My clouded cloud

Manju Gupta

I HAVE been to hell and back. The only consolation is that I am among the lucky few who have lived to tell the tale. I had lost orientation of time and space. I was in a haze, never sure of facts or figures. I often forgot birthdays and anniversaries and had stopped exchanging pleasantries. Like an outcast, I avoided social gatherings and sites. Sharing memories and memorabilia was too much work and it seemed ages since I had  told the world  what was on my mind. Worse still, I had stopped indulging in the basic human activity of sharing, liking and forwarding. 

When acquaintances commented that  I have not  been myself lately, I nodded gravely. My phone had developed a snag and though the company had promised prompt service, it took them three days to replace it. For 72 hours, I was at the mercy of a very old device and my own ‘devices’ which are equally outdated. Among other things, my interim phone lacked smartness. The first few hours were spent in establishing that what doesn’t respond to touch won’t respond to a push or shove. I nearly cracked the screen in an effort to open a mail by tapping it with increasing frustration and force.

Since I was expecting to get back my technically advanced model sooner, I had not cared to copy my contacts onto the temporary recruit. I noticed  artificial intelligence had proliferated around me at the cost of my own. Earlier I could rattle off  dozens of phone numbers from memory, but now I only knew my husband’s apart from my own. I would call him for necessary  information. Let me just say that though I have  great faith in his potential to be many things, a chirpy, helpful telephone operator is not one of them!

The minuscule alphanumeric keyboard was too cumbersome to dial numbers, messaging seemed even more farfetched. Frustration gripped me as I peered at the miniature  screen with my failing eyesight. Typing was slow and tedious without  predictive text and spell-check. I sadly realised that years of enthusiastic assistance by my phone had put me out of practice. 

I sorely missed the search engines. Having these ready reckoners on my phone has made them an omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient part of my life. I like to Google before I doodle or babble. But now robbed of this facility, I was condemned  to  silence.  

Sans GPS, I was a lost babe in the woods, or more accurately, concrete jungle. I realised that the city had changed and I had stopped noticing landmarks ever since I had come to rely on the eye in the sky. Instead of  orienting myself in the traditional way, I follow directions given in a thick American accent. I am never  sure I have reached my destination  till my phone says so.

I haven’t yet started counting the little things I missed, the music, pictures, games, pedometer, camera  and news updates. All seemingly insignificant but together they make my life complete.   

Thankfully, the nightmare is over  but a thought keeps me awake. As phones have been getting smarter  have I been getting  dumber? Without it I was utterly, bitterly lost. My plight reminded me of those childhood fables in which the monster’s ‘being’ resides outside his body. So, has my phone become the centre of my being? Have I unwittingly given a small inanimate gadget the power to take the I out of me?