The Big Switch

It's one of those things for which you constantly have your leg pulled. Having an old, pre-historic phone, a Blackberry. Yes, for years I had clung to the original smartphone, while the rest of the world moved on. But there comes a time when you have to decide between turning the page and closing the book. With RIM on life support, it was time for me to accept the possibility that there wouldn't be BlackBerry a year from now. And therefore I decided to take the plunge & switch to an Android.


But before we come to that, let me first list out some things which I absolutely loved on my BB: the red indicator light, the physical keyboard, BBM, its Email integration, BIS, security etc. Sadly, the LED has been replicated on most Android phones & does not remain an exclusivity. And my BBM contact list has come down to 3 or 4 people. Most of them have moved on to Whatsapp. The only thing that was keeping me from switching was the physical keyboard. While I could swear by the accuracy & speed of a physical keyboard over a touch-based one, shifting to touch wasn’t much of an issue since I had used a Galaxy Tab 2 for over 2 years. So, that left just the email, BIS and security. As far as security was concerned, android provided a basic level of encryption which was good enough for me. Also, I wouldn't be wrong if I said that Gmail™ has become the de-facto choice for mails today (not considering corporate accounts), and what better ecosystem to handle it than Android itself. And by overlooking these trivial issues, I was getting a great app eco-system (Play Store), an up-to-date OS and a modern looking device, albeit less professional. So, at the end of the day i thought that would be good tradeoff. But it turned out to be not so promising after all.

Incident 1: I was attending an admission tour conducted by Alliance Française de Bangalore on the 26th of October. I have a habit of switching to silent mode before entering gatherings such as this. Selecting ‘All Alerts off’ on a BB does the job. I selected the same no alerts option on my Moto and holstered the phone. Midway through the speech of a certain Dr. Alexandre Durant, the Moto’s alarm started sounding loudly. Turns out that the alarms do not silence themselves even if the ringer is silenced. Now there are 2 things you should know about this tone. One, it’s a highly unprofessional tone. Two, this Moto does not ring incrementally. It goes ballistic all of a sudden. Imagine my plight when Mr. Alexandre actually stopped his speech and waited for me to silence my phone. And I fumbled with the buttons, trying the power/ volume buttons & finally realizing that you had to drag a bloody icon from one end to other just to silence the phone.

Incident 2: I told a friend (whom I didn't want to talk to at that moment) that I had internals & would not be able to chat with her that night. Now I have a cousin sis whom I chat with pretty late at night. The next day, I get a message from my friend, saying that I was active till 0300 and deliberately avoiding her. You see, Whatsapp displays the time and date when a user was last active. Sigh.

Also, Whatsapp does not give the luxury of D (Delivered) and R (read) signs. No, the ticks in Whatsapp don’t stand for D & R. 1 tick stands for ‘Message delivered to server’ and 2 ticks specify ‘message delivered to device’. So, if you've been upset with your boyfriend for not responding to your message despite the two ticks and you are assuming he has read it but is busy flirting with someone else, chances are he has not. While BBM can't tell you if he is indeed cheating on you, it can tell you with certainty that the message has been read and not just delivered. I tried installing BBM on my Moto but it’s too crude and buggy. I saw tick-marks signifying non-delivery even when the recipients confirmed that the message has been received.

Other issues: The fluidity of the BB OS is not present in an Android. To make a call, I would unlock my BB, directly type the name of the contact and press the Call button. With Android, I need to Unlock, open the dialer, tap the search bar, wait for the virtual keyboard to appear, type the name of the contact, and tap on the search result to make a call. Yes, this is how difficult it is.

All in all, not a good experience. Old habits die hard. Maybe I was better off with my BB.

The Empty Nest

Moving to college was probably the biggest thing I had been looking forward to for the past two years. I spent my entire high school years wishing that I could be away from my parents, unhindered, the way I wanted myself to be. While preparing myself to go to college was probably one of the most exciting times of my life, it was bittersweet since it meant saying goodbye to my home; simultaneously preparing for this huge next phase in my life, which, I can tell you for certain, contained some of my worst and loneliest moments.

The weight of my solitude didn’t settle completely until the exact moment I left my house. As the door of the car was held open by my younger brother, I threw a longing glance back at my home. I then sank into the rear seat. Then immediately, the cars drove out, with another car carrying my mom and aunt following us. I had left Jamshedpur earlier, sometimes even for long periods, knowing that I would probably return within a week or two. But there was something different this time. This time it felt much more difficult, painful and tragic.

Jamshedpur doesn’t have an airport, so I had to go to Ranchi to catch a flight. My parents, due to time constraints, couldn't accompany me all the way. So they dropped me at the station, where I was supposed to catch the train to Ranchi. Frankly, at that moment I even thought that this was better since it would save me a lot of emotional drama at the airport. I was wrong, dead wrong. My dad, who I was very close with, said:

Come on beta, give me a hug. Pata nahin kab mil payunga…Translation: Come on Son, give me a hug. Who knows when we may meet again?

He broke off after that & for the first time in my life I saw his eyes welled up with tears. I hugged him but somehow controlled my tears, since I was young and had to maintain my image of being a ‘tough guy’. The train suddenly whistled. A part of my mind told me to jump back on to the platform. And the other, silently whispered “It’s over, my friend. It's over”.

When you are away from your parents for the first time, you will discover exactly what and how much they have done for you, no matter what you think about them now. I assure you. No matter how unsteady your relationship with your parents is, that first night you are alone, there will be a pain in your chest, a pain so heavy and miserable that you'll be tempted to tear your heart out. For some, this may be difficult to believe. It will sound stale and clichéd because so many people have already told you this. You've convinced yourself, you won't be like that. You won't long for your parents once you’re out of their grasp. But believe me, you are wrong.

The first night I was on my own, I wasn't as happy as I expected myself to be. My heart literally cried even if I kept teardrops from falling. At one point I was arranging groceries in my larder, when I clumsily dropped a gallon of oil on the floor. I spent an hour scrubbing oil from the tile. That was the last straw. I slumped onto the floor and cried my heart out.

I had been looking forward to this moment my entire high school life. I had been waiting for the day I would have no one nagging at me to clean my room, and no one forcing me to eat veggies when I had clearly declared myself to be a pure non-vegetarian. No one bursting into my room without knocking and no one getting angry with me for talking back. 

And when that day came, I felt downright miserable. I cursed myself for not being able to crack JEE with a good rank, which would have allowed me to study in my hometown. For the first time, I was alone. For the first time, I would have given anything up just to hear my mom yelling at me to drink water. I would have given up anything to hear my dad reprimand me from driving too fast, staying too late or out too long.


It took me a while to realize the fact that it would be a while before I would have anyone at all.

PS: It's been a year since and I have coped up with it, partly due to some close relatives being here. But something happened today which forced me to write this blog. To be continued...