The mobile phone madness

Now that a mobile phone is like a fifth limb, there is nothing worse than having it lost or stolen. That is like hacking off a leg and most of us, having sold our souls to the motherboard circuitry or whatever, go into total collapse. My phone has been swiped, woe is me, just shoot me.
We have never been so possessive and obsessed by any gadget with such ferocity. And since the mindset is such, if you have dropped it somewhere or been careless, the finder is not likely to return it because he 'found' it and he thinks that is a stroke of luck and not blatant theft.
We lost a phone and then tried to call the number and a man answered and said he had found it but he wasn't giving it back but he would give us the sim card and with much skullduggery and subterfuge that would have made the CIA and the FBI proud, we gibbered with gratitude and he left it near a tree and told us when to collect it. stuff movies are made of.
Everyone told us we should have tracked him down and all the knowing people who fetch up at crisis time said, these days even a dead phone can be traced and stuff like that, but how can you trace him when he is on your number and who really goes through that effort. It is much easier to just sit around in the aftermath and blame one another for neglecting the phone and making the theft possible.
The only thing more agonising than finding the phone missing is its destruction. In your presence. One minute you are connected to the world, all warm and fuzzy and feeling so needed and then it slips and slithers across the hard marble floor (never falls on soft sand or thick pile carpet, always on the hardest floor) and the back comes off and the crack of the glass cobwebs its way across the screen and you shriek with dismay and it is now jammed or refusing to slide and you can press home till the sun sets but it won't budge and you know it is now primed to burn a hole in your pocket.
No one can explain in mere words the sweeping sense of desolation that comes with a cracked mobile phone. Yes, of course, you do get these fancy covers that are supposed to keep it safe and protect it from shock and your inherent clumsiness - but take it from me, if you have a mobile phone that is expensive and runs on a mind of its own and has malicious intent against you, it doesn't matter how you cocoon it, the darn thing will fall into pieces.
Then you hear about people whose phone fell 50 feet after bouncing on three rocks and skimming past a rivulet and there is nary a scratch on it. Yours fell eight inches, its fall broken by your desperate hand trying to catch it and now it is a wreck. Go figure.
bikram@khaleejtimes.com