Disconnecting, beep beep beeeep…..
The earth shook with tremendous power, the ground was sliding away. I could hear it, my face trembled, my hands shivered. This is the end, I shuddered at the thought of the unknown advancing towards me. It became stronger. It is near now, at my face. It will engulf me. Buzz Buzz. Buzz Buzz. I opened my eyes and struggled to look through the narrow crevices of my eyelids. One WhatsApp message, it said. I was forced out of my deep slumber by the most insignificant and indispensable gadget called the mobile phone. Clad in a jet black suit with “my life my rules” engraved over it, its cover seem to mock at me. For years, what my parents or for that matter any other super power hadn’t been able to accomplish, this small piece of metal with its intricacies, manages to do every single day without fail. It wakes me up!
“Hello, who is this?” I spoke drowsily.
The voice at the other end spoke in a very mechanical and disinterested way. From what I could infer, it talked about something related to an exciting offer which would entail some amount of expenditure from my side and if I happen to be lucky, will get me a nice car. No one would have felt as murderous and homicidal as I felt. My sleep, something I prize over my life, was broken by some utterly ludicrous phone call by some random company. It is usually the case. My Boss calls, my friends call, an emergency call, everybody and everybody else calls me. I don’t remember how life was like before the conception and invention of these little metal monsters. These are monsters of a vicious kind. They sidle into your daily life, make a place so consecrated in your heart that your sense suffers and your mind longs to be used. The cobwebs that settle on your nervous system make your brain absolutely redundant. And a paralysed existence supported solely on gadgets working on transitory batteries is what comes into play. Life speeds by you, and you forget to hold on to moments because you are too busy taking selfies.
I woke up, got dressed while my phone kept buzzing on. The laptop resting on the table blinked its light, reminding me of a late submission. Today is the day, I decided. I will finish my research paper. No power, no calamity, no God can stop me from completing this work. The ground was laid, trumpets roared and my fingers were ready to run across the protuberant set of alphabet keys. Word file opened. And as I was relaxing my fingers, they went out of control. Before I knew it, I was staring at my Facebook page. The aim of life had just transformed itself. More “likes”, my brain echoed. My conscious had slowly disappeared. I browsed through numerous pictures which were not in any which related to my actuality, skimmed through countless pages which didn’t mean a thing to me and finally commented on the most arbitrary thing I could find. Nihilism with its paramount power was gazing me, clawing deeper into my flesh, strengthening its hold so much so that now I couldn’t even notice its nails penetrating into me.
WhatsApp again snarled. I knew I can’t ignore it for long. And what work was I doing anyway? Facebook to WhatsApp won’t be that big a change. So I glanced on to the perfectly finished capacitor screen of my cell phone.
“Congratulations, you are an aunt now. Zaisha is her name.”
It was a great news. A smile lit up my gloomy robotic face. My muscles clenched and relaxed at the same time. Ecstasy boiled up inside me. I tried to call up my brother-in-law. Sister would still be unconscious. I couldn’t get through. Cursing my mobile, I tried texting people I knew would be there. If they could just send me a picture, or maybe just some more news about her, or maybe a little voice recording of hers. But first I had to do the most important job of all. I had to post a status informing people who didn’t care, people who did care and people who didn’t matter to any morsel of my existence, about the new-born baby, Zaisha. Uh-oh! I didn’t have a picture of me holding her. It won’t get as many likes as I would want. I tried to connect through Skype. The frustration of a slow internet can only be understood by people like us who can forgive a murder but not telecom companies offering slow speed internet. I was getting anxious by each passing minute. Chaos, confusion and a bedlam of innumerable thoughts throbbed my head. Mobile wasn’t responding, skype wasn’t working. It seemed as the devil of technical communication was showing me a sneering face.
The wait was just getting tremendously long. Patience is only for the noblest kind, I could never afford in desperate times like these. I shut my laptop, grabbed my keys and made a dash for the door. In my frenzied movements, I left my phone in the home only. Nothing mattered now. I had to see her. I put the key into the ignition, the car roared to life. I zoomed past the inanimate to see life. Frantically, almost out of breath, I enquired at the hospital reception, “Will you please tell me Mrs. Khan’s room number? She just had a baby, I was told.” I managed to say through my heavy panting. “Just around the left corner, third room.” The receptionist said as she tried to juggle phone calls and exasperated patients. I practically ran through the corridor. And found the room.
The most angelic scene awaited me. In the cradle of life lied a delicate flower of love and innocence blossoming, filling the whole room with its enchanting aura. The little scarlet cheeks and the tender white skin, almost caught me in awe. I gently held her in my hand, her tender body rolled inside my arms. For that moment, I was basking under a happiness which knows no bounds, a bliss so profound that my life dazzled under that new born. Nothing can replace it, no Facebook, no phone call, no WhatsApp message. I felt it. The touch of human life. I looked around me, my whole family was there, all shuffling and trying to fit into that small room. They all bore a smile, a calmness, a tranquillity had settled inside each one of us. I once again looked at her, Zaisha. She was reflected a serenity borne out of pureness.
That day I realised something. No matter how much you text someone, call them on phone or stalk them on Facebook, what guarantees love and understanding in this world is a pure and simple human touch which whispers through pure heart and doesn’t need an emoticon to be understood. You know the best part about all this, now I know how life is like without phones.
It is humane.
– Nida Gul Niazi