ON THAT NOTE
Suresh Menon is a writer based in India. In his youth he set out to change the world but later decided to leave it as it is
Man’s best inanimate friend wreaks vengeance on our columnist Suresh Menon.
In the old days, people came to the UK to lose their inhibitions (or so I was told by an uncle who led an extremely colourful life); nowadays they come to lose their cell phones. Well, that wasn’t my intention (we are speaking of phones here), but that’s how things turned out. One moment I was walking down Portobello Road, not a care in the world, and the next I realised that something essential had gone missing. Nose, check. Eyes, check. Ears, check. What could it be ? Ah! the cell phone.
And just like that you are thrust into the world of organised crime, identity theft, artificial (and real) intelligence, memory loss (“when did I last use that phone?) and profound self-doubt and self-loathing. It could happen to anyone, you tell yourself, but it’s like the five stages of grief overlapping: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In my case, I went straight from denial to acceptance pausing only briefly for anger in order to blame those around me.
“This is the revenge of the cell phone,” one friend assured me, “for all the terrible things you have written about it.” Perhaps he is right. I have often made fun of man’s best inanimate friend, once going so far as to suggest that cell phones weren’t getting ready to take over the world, the joke being they already have.
In Othello, Shakespeare laid it out for all cell phone owners: “Who steals my purse steals trash…but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.” He meant “cell phone” when he wrote “good name”, and Shakespeare scholars have argued for centuries that there should be no “not” before “enriches”, because, of course the cell phone enriches the one who steals it. At the very least he can get a good price for it. If he is lucky, he will get all bank passwords and details of American presidents meeting Russian friends. And have access to all those charming on-line jokes from family members.
What do you do when someone steals your cell phone? I did the following: Cursed and kicked a lamp post, tried to remember the type and make of phone (unsuccessfully), screamed at a cab driver and bought myself an ice cream (chocolate, in case you are wondering). If you lose a cell phone, you might have another set of activities to complete. Such things vary, depending on the individual’s temperament and weight.
Venus Williams once said that you can never be complacent because a loss may be around the corner. She was talking about tennis, but it applies equally to cell phones too.