Has the mobile deprived us of small moments of happiness?





The mobile has entered our lives with a bang and has changed the way we start our day and end our day.  Not so long ago we were dependent on many things like our diary, our calendar, our watch.  But today we don't write diaries, see the wall hanging calendar or have the time to look at our watch, in fact many of the readers may have stopped wearing a watch or may just be using it as a fashion accessory.

Is mobile making us more robotic and mechanical or has it made life trouble and hassle free.  This would be an eternal riddle like asking you guys, which came first the hen or the egg?

The new year has begun and one of the few things many of us would start our new year with, till a few years ago, was to start copying the contact list of the old diary into a fresh one.  Sometimes this would take up a full day with us trying to make up our mind as to which contact to keep and which to remove.  Add to it there was the fun of writing our telephone contact list in best possible handwriting as the year had just started and we would all be in good spirits(literally).  The first day of a new year would always be a sort of relaxed and sleepy kind of day, perhaps from all the partying done on 31st.  And starting a personal Diary would be another of the beautiful things we used to do.  We would write our details, start the first page with our best drawing(probably clumsiest).  We would write on the first page a big Personal or Do not touch.  We would then jot down the anniversaries and birth dates of our near and dear ones with elaborate designs.  Important dates would be marked and highlighted.  Then we would start the diary writing something about the year gone by and noting down important resolutions and to do things in the current year.  We would than polish of the diary with a promise to write something everyday, which most of us would forget in a couple of days or weeks.  But this was the essence of the start of new year with a majority of us.   A few tech savvy users would dish out the Casio Digital Diary or Assistant, which was very popular with the affluent guys in those days. 



It would be a real charm to reach for your pocket and dish out the digital diary and save the phone number and other details of a acquaintance.  He or she would be suitably impressed with our suaveness.

Another thing we are sure to miss is the wall hanging calendar along with its smaller counterpart the desk calendar.  Many companies would bring out their own calendars with beautiful pictures and nice presentation.  There would be a fight for a good calendar with beautiful pictures in our family.  Then there would be a pocket calendar.  I don't know if anyone even prints those anymore.  We would all count the number of holidays in the year, mark the birth dates and anniversary dates of our loved ones.  

In today life the telephone diary or the personal diary and the calendar have all lost their importance and have become a relic of the past.  In fact only a handful of oldtimers and die hard diary enthusiasts may be maintaining a diary now a days.    Every thing is saved at a touch of a button on our smart phone and we don't have to copy any birth dates or anniversaries, they are updated by themselves thanks to the all pervading smart phone.  Even the calendar sits on the wall paper.  With a flick of a finger we can save our appointments and other to-do things on the thousands of apps available in the market place.  Now the things are getting even more easy with personal assistant who have a voice like the Siri in the iphone and Skyvi or  Eva for Android devices and S-Voice for Galaxy S3 phones. 

Once upon a time if somebody asked what was the time? (and people used to ask in those days) we would in all our magnanimity roll up our sleeves and peer at our Seiko 5 or Rado or Citizen and inform the enquirer of the time.  In all probability the enquirer would look at our wrist watch and ask us about its brand.  We would proudly then proclaim it to be a Seiko or whatever brand we used to wear as though we had an Oscars in our hands for best film of the year.  In all eagerness we would also inform the person of its cost and how much trouble we had to undergo to procure it.  Now there are thousand of brands of watches and they have become a fashion accessory and fashion statement rather than a primary necessity they used to be.  The time of the day sits on our Mobile's wallpaper or screen saver.

I look back at the years gone by with nostalgia and some grief as I think all the above was done in pure innocence.  But now thanks to the device called smart phone we have lost all the innocence.  The beauty and the romance of reading a old diary written some ten years ago will give us goose bumps even now.  It was the eternal love hate yet eloquent relationship we shared with our personal diaries.

I fondly remember those days and think maybe I should start writing a personal diary this year.  I am saving a reminder for it in my smart phone!

  My question still stands : Has the mobile deprived us of small moments of happiness?