Death of a cell phone

I still remember the first time I bought a cell phone. It was just after my 10^th board results. Yes, back in those good old days when I still thought of Einstein as the old dude with the funny looking hair, the only calclulus I knew of was the one in tintin,  and any mention of the Hell Volhard Zelinski reaction would only have elicited a response of ‘what the hell?’. Yeah, right around the time when I was a champion weightlifter, a part time supermodel and a football legend in my own right. Guess I’ll save that story for another day though.

Being brought up in a family where Nokia was considered the alpha and the omega of cell phones, even the thought of buying any other brand was heresy. In fact, I had been using a Nokia phone till then, a 3310, a relic of a phone (with a two hour battery life and seven working keys) that had probably been invented right after man was done with the wheel. It found itself in my hands only because no person with the smallest iota of self respect was willing to buy it from my dad. So it was with no little amount of trepidation that I told my dad that I wanted to buy a MotoRazr, and not a Nokia. To my surprise, he told me that he’d gladly pay for it. After which he’d disown me and sever me from his will.

So, Nokia it was to be. Atleast I had been eyeing one particular model for quite some time – 7610. Surprisingly, I had not even considered buying a Sony Ericsson phone. Besides, Hrithik had just become the brand ambassador of Sony, I think. And after watching his magnum opus Krishh, I wanted no association with him whatsoever. No, not even one as tenuous as buying the brand he endorses. I, in fact, remember telling a friend that I wouldn’t buy a Sony Ericsson even if Hrithik were to offer me one himself. So, when I walked into this shady little place where you supposedly got cell phones cheap, I expected it to take no more than a couple of minutes. As I had already decided the phone, my part of the transaction was over and dad got down to the haggling. It was then that I spotted him there. Hrithik Roshan!! I mean, what are the odds, right? Seems too good to be true, eh?

Yeah, that’s right. I just made that up.

But what I did see was a lifelike poster of him holding a K750i. I wanna say that it was love at first sight (And no, I am not coming out of the closet. I meant the phone, you idiots). But it wasn’t. Nonetheless, it didn’t take Sherlock’s genius to notice that the K750i had a whole lot more features than the 7610 and was a whole lot cheaper. I was torn between my principles and the K750i’s 2 MP camera (as opposed to 7610’s 1 MP). And as everyone who has been in that situation knows, the line between rigid moral principles and the desire to buy a funkier phone is a thin one, and transgressing it is no biggie (especially if you are a 15 year old waiting to show off to your friends). A couple of grand saved meant that dad also saw my point clearly. And I walked out of that place with a k750i in my hand. It’s been almost five years since then and there has not been a single day that I regretted the purchase.

Whether it was to kill time during boring lectures, bug the first bencher nerds with long, silly forwards in the middle of the class, secretly listen to Himesh Reshammiya’s songs, password protect and store images of Rakhi Sawant, receive supari calls from friends in the Mumbai underworld, detonate IEDs previously planted in the lecturers’ staff rooms, or secretly store my plans for global domination- my phone had a part to play. But if there was one thing that made the K750i stand apart from the others, it was the wide variety of games one could play on it. From the time I completed the first level of Hangman (dickhead easy mode) in a record time of 2hrs36mins (okay, I admit, I used cheat codes), I knew that my tryst with cell phone games had just begun. It was not like I had not played cell phone games before. On my previous phone, I had already reached beyond godlike levels of pro-ness on snake. So it was just a matter of time before my fingers revealed their magic. I have downloaded hundreds of mobile games since. And the high score in every one of them bears the name of yours truly. Or one of the monikers I had adopted thereof. As a testimony to my superhuman gaming skills, it was on my phone that the Undertaker and Kane first became the runners up of the WWE tag team championship. The fact that they lost to Tori and Stephanie in the finals is a different matter altogether.

It was on my phone that Ajit Agarkar first completed an over with an economy rate of less than six. And no, for the hundredth time, it wasn’t a gully cricket test match against a team of high school girls. Guys, give him some credit. It was an ODI. It was on my phone that India achieved what soothsayers, cynics, pessimists, optimists, analysts, astronauts, particle physicists, serial killers, metaphysical solipsists, transcendental perspectivists, and everyone else who is not this guy, or on high-end hallucinogenics thought was impossible- India routed Brazil 8-0 to win the FIFA world cup. So after creating and recreating history many times over, you can imagine my consternation when my phone started getting cranky, the games became a bit laggy and the frequency of world records seemed to be going downhill. Also, the lens had become foggy, the speakers inaudible, the battery all but dead, the memory card corrupt, and the various viruses meant I couldn’t make phone calls or type messages without pop-ups appearing constantly. But all that I could live with. What I could not live with was my name not adorning the high score list. So, I did what any sane person would have done in my place to fix my phone- get a sledgehammer and hit it continuously before placing it boiling hot water and sending high voltage electric currents through it. Haha, I jest. But what I did do was take it to a Sony Ericsson dealer. Who looked at it for all of one minute before telling me to buy a new phone. He even went ahead to offer me two hundred rupees for the phone. I was already shaking with rage and this sealed the deal for me. I reached across the counter, caught him by the collar and delivered two tight slaps, “YOU BLOODY MOTHERF@#$%R! HOW DARE YOU PUT A PRICE ON MY PHONE? DO YOU PUT A PRICE ON YOUR MOTHER TOO?”

Okay, I exaggerate. Poetic license, I think it is called. But astute readers may laugh and point out that my skill in writing poetry is matched only by that of Shantakumaran Sreesanth, and my blog contains all the poetic eloquence of “tandoori nights”. Yeah, well, screw you. If you want poetry, go do it on your own blog. As usual, I digress. Coming back to the story….

I beat him up some more, and performed a couple of pile-drivers on him. Two hundred rupees, I ask you. How can anyone be so cheap to put such a price on so many years of cellular fun, frolic and adventure when the phone so selflessly offered its services and in lieu expected nothing but a few watts of power to recharge itself? How can anyone be so vile to put such a price on a phone after buying it in its prime and sucking its life dry? Don’t bother answering, they were purely rhetorical. Although I must say, it would have been a different story altogether had he offered me three hundred rupees. I finished off by choke slamming him to the ground.

For all the beating he took, deep down, I knew that he was right about one thing. My phone was dying, and there was nothing I could do about it. Alas, the Undertaker and Kane would never win that championship. India would never again win the FIFA world cup until 2999 A.D. And about Ajit Agarkar, who am I kidding? The high school team won the match in his next over itself.

Cell phone hunting seems to have lost its charm now. One ipod, a couple of mp3 players, two laptops, and a host of earphones and other assorted accessories later, I knew that gadgetophilia still runs in my blood. But I seem to have lost interest in fancy phones. I mean, everyone has one of those goddamn funky touch screen phones nowadays. Maybe I should have taken a leaf out of the ex-chairman’s book, who had had sought out a particularly awful Dell phone just to be different. Oh, what the hell! Even I would’ve bought that Soni erikson iblackberry N95 (available at rs.500), had it not gone out of stock. So, I settled for the next cheapest thing available there – this

Looks like shit, eh? But don’t be deceived. Coz it’s shittier than it looks. Why aim for mediocrity when you can pay so much lesser and be the proud owner of the shittiest phone in town, eh?

P.S: RIP K750i. You will be missed.

P.P.S: Leaving for R in a couple of hours. Packing’s a bitch. Snake’s keeping me company though.

P.P.P.S: Fachchas, line up outside room 645, RKB.

P.P.P.P.S: If you are from the administration, please ignore the previous line.

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