By Niggy
Recently, I was recollecting various means of communication that people used in the not-so-distant past. Our great-great grand parents may not have seen the telephone. Maybe they knew the telegram. In those days, receiving a telegram was related to some urgent news, mostly death. In my own childhood, there was the hand-dialed black-coloured phone that had a long chord. It would be kept in a corner of the drawing room, on a special stand, perhaps. It was considered a prized possession. Only few who were wealthy enough owned one of them. A big fat telephone directory was part of the treasure!
The other day, I came across a picture of the hand-dialed phone accompanied by a hilarious quote: “When the phone was tied with a wire, humans were free…”
Quite some truth in there, you might agree!
I remember being very careful about using the phone as my parents had to pay the monthly bill. Just two or three of my friends in school and college knew the number. Even on the rare occasions that I used the phone to speak with my friends, I would be careful not to speak too long as the longer the conversation, the higher the charges. Fortunately, I never needed to make an outstation call, which we considered really expensive back then. I remember my neighbour who would get ‘trunk calls’ from her sibling who was abroad on our telephone. They would come to our house and wait for the call as they did not have a phone. Later, however, they managed to get a landline connection.
In the 1980s, black-and-white television sets began to enter people's homes. Just one channel was available then, and everybody was very contented with it. The blue anti-glare screen on it was a sort of item of wonder! Not everyone could afford one back then.
A new invention appeared in the 1990s, called the ‘pager’. I bought one for myself, a cute, tiny and very disciplined instrument. You had to call the operator from a landline, dictate a message to him or her, and in minutes your message reached your friend if they had a pager. When the pager days were over and mobile phones came in, pager companies shut down. I went to my pager service-provider, asking them if they would take back my pager. But it had turned useless. I remember after few years, throwing my little pager into the dustbin of history. Today, I feel I should have kept it as a memento of an age gone by.
My first mobile phone was a tiny keypad phone. Very simple. I used it for messages and calls. The Internet had not as yet invaded humanity. With this phone, I managed life, whether it was calling the doctor for my father or to tell my mother I would be reaching late from office. My parents lived with simple phones, using them only when required, and passed away into eternal life without suffering phone anxiety attacks.
The ‘smart phone’ has made life today simple in many ways, and has complicated it in many ways too. You can easily pay for and buy things online. Messaging services enable people to be in touch even if they are on the other side of the globe. You can get information at the press of a button. But like everything else, if not used sensibly, this gadget can create complications.
I am happy to know at least two people who in this ‘fast age’ still do not use the ‘smart phone’. One of them still uses the good old keypad phone and only makes calls—she feels no need to be connected to social media. The other friend can easily afford a smart phone but has consciously chosen not to. If I need to call her, it is through her son or daughter's phone. Or, otherwise, I can visit her occasionally at her home, have tea or a meal with her and chat.
While I acknowledge that new communication technologies can be very helpful, there is nothing that can take the place of face-to-face communication in the real world. That’s a method of communication that great spiritual figures used centuries ago. With no high speed technology at that time, they impacted the lives of millions of people positively, leaving the message of God on people's hearts which people still remember, centuries later. We who are living in this ‘hi tech’ age have the choice to accept the technology and use it in the right way, for positive purposes. The choice is ours.
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