Two One Double Zero Speaks

For a change, this time the blogger lets me speak, maybe because his friends and co workers are circumspect about having a conversation with him and he has ran out of topics. He shamelessly publishes all that he hears and speaks in his blog, perhaps, as he has written, it’s his way of celebrating life and the best impressions of life reach him when he is with his friends…But its necessary sometimes, to look at you through someone else’s eyes to know more about yourself!

Usually, we mobiles never speak….or never get a chance to speak…even though lot is being spoken through us…we have always remained silent…. talkatively silent, I would say! I am the blogger’s mobile or ex-mobile, now…I have been with my owner for the last 4 years…and I have seen life unfolding in and around me, not only my owners life but many lives….I have witnessed different shades and seasons of life…

Before I came to the owners hand I was jailed for almost a year without any address….the owner’s mom felt that he should clear all his arrears and then only he is worthy enough to own me…it was the most distinguished honour I ever got ! but I don’t think I deserved it…after 1 year of sentence I was set free and I met my owner…perhaps his mother realized that the owner wont be using me for another 4 years if he was to clear all his arrears…and by that time I will be nearing retirement, she was right though! And hence I got the 10 numeral address in 2005 and the owner began feeding me with charge. It was his final year at college and knowing my owners character I thought I wouldn’t have to work so much…but I was wrong!

I was late by 1 year for launch and slightly old fashioned then itself, but the owner never treated me like that, he was as excited to see me as he was seeing some show stopper…even though I don’t sing and wink, he never felt it as a limitation. What matters is, how well one uses what is available and my owner was good at it, even if he wasn’t at times, he was smart enough to know the ones who knew how to make use of the available resources….

Pardon me if I am causing confusion or if I sound a bit gizmo, I am quite unaware of the way how you humans appreciate literature, all I got to see these 4 years was texting which never really needs grammar or spelling, but I have also come across messages which were poems sometimes, anger sometimes, laughter sometimes, disappointment sometimes, break up sometimes, relief sometimes and love sometimes. I have seen the blush, the shyness and the skip of heart beat occasionally.

There were few among us , the 36 24 36 models who could sing for hours on end and wink on the click on a G spot and then the impressions in front will be imprinted on their brain and sometimes in the respective owner’s heart…but they never gave me any competition ! Strange it would sound, but it was because of the person my owner was and the kind of friends he had.

During final year he used to recharge the sim as you would say, or feed my brain I would say, regularly but then he had no one but his mom and dad to call…so initially I had not much of work but then the owner was too much involved in his friends’ matters and he used to do conditional feeding or, offer recharges in your lingo and give me away to his friends and that’s when I came across life unfolding in different colours. I was colour blind but I could feel this irony called life, that you humans think is the ultimate truth, unfolding through me as messages and conversations and songs and abuses and smileys….

The owner’s roomie at the hostel used me more than the owner, but I never got to hear any romance in his calls and his messages weren’t particularly flowery either…

I got to knew that this roomie has had his time when I was still in prison…and now he is kind of retired or taken time off, that’s why the romance part was absent…

This roomie was known to be a charmer, chick-charmer as we mobiles say. If I had arrived earlier may be I would have been of help but it was a quadrilateral, I wont say a love quadrilateral, perhaps a quadrilateral of misunderstandings between friends…even though the angle of inclination was more between roomie and the girl, roomie deliberately disassociated himself from the quadrilateral…but he was hurt badly…and so was the girl…

These humans, when they follow their hearts they hardly listen to their brain and when these hearts get hurt, it gets so afraid that it never dares to manipulate the human again, its so afraid of getting hurt again…and the brain takes over and heart stops wishing again, it keeps suppressing the desires, its so insecure and this causes immense suffering in the human that owns this heart…

Thank god we mobiles don’t have a heart to listen to…these humans, even though they appear strong and intelligent outside, when it comes to the matter of their hearts, how fragile they become!

I got to hear the roomie’s story from messages and conversations between him and his female friend. When the heart gets hurt, the brain finds new pastures for the humans to go about! But the heart doesn’t get involved easily in such cases or never gets involved in some cases. The heart and brain do have their clashes of ego. How strange! The way we mobiles and Sims work in harmony, it will be a fact to envy at for you humans!

At night, owners another friend used to take me away…and then I will have to bear the scent of cigarette and at times that of vodka and rum…I hate it actually, but we always remain silent, culpably silent I would say this time. But I won’t blame him, the girl he thought to be his had another boyfriend. His romance was one sided and never really took off. But thank god, both of them were more interested in talking than texting…what you guys call the keypad, had started to wear out and my owner kept replacing the case with a new one…how ridiculous! When you humans face this wear and tear, that’s what you do?

