A Day Without My Phone (OR, How to Really Pay Attention on Dates)

There are billions of cellphone users in the world. On one fateful day, there was one less. ME.

Here’s what life (a day and a half) without a cellphone looks like. (Photo: Sanjoy Deb/The Quint)

When I first had my cell phone taken away, I bawled (in my head) for an hour. What 27-year-old woman has her cell phone taken away like a juvenile delinquent, you ask? The kind that’s been living on borrowed technology for a week.

I first lost my cell phone while I was watching Dangal, rather enamoured, inside a jam-packed movie hall. By the time I had risen to celebrate the proverbial victory – much like Aamir Khan’s belly in the second half – my phone had left its pristine space in an unguarded spot near my arse. Frantic searches ended in tears and a faint sense of annoyance that I couldn’t sit back in the auto back home like a sated customer, x-raying Dangal’s finer points. Instead, I must worry about a lost phone.

Delhi has done many things to me – the best of which is to instil a lackadaisical jugaadu gene. Unwilling to buy a phone just yet and willing to live a short-lived, borrowed life, I coaxed a friend who reviews phones for a living to spare one. “But someone will eventually take it away!” he spluttered. “Pretty please?” I said, once I’d already pocketed the device. Sure enough, someone came to take it away in a week, and that is how I was left, phoneless and friendless (at least in the social media world) for nearly 36 hours.

Here’s How I Lived Those Dark, Dark Hours:

3 pm: Newly phoneless and one friend less (I wasn’t going to talk to the poor phone-review-friend for a while, I vowed), I sat muttering and fidgeting at things that looked like cell phones.

3.05 pm: The world seemed to have changed. I felt invisible. I realised most people have a two-second attention span when you’re talking to them. They nod while you speak, furtively glancing down at their phones. Then they abandon all pretence and make love to their phones.

3.45 pm: I am beginning to think of statistics to ease my mind. There are billions of polluting agents and pizza eaters in the world. There are also billions of cellphone users in the world. Today, there is one less. Who does that statistic help?

(GIF Courtesy: runeatrepeat.com)

4 pm: It’s been an hour since I’ve crossed over into the dark and I see a faint hope in my computer. At least there’s still Facebook, I gush with newfound love.

5.15 pm: I have had countless cups of coffee and laughed raucously about not having a phone (while crying silently into each cup). I have not made much headway with the story I am supposed to be writing for the day, because you cannot work without distractions, and everyone knows the tiny handheld distractions you need.. (No. Well then get off my post.).

6 pm: I have made necessary phone calls (work stuff) for the day, so that no one bothers calling me – either on my old phone that is now in the pocket of a disrespectful Dangal watcher (why were you not watching the movie and nicking my phone instead!!) or on the temporary lifeline that was lent to me by ‘Erstwhile Friend’. (Erstwhile friend has now offered to help me scout for a new phone, so I am slightly mollified).

7 pm: I must head to a date. And I have no means of Googling restaurants. (Which is oddly unnerving and weirdly fascinating for a change). I can afford to surprise myself? Can Zomato tell that it lost the billion clicks I usually give it per minute?

7.15 pm: The boyfriend speaks – and I listen (?). There are a few inadvertent jerks of the hand and flinching of the fingers as I reach into an empty pocket. You are behaving like an alcoholic who just had her lost drop, I tell myself sternly. That does it. Fingers stay in place.

(GIF Courtesy: cloud.lovindublin.com)

9 pm: Back home, I decide to go for my customary pre-dinner walk in a Lajpat Nagar labyrinth where no one really should be walking at all. (On account of being hit by cars and all.) I realise I’m walking for the first time without listening to music on the device – or scrolling through WhatsApp. I realise I have never seen the little Chinese restaurant in the next lane that delivers past midnight. Score!

10 pm: I make two calls (from the roommate’s cell) – one each to my mother and father, and start to relax. They’re the only souls who call daily with their litany of questions, and I have fulfilled a filial duty. I am rather relaxed now because I have decided to drink wine and read a book by a lantern someone gifted me on my last birthday. (Why has that NEVER occurred to me before??)

(I woke up the next morning to no alarms – except for the sound of the roommate snoring – and life never felt better. I’ll spare you the recapitulation of the next 24 hours, except to say, you should try this some time. Your fists, eyes and ears – after the initial withdrawal symptoms – actually start to feel like appendages that can be put to other uses. Like, talking to a person eye-to-eye. And eating a delicious-looking plate of food without Instagramming it.)