Month: April 2023

Evolution

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

I had started earning money, still living with my friends, but I could afford a phone. Before this one of my friend had a phone, she kept my track of text messages and phone charges. We paid her for using the phone. Everyone was working hard, so I would have probably done the same, if I had a phone and let me roommates use it. On one of my visits home, I told my father, I needed to buy a phone. He took me to Burma Bazaar. We went to the basement floor and asked for mobile phone. They showed us a few models, including the Nokia 3310. It was over my budget. So I settled on a blue BPL mobile. All it could do was send/receive text messages and phone calls. This is the same place he took me like 3 years before that to buy me a Walkman – a personal audio cassette player. BPL was a trusted brand then, and Burma Bazaar was like a black market, I guess.

It was a beautiful phone, it looked different from the Nokia models. I used it to call and text my boyfriend extensively. We fought, we loved, we missed each other. The phone was a welcome relief in that long distance relationship. I used that phone till I left India in 2004. Back then, you used something till you couldn’t use it. If it broke, you tried to fix it first before replacing it. It worked till I left India. Moving to CA, my company gave me an LG flip phone. Man, that was a grand upgrade. Flipping the phone open to take a call and talk, it was classy. Flip phones changed, but remained flipped till I left US in 2012. I wasn’t given a blackberry at work, because I don’t qualify for one.

2012, in India is when I got my first smartphone. Samsung galaxy note 5, I guess. As the batteries died on me, I moved to a newer model of Samsung. I remember the Apple users poking fun at me, like using a Samsung phone made a second class citizen. In 2019, I switched to the iPhone. Today, I hold a 14Pro as I write this post.

As phones evolved my connections to people evolved. The number of people on my contact list increased. Back then there was only one group of friends, they were called “Friends”. Today as the storage capacity has increased there are groups of friends. Friends I will call anytime, friends from work, friends from the past, social media friends, favorites.. Yet one thing remains, those 5 or 10 people whom you laboriously loaded on the phone Address book back then, are somehow the same people on your favorites list today. The “go-to” people. A couple may have been added along the way, but by far the list remains the same. Some dropped along the way.

I was walking around the T-mobile store earlier today and saw a flip phone. I opened it and thought, wow! I’ve come a long way.

Silence

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughts1 Comment

Have you sat on your couch and listened to the silence around you? It’s almost 8pm where I am, I look out the window and the leaves are dancing after a rain. I don’t hear birds, I don’t hear the wind chime. It’s absolutely quiet. Pin drop silence. The only noise in my head is the search for the next word I need to type. the sky is a blue-grey. If I hit the letters on the screen of my phone, I can hear a faint tap. Other than that, it’s silence, outside and inside.

It’s my zen state. There is no place I need to be, there is no task I need to be doing, there is no expectation of me. In this moment I am transported to the pool in Mexico where I am floating aimlessly, my face towards the sun. All the noises around me are hushed and all I hear is silence.

Last night, as the movie “96” ended, I started crying. In the past when I have watched this movie, I have cried, because the story has similarities to my life. Yesterday, that wasn’t the case. As the closing credits rolled, I cried like my chest was about to burst. I wanted to scream, “Appa died”. It’s been 7 months since he left, and yesterday it hit me. Not sure why. But in those tears I let go, of him and of all the men and women who failed me. I let go of all the unhappiness of forty four years. Is that even possible, you ask? I don’t know, I am just finding out. This morning it was raining when I went to drop my son to school. On my way back, the skies cleared up and as I turned onto my street, I saw a ray of the sun, shining brightly. As I searched the skies, there it was, a beautiful rainbow. I felt cleansed.

I can still hear the silence. It’s a kind of peace I have never known. The world is just as it should be and my world is just perfect.