The Loneliness of the Connected?

I’m not a phone person. Don’t get me wrong. I’m mostly surgically attached to my phone giving fodder to the husband for his countless number of jokes entirely at my expense. I use it to tweet and check updates and delete WhatsApp forwards. I am incapable of having long conversations on the phone. I have to remind myself again and again to fix a time slot to make that call.  Before I can say ‘eesh’ I realize it has slipped my mind yet again and it’s dial another day.

For someone so vocal, I often run out of things to say in just two minutes. And for someone’s who’s a gainfully unemployed ‘web columnist’, I am always short of time.

Strangely I am not alone in my fear of the dial function of the phone. I often see people share similar sentiments on social media. It’s a space where we have conversations with ourselves and hope that someone will eavesdrop. A community where people wear their lack of social skills like a badge of honour but have no qualms in pouring their hearts out to complete strangers.  Couples declare undying love for each other in public and quarrel in private. Parents get to tell the world how talented, bright their offspring is. Everyone is trying to convince each other how blessed they are.

When I was growing up, my Mother’s idea of pep-talk was telling me how talented, bright, obedient Mrs X Mrs Y and Mrs Z’s children were and I was doing nothing about it. In fact, the more your parents loved you, the more you got reprimanded by them. I still get scolded by my Mom for not calling her enough, for not bothering to keep in touch with Uncles and Aunties I once so loved.

I can’t because I feel emotionally distant from my Uncles Aunts and cousins, who were once such an important part of my growing-up years. All my happy memories are huddled in the summer breaks I spent with my cousins, with no television, no Internet to distract us.  I would cry (sometimes in front of the mirror to feel doubly miserable) every time we had to go back home. 

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