The owner never really got any, so called, interest generating messages…usually Airtel sent him messages asking him to fill money…and he used to do it, more often than not for his friends…he is a useless idiot, I would say, when it comes to his matters… always angry and never really bothers to understand girls or the delicacies and vagaries associated with their mind… and hence Airtel sends him more messages than anyone else…

Even after the unsuccessful one sided story I never really experienced rest…there were other takers with two sided stories to tell…

Even though this guy had a mobile of his own, he used to come to my owner and borrow me for a day or two at times for the free offers! He as well as his mobile was spoiled effluent brats.

Theirs was a 2 sided romance, that’s were I learned a good amount of literature from! but later I got to hear from owner and his other friends’ messages that it didn’t last long… after college this friend was so confused as to how to take this romance further and abandoned her …

And he was smart enough to find solace in fag and booze and brave enough to put the blame on her and escape from himself! Escapisms, the strangest of them would be escaping from oneself!

He didn’t abandon his mobile though, sometimes we are more fortunate…fortunate than few of those humans around…

Towards the end of his final year the owner used to insert different sims on me, thank god we are immune to many of those diseases unlike humans! And there were takers for all these Sims. One of his close friends had a story going on, which was part romance part time pass, stretching into the late nights, when I used to bathe in the moonlight and shiver in the December mist…He used to use a different sim for a different miss !

And then there was this girl who used to take liberties to finish the offer recharges in one day and also trespass into the talktime of the owner! She was so genuine and the owner never said no to her liberties only because of the genuineness she showed towards her romance, but the guy on the other end wasn’t genuine, perhaps it was his own talktime that he was using! Later I got to hear that, this story too ended without any trumpets being blown.

My owner has had many telephonic interviews which I have been through, and he used to screw all of them and used to put the blame on me and the sim….Guys are all alike when it comes to escapisms!

And now I have been plutoed and the owner has one of those sexy models which can sing and wink but he doesn’t have anyone now to send messages or to focus at to wink! Airtel is back to fill his inbox again, Cinderella becomes Cinderella again! That’s the irony that the owner’s life has been all along…now I have reached older fingers. Half of the day I am anesthetized, or switched off in your slang. My case doesn’t get hurt any longer.

I don’t have any stories that ended well to tell, perhaps I am cursed, I hope the new model will script many stories of success, if not for others atleast for the owner, because I always had more stories to tell about others than his.

Few days back he had caused the greatest insult that I have been through and then I knew the time has come to leave these fingers…it was not an insult actually he was just being factual. When one of his friends took me and checked me out, he whispered that this damn thing that I am, is not worthy to be shown to friends, not fit to be displayed among those sleek chicks which his friends possessed…perhaps he didn’t mean to say it, that’s why he whispered ! I am hopeful that the new mobile and its features will help him to shift his focus away from the recent break up he has had. The mind creates such self made elbow crutches to walk without limping…….

There are few stories about the owner worth scripting but I don’t want to share them here, this is my space and I am more or less like him, doesn’t like to play our own music!

But what is a mobiles story with out few quotes and unquotes, to say the least…..?

Vinod: Dood…. How you doing?

“Hey, whats up…I am...…crawling back to life.”

Vinod: Dood….I know how it feels, break up is not easy to deal with, but it’s not impossible to deal with.

“It appears nothing short of impossible now”

Vinod: Anyways, I rang to tell you something else, Our Alex’s dad just passed away. Cardiac Arrest.

“Oh, that’s shocking. Only yesterday, I had talked to Alex and he was sounding perfectly happy. Unexpected”

Vinod: Dood…we need to go, he needs us now

“Yes, yes…I understand, I am ok, I will start in the late night train, see you at his home, be there before the cremation.”

And he went to see Alex and his late Father. When compared to this adversity, his break up doesn’t appear an adversity at all. A bigger crisis always helps you to see through smaller ones…To make a line in the black board look smaller the best way is to draw a bigger line next to it! Perhaps, my owner was benefited by the tragedy at his friend’s home!

Few days later…

“Dood….I now have a new mobile “

Vinod: What did u do with the old one? Donated to some museum?

“Yeah, donated it to something as old as a museum! Dood, as you know, I am emotionally attached to it, not me alone, all those who have used it for atleast 2 days are not going to forget it! The 2100 was like my sibling for the last 4 years, for how many stories it has been the silent partner! I can’t just give it away like that, my mom is using it now. After 4 years, the vibrator won’t shiver It as it used to! “

Sania Mania.

