Attention, please!

In this age of hyper-connectivity, have we lost the ability to live in the moment?

Last week in Chennai I had my first experience of an A.R. Rahman concert. Given that I am a huge fan, I was looking forward to seeing him perform live along with his troupe of super-talented musicians. And Rahman did not disappoint, playing all his biggest hits and then some, with Hariharan and Sukhvinder coming on to do their bits.

What intrigued me, though, were the people sitting around me. Instead of immersing themselves in the music, clapping in rhythm or even singing along – as keen concert-goers should do – they were all busy on their phones. Some were holding them aloft to take grainy pictures; others were recording (even grainier) videos; some were updating their BBM status to tell their extended social circle that they were watching Rahman LIVE; others were doing much the same on Facebook.

None of them were doing what they had presumably come here for: to listen to Rahman and his band play. They were so busy recording the event or telling other people that they were at it, that they had lost sight of the essential purpose of why they were here: to listen to a live performance.

Many musicians have complained about this cell-phone nuisance, where people are more engaged with their mobiles than the music during a performance. And some have even said that this new practice of everyone ‘recording’ what it is going on actually takes away from the energy of the show. And given my own experiences of live music events, I have to agree.

But more than that, I can’t help but wonder if this is not just another indicator of how we have lost the ability to live in the moment.

We can no longer just listen to a singer belting out his greatest hits. We are not content to hum along, clap in time, or even dance. No, even the event unfolds before us, we feel this compelling need to record it and then share it on social media to prove what interesting, fulfilling, fun-filled lives we lead. I can bet that none of the people recording the Rahman performance on their mobile devices will ever look (or hear) that clip again. The only time they will whip it out is when they need to tell someone else about how they were at this ‘awesome’ concert.

And it’s not just music concerts alone. Even in movie theatres, people seem unable to succumb to a willing suspension of disbelief for a couple of hours. No, they must post their thoughts and mini-reviews on Twitter or Facebook even as the action unfolds; or at the very least, BBM or IM their friends to tell them how it’s going. Thankfully, it is illegal to record a movie on a mobile device or else we would have to contend with the mobile-held-aloft syndrome in cinema halls as well.

But it is on holidays that our inability to live in the moment becomes most obvious. Instead of enjoying the sight of a riveting sunset, we are busy adjusting camera settings so that the redness of the sky can be faithfully captured for the family album. Rather than feast our eyes on the majesty of a tiger in the wild, we are struggling to frame him perfectly against that clump of trees. Instead of feeling the sea breeze in our hair, the warmth of sunshine on our backs, or the flakes of snow as they waft past our faces, and just enjoying the moment, we are so focused on recording it that we destroy its essential magic. In making sure we remember the moment, we fail to actually savour it.

Focussing on even the simplest thing seems to beyond us these days. We cannot watch a TV debate without venting our outrage on Twitter. We cannot read a book without stopping to check the newsfeed on our phone. We cannot try a new recipe in the kitchen without posting a picture on our blog so that everyone can exclaim over it. We cannot eat in a restaurant without taking pictures of every dish so that we can share it on social media.

Oh well, you get the picture.

The only problem is that we don’t. Or at least we don’t see it for what it is. Instead, we are deluded enough to tell ourselves that all this flitting between stuff is a good thing. We pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we are really great at ‘multitasking’. Oh look, how clever I am! I can watch a TV show, check the latest news headlines on my laptop and tweet on the phone AT THE SAME TIME! Isn’t that AMAZING?

Well, since you ask, it is anything but amazing. It is, in fact, a bit shaming that we cannot bring ourselves to commit to any one thing at any one time. It is, in fact, a sign of our ever-decreasing attention spans, a sad corollary of our frenetic lives in the age of hyper-connectivity. And it doesn’t look as if it’s going to get better any time soon.

I’m sorry, but that’s private

No, that’s not a phrase that goes down well in a world gone mad on over-sharing

Like almost everyone else on the planet who is in possession of a mobile phone, I am haunted by spam smses. Not an hour goes by without my being exhorted to buy a flat; get a car loan; upgrade my water purification system; dine at the all-you-can eat buffet at a local restaurant; and most worrying of all, lose weight with a magic sauna belt (now, how could they possibly tell?).

This is irritating enough when I am in the country. But it drives me insane when I am abroad and end up having to pay several thousand rupees for the privilege of receiving offers I have expressed no interest in and will never ever take up.

The same goes with email. I can understand being inundated by nonsensical mails on the email id given below this column, because honestly, what else do you expect if you offer yourself up like the proverbial sacrificial lamb for slaughter by spam? But, more mystifyingly, my private email id which is shared only with friends and family, is also routinely clogged with importune messages from people I don’t know and organisations that I have never heard of.

