very instant. I could listen to music while I drive. I could watch a movie while I travel. I could read a book. I could organise my "things to do". I can remember birthdays, anniversaries and appointments.I can browse Internet.I can email.I can play games.

Just a recap of how my life was before mobile phones :

1. I used to carry a pouch full of one rupee coins to use in any coin phone booth to inform home that I could be late from school/college/tuition.

2. When I moved to Chennai - away from my home town and started staying in a hostel, I had to stay in a queue in a phone booth near my hostel to call home every night.

3. Internet was still new. And not all my friends used to use it. So, I used to write letters to them almost every alternate day( this is something I miss now; that intimacy and closeness, which I felt in writing letters is missing in emails). The letters would contain the details of the forthcoming meeting place and time.

4. I carried a copy of Chennai map( I still have the copy) in my bag. It had all the bus numbers with locations.

5. I used to call my friends in their office landlines, hostel land line and used to wait till my friend(s) are informed of the same. This resulted in each friend having many numbers - office, client(s) office, home, hostel etc. And all this numbers were noted down alphabetically in a phone book, which I carried in my bag.

6. I used to write a diary. I miss that healthy habit now.

The above is just a short list of things before the mobile phone era. Though I do miss some of the things which I did in that period, I should say, mobile phones have made the world smaller and more accessible.

Having said all that, my real idea behind this post: things I would have loved to capture in my mobile phone camera. Here goes the list with a brief description of the incident.

1. Open Quiz at Science Centre in Tirupati - Those days, when I was in school, some of us used to cycle to Science Centre in Tirupati, to participate in an open quiz conducted every week on a particular day. On one such day, I answered a question -"What is Hemophilia". No one in the hall of around two hundred people knew the answer and I was the only one who had raised the hand. I would have loved if someone had captured that moment when I answered it correctly and was called on stage.

2. When we were kids, my two brothers never stayed at home after school. They were always in the ground playing. This was the time, when they were ready to be off to the ground after school.One of them used to cycle, and the other would become a pillion rider. Both my brothers are tall. It so happened that, one brother sat on the pillion and the other started to cycle away. The bicycle had gone forward, but the brother who was (supposed) to be on the pillion was sitting/standing in sitting position on the road. The three of us had a good laugh.I wish I could have captured the jolly moment.

3. My brothers innocent childhood scenes. I would need a separate post to write all those.

4. The smile of a baby, when I held her finger in a crowded bus.

5. My first venture into kitchen - burnt omelet.

6. All my childhood paintings.

7. My younger brothers toothless grin in childhood, when taken on a ride on his tricycle and when colorful balloons are left into the air.

8. My toys collection.

9. We live near a railway track. My father used to work in railways. Sometimes, my father used to travel in the train which passes on that track. The three of us - my brothers and I, used to run near the track when the train passes, to wave to our father. He used to wave back. Though I do not have any photo of this, the memory is as clear as any video.

10.My younger brother's - chappal train. When my youngest brother was a kid, and had not started going to school yet, he used to play by himself, till we return from school. One of his activity was to make a train out of all our foot wear. I think he would have been a year old then. He used to arrange all the footwear based on size. The engine would be my fathers black shoes, followed by his chappals, then my mothers, followed by mine, then my first brothers and at last his shoes.

I could write till here. I shall keep updating this post, whenever I recollect an incident.