Time: The Winter of 2002

Place: Men's Hostel A block, top floor, Room No.319

Characters:

PP: Cant reveal the full form of this acronym due to profanity related reasons...I can’t be sure whether kids are reading this with their parents or alone, so can’t recommend parental discretion and hence PP will remain PP...Rahul Dravid is like an unofficial father to PP, PP loves everything about the Wall, (Rahul Dravid-The Wall as he is popularly known...) PP knows everything about the Wall...every record the Wall holds, every match the Wall has played....where does he goes to shop, when he got married, when did his wife conceive...PP is a Wall database! 

Jeff: The one who hails from Fort Kochi, the same place from where Bilal John Kurishingal (the most stylish gunda Malayalam cinema has ever produced, Fort Kochi is a popular breeding ground of gundas) hails... that would tell you something about Jeff.

But the only visible similarity between the two is that both don't bath...invisible similarities couldn't be ruled out though, but since it was just the first week at hostel, none of us had seen each other in that detail and even though half of the bathrooms didn’t had  doors, me and PP would goto bath in the same time and that too during power cuts (thanks to the govt.of kerala, their unending support and encouragement in the field of higher education has many facets, the power cut they provide at night so that people can use the doorless bathrooms in Mens Hostels is just a humble example. And in ladies hostel, we never really got a chance to get that deeper into the LH, we fervently hoped that the govt. was impartial in its unending support in the case of doors!) at night and in the morning when the sun was still under those hills in the east...and as I said we never saw Jeff going to the bathroom...maybe, it will take time !

The New comer:  who was 3 weeks late to join the hostel fearing ragging, but ragging was in his destiny! He is a die hard fan of VVS Laxman, and not so fond of Rahul Dravid or-The Award Movie as he is infamously known!

'Sania Mania' is the new comer's version...

I was waiting for the college bus in front of MH... college was 15 minutes away by foot, so we had to be taken in the bus, as there were too many enticements in the way to college in the form of cinemas and eateries and Ladies Hostel, there was every chance that boys wont reach college in 15 minutes, or wont reach college at all in some days! And hence the bus service...

As I was waiting and it was my first day at the hostel, I hardly knew anyone...all new faces...cant distinguish first years from 2nd years and in some cases even from those nerds among final years....nerds never had the history of looks that suited their class, its the same in engineering college as well...All I have heard was to keep away from something called Bruson Harold...yes, his names itself symbolized terror...

The wait for the bus continues, he saw me standing alone, and he appeared to be little older than me, he approached me and smiled...I didn’t smile back, maybe because I was too frightened and smiling back at a senior was against status quo...

I asked him, "S1 S2?”

"Yes" he replied

I was relieved, it was kind of a feeling that occurs when a mallu finds another mallu in Punjab.

"Me, CS and you?”

"Royal Mechs" he replied

Mechanical Engineering fellows had this rare privilege of adding the word Royal as prefix even though they couldn't claim any lineage of that kind...infact the machines in their labs looked so royal that you start suspecting whether the king ruled Uganda or Zimbabwe? 

"Did you get any ragging yet? I couldn't resist asking.

"No one caught me yet" he replied lowering his voice

"Beware of this guy called Bruson, Bruson Harold, he is the most dangerous one among seniors”   I wanted him to be afraid as well. The mallu in Punjab would obviously warn the other one about the Pakistan which is near by!

"I have also heard about that bugger, will be careful...you have not seen him yet, right?" he asked.

"Yes, I have not seen him yet...have heard that he will rag first years from dusk to dawn"

"Not exactly dusk, from midnight to dawn, maybe...that’s what I heard” he replied

A shiver ran through my spine...But how does this guy know all this? By that time the bus came and my roomies also came running and sat next to me in the bus

PP: "what were you talking to him?”

Jeff: "How did you get the courage to talk to him???"

New Comer: "Why?  What happened?  He is 1&2 Mech. We were talking about Bruson and how to keep away from him, you guys only told me to be careful of Bruson..."

"Oh, yes but we forgot to tell you how Bruson looks, our mistake" they replied in unison.

New Comer: "Oh, common, I was just warning him to keep away from Bruson..."

PP: "He wouldn't worry about that..."

New comer: "Why?”

Jeff: "Because Bruson doesn't have to be afraid of himself unless he has got some psychological problem!"

New Comer: "Now, what does it mean? Tell me before I get some psychological problem..."

PP: “He is not 1&2 Mech, he was, 3 years back!”

Jeff: "You were talking to Bruson himself"...and Jeff laughed as if he was watching some Mr. Bean movie....

New comer: "I guess, then my problem won’t be psychological alone, it will be physiological as well..."

PP: “and it can get financial as well!”

