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NATIONAL PASS TIME

 

Can someone tell me what is the national pass time? No, it is not elections or cockroaches. Wars are no more interesting. So read on……...

 

I get up quite early in the morning. To leave your air conditioned comfort zone has some time to go. What do you do in the meantime? The majority of us pick up our mobile phones to check the time. Some knock off to sleep again,

 

Having worn your spectacles, you ‘thumb print’ yourself like an ‘illiterate’ to access your mobile. These days to save your “data” from ‘unknown people’, you lock it with fingerprints and a pattern or both. Face recognition may not work because many are without makeup.

 

Many of us tend to forget the zig-zag pattern. Try opening a Gen Zs phone, it would be like the hairpin bends of jalebi mor in Ladakh. Zig-zag-zag-zig-scrambled zag and a straight zig. Simple!

 

What do you do now? Moment, you touch your phone, the ‘ting-ting’ starts going bonkers. Good morning messages start pouring in. The morning is at it is very good. You skip most. It is not to hurt anyone’s feelings please.

 

Then there are people who fire a ‘burst’ of forwards. It is like the rapid fire from a ‘gatling gun’. Your phone heats up and says “bas kar yaar.” Frankly, if you skip watching/reading them, you miss nothing in life. Most of the forwards are not checked for their veracity or truthfulness. Plus, half of them are chain forwards as if Jesus will come and take you if you don’t forward them to twenty people.

 

Then you check your groups. Messages can run into hundreds. Some discussion, some debate, some banter, some gali-galoch, some nonsensical, some comical, most Hindu-Muslim. It is better to archive such notifications. Then one day, one click and all are deleted without reading. The phone says thank you as if it has lost a few kgs of weight.

 

Then you look for messages from your favourite people. Your tastes align. You love them dearly. Most of all, you read their messages deliberately and respond to them genuinely. Then, it is time to take a break.

 

You rush to the ‘throne’ but not alone. It is the time to catch up with other social media portals with tons of unread messages. WhatsApp got sorted in bed, it is time for Facebook/Insta. First thing is to wish people on their birthdays. Thank God these Meta guys remind you. A quick dive into your memories. Then to the mailbox to check mails which have lost their sheen. Most of them are spam, selling you drugs for vigour and vitality. Many ‘widows’ want to share their millions of dollars. Send all to trash unread.

 

Before you step out in the garden, the mobiles are plugged into their chargers so that when you return, they are fully charged for uninterrupted services.

 

You walk out of the house for an intellectual discussion with a morning walker followed by a cup of tea while watching the sun rise without bothering about the mobile.

 

By now the sun is well up. You retreat to the confines of the house. The AC is turned on to beat the heat and then what do you do. You pick up the mobile again. By now another string of messages would have arrived. It is time to get engrossed again. This time you become the forwarder of messages. The idiot box remains off on purpose.

 

Having cleared all the message notification indicators, you get engrossed watching “reels”. One after the other, they pop up non-stop. You consume them like ‘chitta’ because they are addictive. One can spend hours watching all sorts of nonsense.

 

These social media guys spy on what you talk or click on. One after the other they keep sending you reels which could be about anything under the sun you may have typed, uttered, searched or thought about. Sometimes voluptuous women start showing.

 

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, watching reels is the national pass time. Unless you take a break, reels consume the best part of the day. Had there been no reels, we all would have gone mad.

 

Reels-reels, even more reels in what we watch as if doing something very important. You assume that it is office work, forgetting that you retired long back.

 

We are not attentive, we do not converse, for us reels are ultimate. From our maid, to the lady who waters the colony garden, everyone is glued watching reels. There is a reel for every occasion and taste. I am not sure if there are any fingerprints left on the thumb/ pointer which is used to scroll reels.

 

Honestly, isn’t it a total waste of time? I wonder!!!!!!!

 

JAI HIND
© ® NOEL ELLIS

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