Necessity is the mother of inventions? Or inventions mother all unnecessary necessities?

It has been travelling to our ears for ever since, that necessity or requirements are the major reasons behind all inventions. When people needed to carry heavy loads they invented the wheel, when they required to keep themselves warm they invented machines called room heaters, when they needed to talk to their near and dear ones from far away they created the telephone. The telephone got updated in various ways and now we have mobile phones, which are not just phones, but calculators, alarm clocks, banks, gaming console, camera, music system, computer, torch and what not! But do we really need that many accumulation of technology to survive?

Almost everyone has a smart phone grabbed tightly in their palms, but how many are smart enough to use it? Or rather need to use it? If people could spare some valuable time out of the useless schedules on their phone and ponder whether they really need it, it would be very clear that they are using smart phones and 3G internet connections, dual sim cards just for the sake of using them! They do not really need such techie stuff to make them feel important in life.

I was a sole believer of mobile phone to be a 3 in one device – calls, messages and music. I know you caught me at the music thing, but the first time when I bought the phone, I had no television at home, as mom had cut off the cable connection to secure my academics, no computer and had recently spoiled the only radio by overhearing it! Hence my only luxury was am MP3 player in my new phone. After four years due to peer pressure from Whatsapp addict friends and disturbing old battery, I bought a new phone. A SMART one. How is it smart? Well, it is big, quite big as I have to hold it with both my hands while texting! It is pretty, and it has room for two sim cards and 3G services, a front camera, a 5mega pixel back camera with flash, Whatsaap, Facebook, Gmail, Google maps blah blah… but the battery life is poor. Someone had told me that a smart phone without internet connection is just another phone, therefore on trying out the internet connection my life turned upside down! Every now and then the phone beeps and I have to waste my precious time in texting my friends and playing candy crush. This sudden addiction for candy crush has simply engulfed me, God knows how. Whether I am going out or preparing to go out somewhere, I am always getting late by a few minutes answering via Whatsapp to my “worried” friends.

Even then, I can’t resist the urge to get an amount spent after the internet service from my phone! Plus, I have become lazy as a log! That partly happened soon after I got my first mobile phone, to walk up to the landline connection where we get almost 100 free calls felt like a huge exercise when I had my tiny handset on my hand!

The solution to this diseasing which is eating up my time is to try and ignore the smartness of the smart phone. We should use the minimum technology every day, the more we depend on technology the more stupid and lazy we become. Spend some days without Whatsapp, Candy crush and most importantly your phone. There’s a more beautiful world out there, explore it without any technical help. (By without any technical help I mean with the least possible ones, but don’t start on foot for a world tour!). Well I tried that for two days, believe me it is not hard, but you get a different feeling of freedom, though sometimes you might miss those annoying message tones. But definitely you will discover a new you in the process.

Modern girl vs Behenji

A brief conversation between one of today’s so called Modern girl and a casual Behenji

Modern Girl : Hi behenji!

Behenji : Stop calling me that

MG : what’s wrong? You look like one…

B : Do you mean, I am a Behenji because I do not waste money and time in looking good and attracting male attention by my face, yet I am smart and definitely because I have brains which you absolutely lack!

MG : Smart? Who you? Go look at yourself in the mirror

B : How do you define smart honey? By spitting unnecessary adjectives into each sentence you speak or by speaking wrong English and make yourself appear as desperate wannabies? Or would you say wearing miniskirts and showing off your fat legs are signs of smartness.. Some of you “Smart Girls” can even fast for months to fit into a mini skirt!!

MG : Are you trying to insult me?

B : Any doubts?

MG : You are so backdated, you don’t wear designer and branded clothes, look at me I am so modern…

B : As if you are updated!! Please tell me who’s the minister of Information and Broadcasting of India?

MG : Good Lord! I am talking of fashion, not politics!

B : Which fashion designer has been in the news recently? Any idea?

MG : You know what, you don’t need to read newspapers for that… just scan through the supplements… Learn the brands and be confident and feel high by wear those stuff.

B : Really? You mean spending Rs10000 from yours parent’s wallet, for a pair of faded jeans is worthy to make you feel confident? Why don’t you join some personality development course… Or you may rather appoint a Psychoanalyst…

MG : You are disgusting. You would never understand the importance of brands, this is why we have boyfriends, you don’t.

