Rantings of a musing-mind
In this nerve wrecking and distorted life, human mind is all about assembling what matters to one’s own life the most. Why would anyone even want to know about a Ramu who gardens for someone in the afternoon, cooks at a Chinese thela in the evening, guards a gated community in the night and goes to a municipal school in the morning? Do we have the time, patience or even access to be curious about his packed cycle? We all are here to become the best of ourselves and not bother about how Ramu is coping up with his schedule. In this ridiculously “I want to be better than you are” kind of world, we have forgotten the concept of US. We draw an invisible distinguishing line, dividing the people of the world on the basis of what we have in abundance. How is that fair for the ones who don’t have anything at all? Standing in the forever hustling street of Mumbai, I noticed something that changed a little bit of my soul.
We all use mobile phones, in fact most of us can’t even imagine a life without a mobile phone but has it ever occurred to us that this device is capable of doing a lot more than just serve our daily dose of entertainment and may be help us make a call or two? Every human has a bunch of sense organs, most of them have 5. Has anyone ever thought beyond the 5th sense, apart from the ones who claim of having absolutely brilliant brains for being able to predict the near future? Not really and the lack of inquisitiveness in today’s generation is taking a toll on their personal and professional life.
Most of us go through at least 3 emotions everyday, joy, sorrow and anger. Have we ever even thought of how exactly does this transit from one emotion to the other occure? No really. At one point, a child is crying in hunger and suddenly a screen showing animated objects with multiple colours is placed in front of him/her. There, transit from yelling his/her lungs out to gawking at the screen in absolute surprise. Most of the urban new born parents and major number of homeless can relate to this ease on a daily basis. There’s an ever growing trend of self-indulgence even in the smallest of day to day activities. When the child is shown a couple of haphazardly shaped and colourful objects popping around on a screen, we are teaching the child to indulge in himself/herself. It is unbelievable how a small wonder of technology holds the capability of over ruling the brain’s command and enslaving us. That is what puts back all those theories of how brain reacts to stimulus.
So I was in the auto rickshaw queue, like a hundred others, tolerating the ear bleeding religious bhajans, surviving the Navratri streets of utter chaos and trying to seek calm from within. I happened to see two men with two kids on the footpath, under an unstable tent which looked like a worn out blanket. The kids, quite young, were howling their lungs out adding to the already unbearble street noise. The men were completely handicapped and did not know what to do with these two cranky beings. Finally it dawned on to one of the men and he started fetching for something in his pocket. After some good 30 seconds of effort-full pocket digging, he found a tiny and thick rectangular phone like object and pressed it. With the sleek, touch and shine monopolising the mobile market, ‘desirable’ is redefined and is forever changing. It was unbelievable to see the vast amount of difference in the child’s facial expressions. From whining away to glory to staring endlessly into the screen, there was a brilliant transition.
A child’s brain is one of the most complicated ones to comprehend. With a million thoughts, not knowing how to express, there is a whole jungle of lost emotions and that tiny box of joy is only complicating it further, transforming the meaning of childhood. The device performed the deed and the men went back to lazing around. This particular act of technological dependence is what self-indulgence is all about in the Millennial world. The kids were merry in their own little cartoon world despite being in between an abundance of mayhem, letting the brain not command or not reacting to the commands released by the brain.
I was awestruck when the kids started imitating whatever was happening on the screen. After a couple of minutes, the cycle of imitating and laughing at each other transformed quite drastically. It looked like the kids enacted and the screen replicated the same. That again was a slight transition from obeying what technology had to say to pretending to own the technology. While the kids where busy in this cycle of acting and imitating, the screen suddenly went off and the kids immediately went back to roaring their lungs out. All their power had been taken away and they were quite the normal cranky kids all over again.
It’s said that on an average, we tap our mobile screens for 2500 times a day. Every activity is gradually getting restricted to this better and ever evolving designed screen which is spoon feeding the art of self indulgence.