I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly annoying when my privacy is breached in this manner. Is it too much to expect that your phone number and email id be kept private by your service providers? Isn’t confidentiality part of the deal when you sign up with a phone company or an email service?

Well, you would think so, wouldn’t you? But within days of signing up, your information mysteriously leaks out into the public domain – and from then on, it’s only a matter of time before you’re spammed into submission.

Clearly, having even a reasonable expectation of privacy as you go about your life is asking for too much in this hyper-connected world. There is nothing that a dogged telemarketer – or a determined stalker – cannot discover about you in the digital universe.

Mobile numbers and email ids are small change in this world and finding out your address mere child’s play. Your credit card details are no longer out of bounds. Information about your purchase decisions is bought and sold by large corporations. What you wear, where you holiday, what you eat, how you relax, what you read, your choice in music – it’s all out there, waiting to be discovered by various interested parties.

So, given that so much of our lives inadvertently end up being lived out in the public domain, is it even possible to lay claim to a private life any longer? Well, I am old-fashioned enough to hold out for privacy but it seems to be an endangered concept – an idea that is rapidly vanishing under the concerted assault of social media and aggressive marketing.

But then, how could the concept of a life lived privately survive when all of us are complicit in invading our own privacy? I have become used to be being laughed at – good-naturedly, but still – by friends because I don’t post my vacation photo albums on Facebook or Twitpic my latest culinary adventure on to my Twitter page.

Why, they ask, am I not willing to share my experiences with the world? Why this pathological insistence on keeping my private life private? What harm can a few pictures possibly do? Why am I so secretive? What is there to hide?

Frankly, I can think of no better route to mind-numbing boredom that being forced to view pictures of other people’s holidays/weddings/children/pets, so I wouldn’t dream of inflicting my own personal albums on an already-suffering world. But more than that, I have a peculiar horror of sharing my private moments with people on a public forum; making my personal life public property, as it were, by posting it on the Internet. And yes, there a difference between ‘secret’ and ‘private’ – as anyone above the age of 18 should know.

But from what I see around me, I seem to be part of a minuscule minority. The overwhelming majority is made up of people who see nothing amiss in sharing every moment of their lives – be they ever so banal. It’s almost as if they don’t believe that any event has truly occurred until it has been shared with the world via the internet – and someone has pressed the ‘like’ button or posted a comment.

Take a look at your own Facebook page or Twitter feed and you’ll see what I mean. You will be inundated with stuff you never needed – or wanted – to know. Your old school-mate’s child has had a fall in the schoolyard (‘poor baby’); your cousin in America is ‘partying hard’ in Las Vegas (don’t forget to click on that ‘like’ button); your former colleague has landed a dream job (grrr...); well, you get the drift.

Why do people post such a great detail of personal information in the public domain? I guess it’s comes down to a combination of a number of factors: a honest desire to share; a propensity to show-off; a certain degree of self-aggrandisement; sheer vanity; or just plain gormlessness.

But it certainly seems as if people want validation for every moment of their lives – and they can only get that by sharing every detail of their routines online.

In such a world, what price privacy? No, you can’t buy it for love or money. And, if you ask me, more’s the pity.

Hang up now!
Is our addiction to mobile phones getting out of hand?

Last night I went out to dinner with some friends. There we were, eating, drinking, chatting and generally having a good time. Except for one of us – who shall remain unnamed out of sheer generosity of spirit – who spent all his time checking his mobile phone for messages and then typing out long replies, completely ignoring the real-life person sitting opposite who was trying to conduct a conversation.

After about an hour of this, I couldn’t resist any longer. When he next began tapping out a message even as another friend was in the middle of telling an interesting story, I piped up indignantly, “I’m sorry, but clearly the people you’re messaging are more interesting than all of us right here. Perhaps you should be having dinner with them instead?”

To his credit, the gentleman was suitably abashed at being called out on his bad behaviour. He turned a deep red, muttered unconvincingly about how it was his daughter on the phone. He then put his mobile away ostentatiously, promising that he would not check it again in the course of the evening. And yet, when he thought that nobody was looking, I caught him checking out the display surreptitiously, to
make sure that he hadn’t missed on any calls or smses.

My irritation – and that of my friends – notwithstanding, in the cold light of day I have to admit that none of us can afford to be overly judgemental about these things. And I am the first to confess that I am as much sinned against as sinning. In fact, it was only a week ago that an old friend, with whom I was catching up over lunch, accused me of being a Crackberry addict because I kept checking on the delivery of some urgent emails I had sent out.

