‘As If The Mugging Wasn’t Enough’

As if the mugging wasn’t enough. As if someone pointing a sharp knife at your abdomen and losing a grand in the bargain wasn’t enough, I had to go on and make it better. Gift my cell phone to an opportunistic cabman, leaving it behind as I was vacating his cab. And all this is a span of three days and I am thinking what exactly happened there.

Now I know what it’s like losing a cell. It’s unlike losing anything else. Long after you have lost it, there is that lingering feeling that somehow, someway you could have prevented it. Why does that feeling come into being? The answer lies in the subconscious implications of owning a cell. But first before we pry the subconscious let’s see what does a cell phone bring to the table? Is it a fashion statement? Or is it only a handy, electronic device which enables you to talk to anyone? The truth is that it’s much more than one can imagine.

I think its greatest beauty lies in the way it’s designed to extract a response to us humans. It’s so good at that that every toddler is way too eager to grab a cell at the first given opportunity and imitate his father talking on it or if his father happens to be on the other end, he desperately wants to listen to his voice. Apart from that, it’s the function that it performs that makes it so popular. I imagine that if a cell was a human being, it would be the most popular guy/girl in college. After all it’s so good at remembering names, and b’days and meetings. It keeps record of the conversations you have had, writes to you if it forgets to call, and not to mention produces endearing sounds and vibrations.

So if a cell is capable of doing so much and with such ease, imagine how profusely it could affect a person who has never been habituated to using a cell, let alone possessing it, day after day, week after week and year after year. Giving a cell to such a man is not very different from putting a transmitter on an orangutan. It’s a foregone conclusion that the orangutan will get tried of the constant itch caused by the transmitter and at some point in time pull it off and bury it in the nearest pile of elephant poop. For an orangutan this is a very natural process which is a direct result of his subconscious thinking, which dictates to him that the transmitter is no good for him.

Now after having evaluated, how an orangutan’s behavior compares that with a human with regard to interfering foreign entities, let us now examine the behavior of a bounty hunter to complement our understanding of a person who has never owned a cell and now is suddenly expected to baby-sit one and it goes without saying that he is also expected to pamper him with coochicoo ring tones, new dresses, and nourish it with prepaid and post paid milk. Letting go of the enormous temptation of analyzing the thinking of the famous-in-little-known-circles bounty hunter Nami baba (of the 44 roomies fame) let’s analyze the thinking of our very own American hero Indiana Jones. Indiana Jone’s life history forces us to ask the question, what in the world does Indiana have in breakfast that always keeps him into trouble and thus in Spielberg’s good books? The truth is that it doesn’t matter if Indiana has baby octopuses or foot fungus in breakfast; he is almost always as susceptible to danger and trouble as ever. Do you think he does it consciously? The fact is that he can do it over and over again successfully is because it’s his subconscious that finds trouble for him on his behalf. He doesn’t have to move a muscle to do that. All the muscles come into motion only when he is deep into what his subconscious planned for him. And to prove the dominance of his subconscious may I just ask you how long do you think Jones will survive the life of a hermit if awarded one? Or why do you think that closer to home, Bunty and Bubbly found it hard to lead a simple life which although did involve applying profuse quantities of oil on each other’s bodies (hmm…why am I bringing this up when its totally beside the point. I think it’s the ‘all thoughts lead to sex’ syndrome of the Nami-baba of the forty four roomies’ fame).

Coming to the point now, since we have already spent a lot of time building up the atmosphere for a decent discussion on cell phones and to be specific lost cells, I want you to imagine what would happen if Indian Jones was told to keep a cell all the time with him irrespective of wherever he went, whatever he did. Is it even thinkable? It’s impossible. One might argue that he is of the time when cell phones were not even invented. Okay in that case try to imagine a Rocky with a cell phone? Do you think Rocky will give a damn about a cell phone? You know what I think he will do if he happened to have one. He will leave it in the next cab that he took to home. That’s because he understands that cell phones are meant for button pressing, Gameboy freaks like Jame Bond, and Mr. Ethan Hunt of Mission Impossible.

I know all the above cannot justify me losing the cell, leaving it behind in a Taxi. The problem complicates further when you have the summer trainee Namit Prasad and the bounty hunter Nami-baba living in the same body. It seems this time Namit Prasad was had by nami-baba big time. But it cannot be ruled out that Namit Prasad was a secret accessory to the act because now once again without a cell, he is breathing free and not mistaking other cell phone rings for his own which used to vex him greatly. He is now free to pursue the continuous thread of thought that he is so accustomed to.

And yes if you are wondering why it’s so different losing a cell, it’s because you were in love with it, its predictability, its exemplary etiquette and its easily mastered menu. And because of the fact that it keeps you connected to your loved ones so that you can mess it up by calling them when you could have otherwise increased mutual fondness by just dreaming away about them.