The phone and I: Am I the mother of my phone?

Once I got a mobile phone, I could never go back to being the carefree soul I used to be, who could only be contacted via a landline somewhere. (Representational image by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels)

Though I do not remember going into labour, these words are still ringing in my ears: "Badhai ho, aap ko phone hua hai." I cuddled it all the way back home, with it sleeping innocently in its little white pack. Holding it carefully, I stepped back into the house, a house I had left alone and single.

Though people had warned me that life after phone-hood would never be the same, that I could never go back to being the carefree soul I used to be, who could only be contacted via a landline somewhere, I was still not prepared for the complete overhaul. First, the anxiety: is it dead, is it alive? I have randomly jabbed the phone many times to check if it is breathing. I have shaken it and asked it to make a noise, any noise, so I know all is well with my phone. And before it wails of low energy, I have latched it to its warm, nourishing charger.

With time, the phone and I grew used to each other. When it fell the first few times, I flew to it and stroked it soothingly after checking carefully for scratches. And now I just pick it up swiftly and say falling is routine. When it buzzes, I locate it in a jiffy, and smooth its cracked exterior with loving fingers.

I have sometimes misplaced it in a shop. And then frantically dashed around in search of it, only able to communicate its loss to the crowd gathering around me in incoherent panic. Like all mothers, this was always my deepest fear – one day I would lose the phone. It would be plucked from me by a phone-napper, a robber of phones who will take it apart for parts or smuggle it out into the phone-trafficking racket. The rest of my life would entail putting up posters of the phone in various poses with the words: "Have you seen this Phone?"

At parties it can never be far from me. I am not being judgemental but I have seen many just abandon their phones the minute they are having fun, their phone lying unattended far away! Serves them right when they finally remember it and wail, "How can I order my cab? This thing is dead!" Then they run around trying to revive it, and I act deaf when they randomly beg people for a charger. Ha.

I know what you are thinking, that I am a possessive mother. That I would never be able to let go when the time comes. This is why people do not keep pets; saying goodbye is impossible. But one day they do fly the nest, and you are left behind. People will tell you to go get another one, but you know it is only heartbreak…

And yet, and yet one day you walk by a shop window, and there it is, your new phone. You switch it on and a maternal glow lights up your face.