So, I guess I shouldn’t be holding forth about the trespasses of others. But you know what, I can’t resist.

Honestly, what is it about mobile phones and us? Why are we always looking at them anxiously, worried that we may have missed some important call during the nanosecond when we weren’t looking? Why do we seem unable to ever disconnect? Why can we never switch off completely? Why have we developed such a symbiotic relationship with
our phones that we appear unable to exist without them? Why are we so addicted to our mobiles that we suffer withdrawal symptoms on the rare occasions we are parted from them?

I still remember the feeling of utter helplessness that engulfed me when I lost my mobile while on holiday a year or so ago. It felt as if I had been disconnected from life itself. Nobody knew how to get in touch with me. Having lost my phone book, I didn’t know how to call anyone. After casting about desperately, I was reduced to emailing people to send me their phone numbers. And all the time, I was in
agony, fretting about all the important calls that I was undoubtedly missing, convinced that there must be some work or family emergency just when I had been rendered incommunicado.

So, don’t get me wrong. Yes, I understand just how important mobile phones are to all of us. You can call the airport from the car to check on the status of your flight. You can keep tabs on your kids no matter where they are. In a medical emergency or in case of anaccident, you don’t have to go around looking for a phone booth to summon help. Your elderly parents can get touch with you at all times.
And after a late night out as you take a taxi home, it is a reassuring feeling to have a mobile phone in your purse so that you can call a friend if anything untoward happens.

I know all this, and yet the tyranny of telephones is beginning to get me a bit miffed. Is it really necessary to take calls when you are in a business meeting? Do you have to have loud conversations on your mobile in a restaurant where everyone else is trying to have a quiet meal? Must the loud ring of your phone disturb everyone else in cinemas, at the theatre, or even during a book reading? Can you not
switch your phone off even when you are visiting a sick friend in hospital?

Surely, life went on even before the mobile phone was invented? We managed to catch flights on time, make restaurant reservations, keep in touch with friends and family, even check our email, long before the mobile became an essential tool of modern life.

So why do people act as if they can’t figure out how we ever coped in its absence? After all, it was only a decade ago that we managed perfectly well without it. Could we really have become so dependent in this short space of time?

I guess the short answer to that is yes. But sometimes it makes sense to do without something you feel is essential to your life – if only to prove to yourself that you can. So maybe it is time to ditch the mobile phone – one hour at a time.

I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to go cold turkey just yet. And I’m guessing that nor are you.

Switching off

Why can’t we bear to be out of touch with the world for even a nano-second?

What is the first thing that you do when the wheels of your plane touch down on the tarmac? Do you send up a silent prayer for having arrived safely at your destination? Do you hastily scramble around to collect your reading glasses, shawl, book, magazines or whatever detritus you have strewn around you? Do you rummage in your purse for a lipstick so that you can repair your face before facing the world?

Or do you dig out your mobile phone/Blackberry and switch it on even before the seat belt sign is off?

I’m guessing most readers will be ticking the last option. Going by my own experience on flights this is what everyone does the moment the plane lands, defying the airline staff’s plaintive request that no one should switch on their mobile until the aircraft doors are open. So, even as you are taxiing down the runway, the air is abuzz with messages, emails, and phone calls coming through the ether.

Some are self-importantly scanning their Blackberries for all those crucial emails they missed while in transit. Others are calling their drivers to tell them to drive up to the exit gate so that they don’t have to wait even a couple of minutes for their cars. And then there are those inveterate social animals who can’t wait to get off the aircraft to firm up their dinner plans for the evening.

But every single passenger is on his or her phone, checking smses, the list of missed calls, tapping out messages, scanning e-mails, or making phone calls.

What is so important that can’t wait even for the five or ten minutes it takes to disembark from the aircraft? I am guessing here, but I wouldn’t mind betting that it’s nothing at all.

It’s just that we have become so used to the idea of being plugged into things at all times that we begin to suffer withdrawal symptoms when we are out of touch with the world for the few hours we are in an aircraft. So like a junkie craving a quick fix of his drug of choice, we reach for our phones with a certain desperate urgency the moment we are on terra firma.

What did we miss, we wonder as we switch on our lifelines. Was the boss looking for me with an urgent message? Did the sentence on Ajmal Kasab come through while I was mid-air? Did the sales and marketing team manage to swing that new contract? Did some new controversy break out on Twitter? Did my daughter do well in her exam? Did the stock market recover from that setback earlier in the day? Did India win that T-20 match against South Africa?

