HELLO
Good evening
//NOTE-First call comes on mobile ,fumble//
Oh sorry
Good evening Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and welcome guest. As I was saying.
//Phone rings again . Body language to depict surprise, fumbling with phone//
This might be important . I think I will just take it.
Hello
//5 seconds pause
Hi, I cant really hear you and I am in a bit of hurry. So let me assure you I don’t need to buy any insurance or a subscribe to hello tunes. If however, you have a credit card then I am interested.
Mom!! Whose number is this? Anway I will call you in some time. Bye.
Oh sorry folks. This is how life is. Now we are just simply never unreachable. All thanks to technology and the mobile phone. (wave the mobile phone)
Today of course mobile phones are everywhere. I went out with some friends to dinner some time back at a place in Pune. Since we were all sitting on low diwans, we all kept our mobiles on a side tables. I was amazed. There were eight people and eleven mobile phones. Two friends had two mobiles each and one of these two cool folks had a borrowed cell to talk reliance to reliance free.
There was a time when mobile phones were not that widespread. I remember in 96-97 when erickson and usha cellular first started offering mobile phones. Out going rates were 24 rupees per minutes and incoming was 18 rupees a minute. Those were the times folks. One sms was 8 rupees a minutes. I used to joke that dialing wrong numbers on mobile phones should be a criminal offence. At eighteen rupees a minute for an incoming call, a wrong number was like being punished by God.
My first cell was a grey screen cellphone and I was so happy. I did not think of another cell for years. Last month , I was gifted a touchscreen phone and I am already thinking about the next. I am not sure what I want in a new mobile phone that my present one does not have but I know new cells come into our lives as certainly as the income tax returns every year.
And then thanks to the mobile phone we have the 160 characters which mean everything in life nowadays. Yes, the 160 characters is nothing more than the length of a short messaging service message or as we all say SMS.
The S.M.S. service has spawned its own language where words are shortened acronmyms. Tomorrow as 2-m-r-w and good morning as g-m. Is this as many say a vice?
I do not know because most of the times I simply don’t get the language.
Like “tc”. For a long time in my first year of engineering I thought tc meant turbo C. For those who have forgotten, turbo c was this great compiler for c language. When this friend of mine started to sign off her messages as tc, I thought “oh! she must really like C language.”
It was only much later that I realised Tc meant take care, but the joke stayed.
Anyway there is a reason why I talked about mobile phones. With great power comes great responsibility. A recent international survey said Indians were among the nationalities with the lowest levels of telephone etiquette. And we need to change that.
I was sitting in the mutiplex sometime back ,watching a movie. Suddenly a mobile phone rang somewhere around. I thought, I would hear a sorry and the sound of the call being cancelled.
Instead , I heard someone say,"Hello ruchi, Hows you?" And instead of hanging up, the talk just went on and on. After about 5 minutes I tapped the girl on the shoulder from behind and said,"Mam, I know the movie is pathetic but still there might be people who would want to watch it. " I think she got the hint.
And so many times, phones ring in meetings,conferrences ,hospitals, and in so many other places where they should never sound.
It reflects badly on us. So I ask all of us to say that my mobile phone is silent or switched off in all places where it is not supposed to ring. And even if no one asked us to do the same.
And there is a simple reason why…
Once upon a time ,there was a boy who was gifted a mobile phone by his parents. He was very happy. Next day his cell phone rang. It was his mother . He was amazed. He asked his mother-"how did you know I was in the principals office"
The mobile phone does not know where we are. We should tell it so by keeping it silent.
Over to you Mr. Toastmaster
No comments:
Post a Comment