ulta pulta
Mobile mania
Jaspal Bhatti

A Parliamentary Committee has invited public opinion on whether the use of cellphones should be restricted. It really is a debatable point. When a teacher teaching the class suddenly says, "Excuse me students" and talks at length about his private tuitions on his cell phone, many would say that mobiles should be banned in the classrooms. But when a student’s girlfriend calls and asks how long would be the class, the same student thinks, ‘What a facility!’

Many a times people get off running trains or buses after they realise that they have forgotten their cellphones at home. I asked a woman in an elevator, who looked pale and breathless, "Are you asthmatic or claustrophobic?" The woman replied, "I feel breathless when there is no signal on my mobile network."

People don’t switch off their mobiles even in cremation grounds. A funeral pyre was being lit, when the ring tone on somebody’s mobile phone rang in full stereophonic sound, "Hun mauja hi mauja...." Panditji yelled, "Switch off the phone. The song doesn’t go with the atmosphere, you idiot!"

"It does," the relative exclaimed, "the dead man has left us huge property and cash."

I don’t think a law could be passed to jam the signals in the classrooms, cremation grounds and temples, but people should use their sensibilities to decide when to use a cellphone or not. You don’t expect Dhoni to tell Brett Lee as he comes charging down the run up, "Hold on. I’ve got a call from an ad company!"

HOME