The Hour Without them all

This blog is the story that started off to be an easy seeming thing but ended up being a realization process. Don’t try to take challenges like I did and end up being completely thrown into a new planet some infinite light years from the ever so sweet earth.

It all started with my listening to songs in the iPod. It was a very pleasant weather, better still, great song. It was all fine until my Mom came in slamming the door behind asking me to do her a little help with the household chores, fair as it seemed I had a reason to postpone in for just 2 more minutes, the song would have ended then and I would have done the work with no regrets that I left a song in the middle of listening. That’s all I asked. And what I got back was naturally a complaint that we the people who constitute the generation next are obsessed with the gizmos. Are we? No! (But the truth is hell yeah!). The argument thus continued and ended up as a challenge my Mom posed to me; spend a day without any gizmos. Not that long! I need to make my discussions with my friends on all things with my mobile phone which was in her hit list of gizmos. So it was reduced to JUST an hour. And her gizmo hit list was: iPod, music system, laptop or computer and the ever so friendly and most useful mobile phone. And if I had owned a PS or an XBOX, it would have been in the hit list too.

It was on the next day of the argument that the hour of the evil was to be implemented. How I wish I didn’t accept the challenge! Well, it was late into the day at some 11 pm. First I said to myself, it’s just an hour just till 12. It’ll get over sooner than you think. Well, I wish! I got calls from my friends right then. How grateful I am to them! Then, it stopped ringing. Happy? I wish! They started messaging me about I didn’t know then but later saw about replying to their messages or attending to their calls or else…. Thank you guys, if you’re reading this!

OK somehow they got sick of not getting replies and just stopped it. And then when I saw the clock with hopes that it would have been at least 11:45, I was in for a rude shock, it was just 11:15! And my mind already stared craving to know about the message my friends tried to convey to me which I missed; what could have it been? Some gossip about someone? Some sort of great news? Some sort of a bad news? Well, I was left to imagining to the next what seemed to be half an hour, but it turned out to be just ten minutes. Time did play a very cruel joke on me, why did it go so slow then and very fast when I needed time? Then I was so bored I wanted very badly to listen to a song where could I go for a song then? It could clearly not be from my iPod or my mobile or the music system. A radio? Oh great! First I have no gizmos next I have to go search the dead remains of the storage compartments for an ancient radio which I am not sure if it even had an existence now!

It did have an existence; I did find an ancient radio. But it didn’t play anyway! But that was a blessing in contrast to my misconception. It consumed a good half an hour of the time. This made me just five more minutes! Hurray! Then it finally got over. But I will never forget this day in my life. I learned an important lesson of my life, “The present generation is addicted to the gizmos.” No doubts about it. You wouldn’t be disagreeing with it if you actually saw what I had experienced in your light. Just imagine a day without any gizmos, they would be horrible. The gizmos have become so important to us, we don’t really sense it, but it is the truth. So the next time you hear someone complain about our addiction to gizmos smile and say “yes we are. And we’re happy about it. We can face the world of tomorrow better with the gizmo addiction in comparison with facing it without our gizmo addiction. So by and far. It’s for the good of us, the good of tomorrow and the good of man-kind in all that we are addicted to gizmos”. I’m asking you to do that because I am going to do the same, it would be better to do it with some company instead of doing it all alone!
Untill the next post,
yours,
Arthi Appathurai.