-Brian Mendonça
Before I knew it my phone was on the ground. I had
been standing trying to juggle too many things with my fingers. I lost track of
what I was holding in which finger – and down it went.
There it lay immobile, the red mud and stones bewildered
at their new found company. In the darkness, the area was just about half-lit
with the light from the ice cream shop nearby. I could see that the mobile had
fallen on its face - like an accident victim sprawled across the earth.
My heart skipped a beat. I had put a protective
casing for the phone. Surely that would protect the display? I had recently
taken off the extra, tempered glass as I
could not view the apps very clearly.
The touch screen was also less responsive with the tempered glass in
between.
I bent down with trepidation and slowly flipped
back the protective case. The phone seemed okay enough. But that was in the
half-light.
In the morning I found that the display of my
phone had a slight crack. It looked like a hairline fracture. The crack moved across the breadth of the
panel which began like a graph from the bottom left to the middle of the phone
to the right.
I thought about how the phone slipped and fell. I
held my left thumb and forefinger responsible. At that point I was carrying two
bags of piano books in my right hand and the phone in my left.
Why could not someone invent a device by which a
phone could be held more securely?
On one occasion I was in a pastry shop. In the act
of taking out the change and using one finger to accept the cake bag I loosened
my grip on the phone-carrying fingers. The other time was when I was getting
into my car in the car park after a visit to the hospital. Absent-mindedly, I
gazed fondly at the window of the hospital room which I had just left. The
phone fell on the concrete.
Ever since the mishap, I have been looking at the
phones around me. I was delighted to find many in the same boat. One person had
an iPad which was littered with cracks.
The point was that everyone was going on about their work as though
nothing had happened. So why was I feeling so miserable?
The next day there were two graphs on my display
in place of one. I actually felt happy. I was inching towards the day when I
would gift myself a new display. My mother used to look at our teapot with
multiple cracks, waiting for the day it would ‘accidently’ fall and break.
One likes perfection. But the mirror is often
cracked. One has to make do with what is left. Now I use my fingers more
mindfully. I keep my phone in my back pocket instead of between my left thumb
and forefinger. I try to hurry less.
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Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, Panaji,Goa on Sunday, 21 July 2019. Pix of LCD of Asus Zenfone Lite. Courtesy: maxbhi.
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