Where Are You?

Many things have changed since cell-phones took over our lives. I always wondered how nice times used to be before the damned phone. One of the things to change since the mobile make-over is the first line while we speak. The moment hellos and his are dealt with the first question is ‘Where are you’? Whatever the hell happened to how are you, what are you up to….no where the hell are you! So as an off shoot of this has been the increase in lying capacity of people. As a defense mechanism, for the lack of any other term, I end up telling my location but not revealing it. I’ll say I’m in Delhi. Of course I am in Delhi; for those who don’t traverse inter state on a daily basis Delhi is Delhi and Gurgaon is Haryana. But some times Gurgaon is Delhi too. I don’t want you to know where I’m or what I’m up to.

 

Could this be true then…this generation lies more than the previous ones? I mean there are signs of the same in everything you do. You don’t reveal your location on a phone call, you don’t want to ‘archive’ the gmail chat, most of the times you are ‘invisible’ on gmail…why do we do it? One of my friends says this way he can be there and yet not be there so he won’t be disturbed. OK. But weren’t we supposed to be people who unlike our parents were direct in communicating? Yeah but does that work? Have ou tried telling someone that you don’t wish to be talk- try it and see how they will mend the fences! The simpler and easier the tools of communication become the harder it seems to keep in touch.

 

Even some of us who first make such tools to be incognito come up with devices that will be like a lie detector strapped to your body. Google Latitude for instance. This freaky thing will tell you the location of your friends (gmail contacts) in real time. Combined with Google Maps, Latitude reveals the friend as a blinking dot on the map of the city (provided they are online using a laptop or a cellular phone with GPRS) and track their movement. I mean if you are online and take a left turn as you exit from Barista Vasant Vihar and move towards Priya Cinema via Chocolat, Sony World, La Marchie, Arabian Nights and the Timex Showroom as you check out the window display of Fact and Fiction! Of course Google will put funny lines like ‘My wife is on her way back I better start preparing dinner’ on it’s website to pitch it. See the thing for yourself here. Don’t fret you can tinker around with the settings and ‘hide’ your location.

 

I better update my facebook profile and status message if I want to keep in touch with friends. On second thoughts RUN GAUTAM RUN! On second second thoughts YOU CAN’T HIDE GAUTAM.