B : Smart girls have friends.

MG : You wouldn’t have boyfriends because you are not sexy. I am, look at my curves, my hairstyle.

B : Do you mean, that you have to stand in awkward positions to show your bulging out bum to attract your boyfriend?!?!?! Or just because you are half bald, you cut your hair in the crazy manner to make it look fluffy?

MG : To hell with your explanations. He calls me sexy. (introduces behenji with a Hulk!) This is my Baby.

B : My God! He’s double your size. What if he falls on you, you’ll be squashed! Beware, or get something to eat.

MG : Shut up. You are just jealous of me, because I have a BF.

B : Oh! Please, rather I would appreciate cute and normal men other than the grumpy black cats. I have friends to spend time with, and a friend in need is a friend indeed.

MG : So is the case with a BF. A boyfriend in need is a boyfriend indeed. Isn’t it so baby? (Winks at BF and reaches out for his wallet. BF’s smiles painfully, swimming in deep love for MG.)

B : Anyways, I have work to do, you carry on your sweet nothings. (turns to leave, but helpful boy-friend appears)

MD : Who’s that? You can’t have a BF. That’s impossible; your BF would probably be a bald guy with thick glasses on the nose…

Boy-friend : I’m her friend, we have an appointment with so and so company for a job interview. Bye.

MG, turns off her head and plays with BF’s wallet.

Chair Cheers

Do we always use this wooden or metal instrument called chair to sit? Rather we use it for other purposes, may be for standing on it to peek up at the tube light’s choke, or to hammer a pin high on the wall for a picture, or some of the aggressive us use chairs to bang them on glass tables, or hit innocent people or rivals with them. Some little girls also use chairs as the multistoried building for their Barbies!

What I did as a kid was even more unconventional! Of course there isn’t a doubt that my activities left a mark on me and others around. Literally. I have always had a hunger for adventure deep within me, but no one could sense from which side the attack could appear! I would sit and stand under the dining table as long as my height permitted, and play games underneath, imagining it to be a cave or a tiny shoe house or other such products of fantasy. I had an annoying habit, as my mom would term it, to hang on the back of people’s chairs. Now I cannot recall what happiness or adventure that activity provided me, but I remember very well what happened to stop my hanging from the back of people’s chairs!  One fine evening when my family was seated around the table for tea, I galloped into the room and wondering what to do next, jumped onto the back of my mom’s chair. The chairs were wooden and quite heavy, and as usual I clung at the back of the chair and started swinging to and fro rhythmically, without mom having noticed it. Once she had finished her tea, she got up from the chair and I still hanging, fell flat on my back. My head was the first thing to touch the ground with a bang and then my whole body. I fell with a massive thud… Wait the story doesn’t end here; I had the heavy wooden chair bury me under it! I felt like I was Tom who had just been squashed flat like a paper by a huge piano smashing on him! For a moment everyone in the room stood like a statue, since no one had noticed me enter the room or swing behind the chair, and my sudden fall had scared the hell out of me to even make me cry! Mom said I never tried that adventure game again.

Several years later, I had a tiny friend downstairs in our building; the only friend may be at that time in the whole locality. She was quite a lot younger than me, and everyday coming back from school I would go to visit her. I wouldn’t do much, other than  helping her gather her toys or letting her sit on my lap or telling her stories she never understood and hearing her stories which I never understood. On one such visit, she was very restless and was going about pulling things from everywhere. On the go she pulled a chair from the back, nothing happened. She tried again, but in vain. Then with all her might and both her hands she pulled it from the back, and notwithstanding the weight of the chair her hands gave away. She kneeled down, with her hands up holding the chair, and finally she let herself be buried by the chair. Then she let out a panicky cry.

I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically, for a couple of minutes, while all of us where trying to recover her from under the chair. I was suddenly reminded of my own chair incident.

Just a few days ago, I discovered some photographs of genius activities around the world and guess what, a chair had to be there. Someone had a scooped up sofa, and the person had inserted chairs in between the seat and the back rest! My heart yelled out, that’s called a Chair cheers! Well if you are wondering what that means, I would rather suggest you to stop thinking, because even I don’t know why I said that.