Jesus...save my soul...what would I do now, go back home and not come back to hostel for...few weeks, maybe? Run away from college? not possible, dad will start ragging me if I do something like that...what to do ?...But why am I calling Jesus when we have countless number of similar ones in our repertoire itself...maybe because the Satan is appearing in the form of Bruson and Bruson Harold doesn't sound Buddhist or Brahmin...!

At college there was this meeting for freshers and few of the parents were also present...the leader of the anti ragging squad- this guy from S7 Civil, who looked anemic as if he had AIDS and was atleast a semester late for haircut, gave a lengthy and hair raising lecture about the activities of antiragging squad, the proud students union, activities of the non existent placement cell etc....

Apparently, freshers should learn to look beyond the hair and concentrate during such hair raising lectures so that they wont get distracted from the main idea the orator is trying to convey, also they should gain courage and return back to hostel after class...I said to myself.

In my room at the hostel I was expecting nightmare long before nightfall but nothing happened that night...no signs of the bloodsucking bruson, only his cousins were at work consuming our blood ...yes, there was no dearth of mosquitoes in our room...

The next day, post midnight we went through the ragging drills for 2 hours, and would you believe it, it was the same anemic-antiragging-orator who ragged us! Height of irony! Maybe this was to give us some idea of what lied ahead or what lied beneath, rather. Yes, the floor below had 35 rooms full of seniors!!! 

The next evening...

As every room in the hostel, ours also had four walls...two had shelves to keep our text books and luggages... ofcourse, texts were non existent in S1S2...the third wall was reserved for God , calendar , timetables and spiders which spun their webs in the photos of God. As God himself kept on weaving a web in our lives...we didn’t really restrict the spiders from doing their job...its Men's hostel of a Government college in Northern Kerala, let socialism prevail!

But now, it seems only chaos is gona prevail...in the remaining wall, PP wants to paste Rahul Dravid...The Wall should cover our wall....PP had a few kilos of The Wall's posters, he himself weighed only a few kilos more! and I wouldn't allow The Wall to cover the wall...I want VVS to dominate the wall like he dominates the bowlers in the field...The posters of the 281 by Laxman at the Eden Gardens, that alone was necessary for me to counter the Wall and his non biological son...so this verbal duel was going on between me and PP and suddenly Jeff signaled danger...

"What, is it the warden or princi?" PP asked.

But, then it shouldn't be a danger sign, it should be a sign of surprise! The warden, ever since he was given that post, made it a point to keep away from not only the hostel but from the very panchayat in which the hostel stood...if principal had to visit us then it would be part of some punishment meted out to him by higher authorities...

Jeff: "No, Bruson has come for some clarifications"

PP: "now the Gods in the other wall alone will save you"

And my feelings then...are beyond words.

Bruson came and started with an appetizer...it was the usual stuff, sitting in an imaginary chair for 15 , 20 minutes but he was kind enough to make PP and Jeff do the same along with me...time crawled like a snail....suddenly we heard a knock in the door....who is it? some god-sent angel to save us?...it happened to be the younger brother of Satan called Sahadevan, perhaps this is the season of satans and gods were suffering from loose motion like us(that was something the hostel mess offered for free. perhaps, things had to happen fast inside the toilets until the freshers got used to the toilets and the fragrance that emanated ...the hostel mess ,the toilets, the seniors, the gods...they were all part of a chain which worked in unison ! )...soon bruson was relieved of his serving-appetizer duties and it was time for the 5 course dinner...I cant mention the name of all the dishes that were  served in the dinner...however, we were made to... read news papers in the tune of some malayalam melody, demonstrate how hanuman would cross M.G. Road, Jeff was made vishwamitran with the drafter as the instrument to rest his hand and pp was made menaka and made to dance around viswamitran...but menaka failed miserably this time....perhaps a more seductive one was necessary to entice this viswamitran, we were made to piss on a steel glass which was given an electric charge of 2 Volts. As per theory saline water is good conductor of electricity, that night we experienced how good a conductor it was. Even Faraday wouldn't have dreamt of such creative use of electricity! The dinner went on till early morning with few more unmentionables and then bruson was back to serve the dessert...I had to get him 2 packets of Wills from the road side eatery that was open all night and then finish a 20 page assignment for him by Sun rise...oh, this was the financial problem that came after the psychological and physiological ones that PP was mentioning !

PP and Jeff utilized that time to finalise bilateral talks on the partition of the wall... and we finally decided to kick Dravid and Laxman out of the room...and let her come in....the wall was fortunate enough to house her in all known poses...playing and non playing poses. Wow!!! Dravid and Laxman could never have entertained us in such a dimension! She was Sania Mirza...and we named it Sania Mania.