Reflections on a phoneless 10 days

I am phoneless.

My Hutch connection has played up and it appears to be taking an eternity to resolve. This has resulted in me nightly lambasting multinational corporate capitalist consumer victimization. The slavery under which I am bound to my cell phone has, thus, recently struck me. No, this is not going to be a cynical essay on how (wo)men are being enslaved by their own machines. I am a firm believer and condoner of that particular state of affairs. I am a stereotypical teenager and a sellout to my mechanical accessories, and not ashamed to be so, so there!

Life without my cell is dreary and slow. Since I my service seems to have expired, I am unable to do a thing except receive messages. And I feel doubly helpless when I cannot respond to them. In disgust I have stopped taking my phone out with me, and the empty feeling in my pocket, without the familiar pressure against the thigh, often sends me into minute paroxysms of panic; I feel like I've dropped it or my pocket has been picked. I cannot help it, I have a neurotic fear of pickpockets.

I think I have forgotten my ringtone, and to receive those IRRITATING. ANNOYING AND ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING advert messages from Hutch telling me to pay an additional 6 bucks to download Jhalak Dikhla Ja or Rock n Roll Soniye on my phone when I can't even listen to Knocking On Heaven's Door, just makes me want to either chuck my phone at a concrete wall or pop a blood vessel!!!

Every call I make these days from my now-only-hope landline conjures up images of what my mum's face will look like when the phone bill arrives not only coloured with Internet charges but now with additional illegal phone calls!! "Ek ghonta dhore kotha bolbe na!!!!", " Collegey ki bondhuder shonge jotheshto golpo hoy na?? Aabar bari phirey phone!!" and "Billta ke debe chandu??" ( the last statement made in a sugary sweet tone with laced with venom) have once again made their way into my bounds of routine hearing. I am reduced to making clandestine calls when she's either out or in the bathroom.

And it's not like Hutch employees ease the blood pressure either. They are so superficially sweet and stupid it makes you want to kill them or cry. Call centre people, as much in the dark as you are! You can never even find out on which torture rack they're slowly murdering your connection!!!

But the bit which really bites is the greenbacks! The way they suck up your dough and then make YOU run around for it just kills you with the irony of it all. In the end they'll make sure you give up in exhaustion and they've got it all for themselves without even lifting their baby-pink asses from a faux-leather couch. And THEN, you'll hafta pay MORE to start over to either the same or a different capitalist telecom company coz by this time they've made sure you're enslaved to your phone!!!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate life without my cell. I hate it I hate it I hate it. I don't care if I had already lived a robust and healthy 18 and a half years without one. I want it NOW!!!! Yes, kindly note the lure and addiction of technology on today's youth.
I miss missed calls, and replying to messages, and getting a call on a bus, feeling the familiar pressure in my pocket and my ringtone!!!!!

If I don't explode with impatience and frustration first, I think I'll just tyaagofy it all and become a phoneless sanyasi.