CELL OBSSESSED

 The 21^st century woman that I am, cell phones had become a necessity for me. It was a necessity for everybody, come on, even my neighborhood chai wallah has one! I decided to upgrade my parent’s mindset a little more in tune with the modern world.

After a lot of persuasion, I finally convinced him to come with me to a mobile shop and buy a mobile. He is working at a managerial level and I told him how useful it would be to talk to everybody while travelling and send messages and emails instead of posts. Anyways, he decided to buy a mobile phone!

I took him to a mobile shop and he was totally zapped, he knew of course there were various 1000 models of cell phones but seeing it together under one roof was a whole new deal. Knowing that it was his first, we bought a simple no fuss, no complications cell phone. I wasn’t exactly happy about the model we chose but that was apt for a person new to cell phones.

Later at home, I sat down with him and told him to read the whole manual. I could have taught him but I wanted him to read first. A slow reader that he is, he took almost two hours to read through the entire manual. I was happy that he had read everything about the mobile and could operate it, probably without my help. I told him to switch on the mobile.

If you are wondering about the sim card, I gave him mine while he learnt to use the cell phone.  He didn’t know how to switch it on. I glanced through the instruction booklet and it was in an easy layman language.

I patiently taught him how to switch on the mobile. I taught him the basics on how to receive and make a call. That was simple enough. I thought that was enough for him at present but he wanted to know all the features.

Harassed and impatient, I taught him all quickly. He learnt it fast or so I thought. The next day he was back with more questions. He said that he had cut a call instead of picking it up and when he tried to message, he couldn’t get the proper words.

I was on brink of losing my hair, hiding my intolerance; I sat down and taught him all the functions.

After a month finally, I taught him how to operate the cell phone. Mind you, and this was an ordinary Nokia 3310, the simplest phone there is. It scared me to think about him upgrading his phone further. He was happy he had learnt the phone finally, I was happy he didn’t need my help anymore.

My mother complained that he was always on the cell phone even during dinner time. There was nothing I could do about that, been there, done that, you see!

The bomb dropped on me when my mother asked me for a cell phone. I realized what I had done. Now sitting with both of them at home, each having a cell phone in hand.

Its kind of funny, kind of frustrating when you see both of them exploring the cell phone in the darkness of the night.