There is something deeply powerful about what you hold in your hand and how it connects to the heart and the head. Unfortunately, for the larger part of the last six months, it has been my phone. That is not to say that the phone cannot be powerful. It can, but it comes with a strong possibility of addiction - the opium of not having to think, the panacea of not having to feel, the opportunity to not have to engage with someone in front of you, thereby making yourself truly vulnerable.
A few months ago, I was stuck with a basic phone instead of my cherished and much-missed android for ten days during a work trip. Those ten days gave me the opportunity to connect so much better to myself, my needs, my fears, my hopes and my deepest regrets in a way that little else had lately done. It made me question decisions I had been putting off and ask myself the reasons for those procrastinations.
These days, I find I need rescuing from my phone. Earlier, I would ask my partner to be my knight in shining armour if he saw me glued to my phone. But then, earlier, I also had a full-time job that provided me with an excuse to be on it.
Of late, I find there are other things that act as my saviour. The topmost three things are cooking, reading and gardening. In that order. The one thing that I thought I would do if I put down the phone more often, has been more difficult doing - writing. Though there is so much to write about, I often find my thoughts struggling between reality and reel-ity. Was the neighbourhood romance happening on the screen or next door. Was there really a John Reese waiting around the corner to prevent 'bad things' from happening? Did I really attend the massive protests in Jantar Mantar - the ex-protest site in the city of Djinns?
The intersection was a wake up call - to temporarily sit my ass down and put my thoughts on record. When the day comes that this muddling is caused by age or some neurological disease, should I want, I should be able to trace back to the evidence from the days when it was caused by something so innocent as the world in my hands. From technology-driven obfuscation of reality to a state of imagined and aspired reality to a neurological one, will it be a short journey or a long one?
