August 2005
A boy, straight out of school, comes to Delhi to pursue engineering. Not from a very metro city. Mostly unaware of how the world operates, with a pathetic dressing sense, and no communication skills whatsoever. Just the usual exuberance. And confidence. He had his first cell phone then. A brand new Nokia 2600 [har jeb mein rang]. There were hardly 10 contact numbers in that phone. But no e-mail id of his own.
October 2005
I think it was 17th of october, saturday. Time- 6:00 PM. He was at Sarojini Nagar Market. This was his very first visit to this place, which was to become so familiar in next few months. Kabooom! There was a blast in the market. It was in one of his adjacent lanes. Nobody panicked. Nobody knew the ambit of blasts. The crowd thought of it as some regular LPG cylinder bursting. He continued his shopping, like everyone else, not for long though.. because in next 15 minutes there was police all over the place. They were trying to evacuate the market as calmly as they could, amidst all sorts of fire-rescue devices. And TV reporters. One of the reporters even talked to our guy. I think she was from NDTV. I can’t recall exactly what did he say, or rather did he say anything at all? Umm.. and he also had to board the train on that very same day. It was at 10PM. So what he did is that he paid 60 bucks to an auto from SN market to IIT hostel gate [it’s normally 25-30, with augmented meter rates.. it was even cheaper then, but apparently, he didn’t know coz as I already told you.. this was his first visit to market]. There were some 60 contacts in his Nokia 2600 by now. And one gmail, yahoo mail id each.
Circa- September 2008
13th, Saturday evening, again. Time was around 6:45PM. Our protagonist is sitting in his hostel room. He had a very depressing, lull day. He had been wanting to drink for some time now. Apparently, his throat was parched profusely. Suddenly, from somewhere, somehow.. his friend [ who was there to spend the weekend with him, and who had ragged him real bad, way back in August 2005] walks in and inform him about the blasts. In CP, in Karolbagh and in GK! Just 3? Fairly low-intensity. Hopefully, no one has died. Within sometime, his Nokia 2600 was flooded with sms’s. And he didn’t know whom to ask for well being. There were so many of them in his phone book! Then there were many others on net, whose number he didn’t have but they were as important as anyone else. May be, more important than others. But mostly he was callous. He did drink that day invariably. Infact, drank a little too much. After much cleansing of his ancient Nokia 2600, he is now left with some 190 odd contacts. He is very active on Orkut, Facebook, even Blogging! Was even awarded “Brilliant Weblog 2008” by one of his fellow blogger.
This is how insensitive I -rather WE- have become.
Cellar Door 