Power

I wish I could do some muscle-flexing once in a while. No silly, not that way.

You know, order people about, get things done for me by people who try to fold their hands and cover their mouths at the same time when they talk to me, have people fighting with each other to make me a cup of coffee, and have people book hotels and flight tickets and concert entry passes whenever and wherever I wish to go.

The other day, I was making my way back home on my motorcyle in a sedate manner after I had filled it up. It was rush hour. I was occupying a lane nearer to the left corner of the road, and minding my own business. When I heard a siren.
Thinking it was an ambulance, I moved a bit more towards the corner of the road, in the pretext of making room for it. Which is when I saw two lights twenty feet off the ground and a siren coming towards me at about mach 5 in my rear view mirror. And it didnt look like it was slowing down.
I swear, I have never made such a fast and dangerous lane changing maneuvere in my life. It was a suicidal move in order to avoid being killed. And then it passed me. An entire motoring cavalcade.
The vehicle that had prompted me to change lane was a Mahindra Bolero, which was filled with about 100 people having machine guns in their hands, leaning out of the window screaming at everything they went past, including me, other motorists, empty vehicles by the side of the road, and I think I even saw one or two of them shouting at compound walls.
It was followed by another similar jeep, and another, and another, and so on, and in the middle, there was this swanky Mitsubishi Pajero, followed by some 55 more jeeps.
Like moses, they parted the sea of motorists within milliseconds. Without anywhere else to go, I had to pull up near the divider in the middle, and kept getting screamed at even then by every jeep passing by.
The scary part is that for not a single moment, the guy piloting the frontmost vehicle (which, if you think about it, literally decides how fast the cavalcade is going) ever slowed down, even when motorcyclists and others were within inches of the jeep's bodywork. I do not know what he eats, but it sure aint normal food. He must certainly be a suicidal cannibal. (there I am, my second contradictory sentence in this article)
It was a nerve-wracking experience, and the funny part is that it lasted no more than ten to fifteen seconds. One might question how so many vehicles could pass by in such a short while, but it did happen.

It was a crushing display of power, because it is no mean task to part a wide clearing in Chennai rush hour traffic, you need some real power for that kidna thing.

Yes, forget the other trappings of power, just a motor cavalcade wherever I go will be fine.

Mobile Phone

I never really wanted a cell phone when I was in school. I thought they were unnecesary, ornamental, pointless devices which, in a school-going kid's hands, were nothing more than a gamble of many thousands of rupees which his/her parents were brave enough to take.
Really, where was the need? There was a phone (two, actually) ready to use whenever the students wanted to contact their folks back home, and one couldnt complain that the campus was too big to walk all the way to the office, because it really wasnt, and it wasnt like locating a friend was such a herculean task, because of the aforementioned, so the phone held no use in both these regards.
Moreover, there were lowlife criminals in the guise of decent students ready to flick the costly instruments these people carried, causing tears, empty pockets, and wastage of energy through shouted words.
Rather hopelssly, the teachers would occasionally ask the students carrying phones to hand them over, which is like addressing a crowd of people in a market-place and asking all the pick-pockets to please step away from the rest. Completley, and utterly pointless.
So I really could'nt see the point of taking all that risk for no gain. Moreover, my parents wouldnt get me one until I finished school, so there.

So once I completed school, I was entrusted with this beautiful phone that my father had been using for a while. It wasnt the latest model, but it was big, had a keyboard, and was as solid as the western ghats. You could hurl it at a wall and nothing would happen to it. It laughed away all the bashings and shocks that the daily usage of a careless student threw at it, and did not give a single problem, and didnt seem like it was ever going to. I vowed never to let it go, swore that it was going to be my phone forever. Then I caught a bus to bangalore, rode 15 hours in a car to Goa, lost it, and came back. And felt like I was a bit dim.
Then I persuaded my father to buy me a new phone, and he did, and it was a Motorola, and it looked fantastic, like it was very costly, which it wasnt, because it was an absolute bargain. And, sadly, it isnt very good.
It dosent have a keyboard, for starters. So the messages have to be typed out using the number pad. Which is a bit of a problem for me. While my friends could type messages as long as the entire 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' in about 5 seconds, I fumble, search for keys and dither around in my new phone. And the fact that it has a bumbling, dimwitted sofware dosent help either.
And recently, the phone has started hanging, and switching off, on its own accord. In other words, its started being an absolute pain in the wrong kind of place. When it works, its frustrating, and slow, and gets on your nerves. When it dosent, well, it dosent.

I want my old Nokia 6800 back. If you have seen it, do tell me when and where.