Yes, the questions are just bubbling over in our heads and we simply cannot wait for the answers that are lurking in the electronic memory of our phones. So, the first thing we do is switch it on to reconnect with the world. And as the screen comes alive with messages, e-mails and phone calls, in a very real sense, we come alive as well.

See, that’s the thing about modern living. We simply cannot stand the thought of being out of touch – with the news, with our friends, with the office, with social networking sites. No matter where we go, what we do, we must be plugged in. It’s the information age after all; so who could bear to be deprived of information?

Even if we are on holiday, when you are supposed to get away from it all, we want to stay in touch. What do you think is the first question most people ask when they check into a hotel? No, it’s not about what treatments the spa offers. It’s not about what time breakfast is served in the coffee shop. It’s not even about what speciality restaurants there are in the hotel.

No, what people want to know right away is how they can access wi-fi in their rooms. And this is as true of business hotels in big cities as it is of resort hotels in far-flung corners of the world where you should be enjoying the natural beauty all around you instead of surfing the Net. And yet, there we are, logging on to access our mail, check the news sites, and upload photographs on to Twitter and Facebook so that everyone knows exactly what we are up to (and we know what they are up to as well).

If there’s one thing that we can’t bear to do it is switch off – from the mad whirl of events that make up our world; from the constant thrill of the 24-hour news cycle; from the incessant pressure of our workplaces; and from the over-sharing that is such a defining feature of social media.

And we certainly can’t bear to switch off our mobile phones without suffering pangs of anxiety about what we are missing out on.

Thanks seems to be the hardest word

Why is there such an absence of good manners in our country?

Were you at all surprised to hear about those unruly Indian passengers on Cathay Pacific Business Class who had to be off-loaded in Hong Kong? When the cabin crew refused to serve them more alcohol, given that they were already dead drunk, they started abusing the air-hostesses in a tirade strewn with four-letter words.

Frankly, I wasn’t. Given the way Indian passengers – especially the rich, powerful and famous ones who travel in First and Business Class – behave on airplanes, this was an incident waiting to happen. But what is truly shaming to us as a nation is that such incidents are happening with an alarming regularity.

Needless to say, airline staff bears the brunt of this bad behavior. If a flight is cancelled due to fog or delayed because of late arrival of an aircraft, you can be sure that a few obnoxious jerks will start verbally abusing the ground staff, even though common sense will tell you that these hapless people have no control over such matters. If a particularly hostile crowd gathers then physical abuse can’t be ruled out either.

Air-hostesses have gotten so used to being treated badly by passengers that it is no longer even an issue. They are routinely spoken to rudely, the odd grope is par for the course, and men seem to regard it as a god-given right to try and pick them up. And irrespective of gender, the cabin crew is shouted at for everything from ATC delays to bad in-flight meals, even though they have nothing to do with either.

In fact, if you want to see how badly behaved Indians are, airports are a good place to start. Car and taxi drivers will try their best to run you over as you negotiate the zebra crossing. The security staff will be rude and obnoxious. Instead of addressing passengers as Sir or Madam – as is customary across the civilized world – they will address you by the familiar ‘tum’ form in Hindi or whatever regional language they speak. And if you are pulled aside for a random check of your hand luggage, they will not make the slightest attempt to help you put it back.

Shops and department stores are another place where you can check out the legendary bad behavior of our brethren – right across the service divide. No customer will ever bother to say please or thank you – and neither will the sales staff. If you are dealing with a shop assistant, the person behind you will not have the decency to wait till you are finished but will interrupt unabashedly. In fact, anybody who exhibits the barest modicum of good manners – like queuing up in an orderly fashion at the till – will be regarded as something of an oddity.

I’m not suggesting that we should go in for the fake-cheeriness of US stores, where everyone is sent off with a hearty, “Have a nice day”. (One British writer was most upset when he was so advised by an American cab driver. “I’ll have any kind of day I want,” he retorted indignantly.) But surely a smile, a please, a thank you, goes a long way in making the world a better place to live in. And it doesn’t even require much effort.

Telephone manners are another area in which Indians could do with a great deal of improvement. I’ve lost count of the number of times I pick up the phone to be greeted with a peremptory “Who’s that?” My answer is always an indignant: “What do you mean who’s that? You’re the one calling me.” Honestly, whatever happened to: “Could I please speak to…?” or even “Is that so-and-so?”

Restaurants are another arena where I am constantly appalled by just how badly behaved Indians are. The word please is conspicuously absent from their vocabulary when they are placing their orders. They ignore the waiting staff when they are serving the table instead of saying thank you. And then, if nobody is paying attention to them momentarily, they call for service by clicking their fingers, or shouting ‘Boy’ or something equally offensive.

