I sat down one day with all work done and totally bored! I thought of catching up with friends and/or cousins, whoever is good enough to pick up my call! After half an hour of talking to every lady on the ‘voice mail’ of every phone I tried, I gave up! Looks like no human voices are available anymore to talk to, it is all electronics dear!

I see my teenager always playing with her fingers on her touch screen mobile and wonder what is it that she texts away. When the curiosity has killed the cat to a total pulp, I jump at her and ask her one day, “what’s it that you text every minute?” “Well mom, whatever we want to talk, we text.” “And why so?” I ask, not understanding the concept at all. “Oh, it is easier to text than talk and anyways, phones are so outdated mom!” She surprises me a lot these days!

It is very surprising for me to even think that people don’t want to talk with each other anymore. I see even spouses’ text each other sitting in the same room. Oh well, they are in a party and maybe want to share some ‘sweet nothings’, I console myself. But, this might not be the case always. Someday, when you peep into the mobile of the lady next to you in a party texting to her husband, you might be knocked out. “Did you put your clothes in the dryer before coming here?” or “where did you leave the salt container last night after your drink party, I didn’t find it in the morning when cooking?” could throw all your ‘lovable’ assumptions to the wind.

I know of people close to me too who love to write emails rather than talk. They would rather chat with you electronically than speak with you over the phone. Now-a-days, a lot of families, where husband and wife both work, they don’t even have a phone connection at home. They manage with their cell phones or tablets or iPads as all they want is to text with one hand and drive with the other. Or sit in the meeting and text under the table, even if they have to do it with one hand.

I vividly remember when I was a kid, and having telephone in the house was a rarity but we had one at home, and it was so special. I used to call up my friends for some doubts in homework and end up talking about all things irrelevant to our studies. It was fun sharing incidents, joking about school in general and boys in particular. Do kids today share this joy anymore? Wish they did!

It wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that I have a lot of cousins and friends in this country and I haven’t heard their voice in ages now. I see their pictures on social networks, I get to know about their well being in emails, we wish each other on birthdays and anniversaries electronically. Now, they exist only electronically for me, no more any ‘human’ touch to them.

For me, spoken words are special. . I love to meet people and I love to talk; I love to listen to people talk too. How I wish we would go back to those days when talking over the phone long-distance was an achievement by itself. Now all I hear people saying is that “Phone is a bad way to reach us, try email or texting!” The phone is exclusively for the ‘telemarketers’ now, isn’t that so?

In spite of all this, I still call up my parents, my brothers and my close friends and talk for hours! And of course my husband is always a ‘phone call away’. We still sit and talk to each other and laugh our hearts out when we are together every day! I would love it to be this way for ages to come, so that ‘Electronics’ is some distance away from my family and ‘voices’ are heard always!