+ HELL'S BELLS

I'm on the Ananthapuri Express and finding out all over again what pains people can be, especially people with cellphones.

Right now, it's one thirty in the night. So why am I typing away on a miniscule keypad with prediction turned on when the far sensibler and correct option would be to sleep? Well, what do you know, I was asleep and dreaming when i suddenly realized that the persistent beeping I was hearing wasn't really part of the dream. I came out of my dream and my sleep, and found this guy on the opposite berth fiddling with his mobile. He was probably going through his pile of the day's forwards, hence the minutes-long beeping that woke me up.

Of course, every phone has a silent mode, but when was the last time you were reminded of that by the absence of a ring in the middle of a movie or concert? And the current generation of people with buddy-phones will very well know that, during all the hours in a day that they are plugged into it listening to music, it's muted to the outside world. But then again, when did you last meet the sensitive or sensible mobile user?

The mobile phone is the latest instrument of rudeness. It far leaves in the shade the smoker who, in any company, cannot help asking: 'Do you mind if I smoke?' I can't say I damn well do, can I? But at least he asked.

Mobile phones have brought about an entirely new paradigm of bad behaviour and social awkwardness. You hardly find people sitting still for five minutes - they are already fiddling with their phones. It might look like the phone-and-user space is tiny, inconsequential, and innocent. Hardly. The mobile is the ultimate passive-aggressive weapon. You can use it in a variety of ways to obliterate the world around you.

Start fiddling with it in the middle of two-way communication to completely confuse or frustrate the other person. Do this repeatedly to tell them they are just a teeny part of your humongous world. If you have recently started despising an acquaintance, you can convert them into a mental wreck simply by persevering with this.

God, I haven't typed this much on a phone keypad in ten years of having a cellphone, and I know I'll never be able to understand how people can do it everyday. My fingers and wrists ache from holding the phone and tapping away on the keyboard, it's taken me ten times as much time to type this as it would have on a computer keyboard, and my hands are close to getting their nerves shot. I don't expect to fully comprehend the universe of the inveterate and compulsive cellphone user but I think I'm beginning to understand y dey typ lyk dis tho it teks mo tym.

As for me, well, the cell demon's now in a slumber, so let me too catch a little of it before the next rash of beeps near dawn as the alarms begin to go off.

Yawn!