Nowhere is this more embarrassing than when you are eating out abroad. You can be sure that the guy shouting loudly on his mobile phone while everyone else tries to have a memorable meal at a Michelin-star restaurant will be an Indian. And don’t even start me on the kids. When foreign children will be sitting quietly in their high chairs, doing a fairly decent job of wielding a knife and fork, the Indian kids will be running riot, careering around the restaurant, throwing more food on the table than into their mouths, and screaming loudly if their maids make an ineffectual effort to discipline them. (And please, all you mummy bloggers out there, please don’t clog my in-box yet again. Let’s just agree that I am a bad, bad person, and be done with it.)

If you don’t think there is a difference, just observe the behavior of Indian and foreign kids on your next long-haul flight. The firangi children will sit quietly with their headphones listening to music or playing a video game. The Indian kids will be running up and down the aisles, trying to trip everyone who passes, while their parents don’t pay the blindest bit of attention.

Is it any wonder then that we grow up to be such a badly-behaved bunch?

Virtual loss

Will we end up being the first generation without a history?

At the fag end of a fabulous holiday in the Maldives, I lost my mobile phone. It happened like this. The hotel had set up a picnic on a platform in the middle of the Indian Ocean to showcase the setting sun. The flowers on the table were gleaming in the soft candle-light, the champagne was chilling in the ice-bucket and I was happily recording the scene on my camera phone.

I set it down beside me so that I could pop one of those delicious looking canapés in my mouth. And just then, a huge gust of wind blew it right off the platform, depositing it into the depths of the ocean. All I could do was stare open-mouthed with astonishment.

In that instant, the euphoria generated by the beauty and serenity of the Maldives, the sense of well-being engendered by several hours of hedonistic massages and serious pampering in the spa, was destroyed, leaving me devastated and near-tears.

Overreaction? You might think so, but I couldn’t possibly agree.

You see, I hadn’t just lost a mobile phone, easily replaced by a visit to a shop. I had also lost a significant part of my life. Along with the phone, it had vanished in the depths of the ocean, taking my memories with it.

It wasn’t just the many pictures I had taken on holidays like this one, snapshots of birthday celebrations of close friends, or even portraits of my niece, the newest – and dare I say, cutest – member of my family. It was also the many messages that I was saving from friends and colleagues that marked important moments or events in my personal and professional life.

On a more practical level, the loss was just as immense. I had lost my entire contact list, built up over several years in journalism, which – true to form – I had neglected to back up on my computer.

Not that computers guarantee any kind of safety either. I have lost count of the number of times friends have called me in despair because their PCs/laptops have crashed wiping out the entire library of pictures that chronicled their lives and the music list which contained the songs they lived it by.

But then, that’s the danger of adopting a digital lifestyle. Your entire history is at the mercy of technology which can erase it in a moment – and, of course, sooner or later it does.

It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? But despite the fact that these worst-case scenarios are all too common, none of us have any compunction about embracing the virtual age with a vengeance. Going digital is all the rage, and we are all buying into this trend.

One of the first casualties of this is the art of letter writing. We no longer write home recounting our adventures or even detailing the minutiae of everyday life. We simply pick up the phone and have a casual – even desultory – conversation, send a terse sms to say that all is well, or dash off a rushed email that is deleted as soon as that inbox begins to get a bit clogged.

No meaningful conversation or dialogue is possible in these circumstances, nor is it feasible to have a fruitful exchange of ideas or information. The era in which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s letters to his young daughter Indira were thoughtful and informative enough to form the basis of three books – Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History and the recently released Letters from a Father to his Daughter – is well and truly over.

Somehow A Father’s Smses to his Daughter doesn’t have quite the same ring. And that appears to be the best that our generation can do, given that these days all social intercourse seems to be conducted by digital means. We speak on the phone, we communicate through email and sms, we store our records – both written and pictorial – on the computer. It’s almost as if we are determined to leave no physical evidence behind as we go through the motions of our lives.

Our parents’ generation left behind a plethora of material, a rich and colourful record of lives lived in letters and pictures. Today, the letters may be yellowing, the photographs fraying at the edges, but they still have an immediacy to them. We may not recognize all the faces, the handwriting may have faded but these mementoes give us a glimpse into the past, imbue us with a sense of personal history,

So, I can’t help but wonder our generation will we leave behind? A couple of compact discs, an overflowing email in-box? That’s assuming of course that we haven’t lost all of this in the interim in a computer crash or two.

The way things are going, we look set to vanish off the face of the earth leaving behind no visible traces. And that could well make us the first generation without a history.