It was the first of October. Thirteen well-to-do professionals who were filing out after a yoga session in the early hours of the morning signed out for the day. The first one to hurry out quickly opened the register, zeroed in on the page marked September and put his initials in a jiffy on the column with the 31st date and zoomed out. The others followed suit unthinkingly. Even as they scooted out, they did not forget to check out their smartphones to update themselves, lest something had happened to the world while they were twisting and turning in the past hour.
The incident was both amusing and frightening to say the least. It can certainly be written off as a mindless activity triggered by sheer habit. Yet seeing the baker’s dozen doing the same thing underscores a latent issue that is dogging the contemporary populace.
It is really hard to see people sans their cell phones these days, the ruling mantra being, smarter the better. The instrument seems to be capable of doing everything in its power to keep us distracted, self-absorbed and even selfish, at times. People are always speaking into it, taking pictures, texting, paying or playing all the time. Messages, pictures, videos which are meant to be tools of effective communication assume different dimensions, when they do multiple rounds in the name of being shared. Truth of the matter is seldom verified or considered before it is spewed around carelessly. No one seems to find it strange for it has been accepted as an unwritten norm of present-day life.
