The life of a smartphone - 5 (The epic finale)

A similar kind of incident had happened again. She had dropped me under a car. There were no regrets on her face when she was picking me up. She was very confident that I would be fine. Did she ever even realize how much effort and pain I had to undergo in order for her to still use me?

This doubt had been growing inside me since the bus incident. I felt I was being exploited and being taken for granted. I contacted my buddy from the shop who was also taken the same day as me by a different person. He told me that there were zero scratches on him and he had a tempered glass put on his screen instead of a mere scratch guard. He was in excellent condition and didn’t even know what being mistreated meant. When he heard of my condition, he said that it had only been a year and it couldn’t be that I was already in such a bad condition. “We are supposed to last much longer. Not make efforts to say alive only after a year of use. This is supposed to happen maybe four or five years down the line” he said.

Listening to all this I had decided that I was indeed being taken for granted. I wasn’t being appreciated for my efforts and was instead being scolded, cursed and laughed at for them. I wasn’t liking it anymore. I wasn’t liking her anymore.

One day, she went to the toilet with me. She had started doing this 6 months ago. Days were still good back then but not as good as they were in the beginning. She sat down on the toilet seat holding me tight. But that tightness was making her hands sweat and all that sweat made me slip and fall into the water below. I can’t even describe the horror I felt when I fell in. It felt very bad. No smartphone should ever go through what I went through that day.

I could see the horror in her face. Then I saw her expression, she was deep in thought contemplating whether to take me out or not. It pained me so much to see that expression. I still held on, because I still loved her but what happened today was the maximum humiliation I could take.

She somehow got me out and looked at me. I was still holding on but it was getting tougher. She thanked her stars that I was still working but my screen got stuck and didn’t respond to her touch. I was done with her. I couldn’t take any of it anymore. She switched me off and tried to switch me on again. But I was dead!

This voice inside me is still alive and I keep seeing her everyday trying to switch me back on again, trying to go to shops to get me back to normal again but the other parts inside me have told that they can’t function anymore because of all that water inside. She keeps going to shops, she has visited three already to revive me but I have decided that even if some miracle happens and all the other parts start working I am officially done with her and won’t let them work for her anymore.

She is very determined and not ready to give up so easily on me. She keeps opening the cupboard she has thrown me in, everyday, taking me out, running her fingers on me and asking me to start working again. She keeps telling me how much she loves me, how well she would treat me once I get back to normal. But I know better. I am not falling for her lies no matter how much earnest they sound.

She has gone back to using a smaller phone again and I hear her telling her parents that she doesn’t want a new phone and will try every possible option to get me to work again. Sometime I feel sorry for her and think I should maybe start working just to see that sparkle in her eyes again, but then I know what will happen a few months later. Everything will go back to normal. I am better off like this without my human.

P.S. – This is in loving memory of my Asus Zenfone 5 which, I dropped in the toilet (I know all of you are going to judge me now). I finally, went to the Asus service center (my last resort) and they said the motherboard is gone and it would cost me 11k INR to get it changed. I was devastated and didn’t buy a new phone for many days. Yes! I did get attached to it. But finally, I did get a new phone because life goes on and you’ve got to go along with it. I still love my Asus Zenfone. But my new phone a Lenovo Vibe K4 Note is good too. However, I am not very sure if it is as happy with me as I am with it. It must be having a million complaints just like my Zenfone but trust me I have changed a lot after my Asus. I still am not over it!  :’( :*

The life of a smartphone -4

It grew more and more worse as time went. She used to leave me to charge overnight and I used to get heated up. Before, she always made sure she never did this by putting an alarm and waking up in the middle of the night and then switching off the charging port. She had gotten very careless with me now.

Then came the summers. I was always hot and needed some cooling down. But she never stopped leaving me to charge overnight. This caused me to heat up even more and I started getting slower. I was so hot that everything was a daze. I couldn’t process anything properly. I heard her telling her friend that I was useless and getting more and more slack by the day. It hurt me so much.

She was constantly hurting me. But I loved her so. I tried in many ways to prove myself to her. Tried to say that I wasn’t so stupid and useless, that I was a great phone. I started working overtime and it didn’t help me in any way. All those extra hours of work were making my processor slower and my battery drain faster which in turn caused her to curse me more. I remember sitting late into the night praying and asking God (if there was one) to show me a way, to make her like me again, to make her love me the way she did in the beginning. Whatever I did only seemed to make things worse. Nothing seemed to work.

One day, after maybe a year of our relationship, she was boarding a bus holding me in her hand. She never put me inside a bag or anything as she was afraid of thieves who would try and steal me. But they wouldn’t if they had seen my condition. I was scratched all over my screen and my paint had come off in many places. There was also this SIM card problem I was facing. Who would have wanted to steal such a phone? So anyway, as she was boarding the bus I felt myself slip from her hands. I wanted to protest but she was in a hurry to get onto the bus. And then it happened. I fell face down on the road under the bus. The moment I fell I felt so much pain! I thought I would die! But all my love for her came to my mind and I thought I had to stay alive at least for her sake. Because no matter how much she mistreated me, I believed she would miss me terribly if I was gone. So with great effort I held on until I felt a hand pick me up. It was her and she was looking at me to see if anything had gone wrong. If not for a few extra scratches on my screen I was fine. She heaved a sigh of relief and got onto the bus where the driver was already scolding her for holding up the line of people getting into the bus.

She got in, sat next to her friend and said “Thank God my phone’s so insensitive. If it were as sensitive as your phone it would never have switched on again.” She and her friend started laughing about the entire incident and I somehow, deep down inside, knew that this incident had given her confidence about my robustness and she would get even more careless with me. But I hoped she would realize how careless she had been and would treat me with a little respect. A little hope never killed anyone, right? But hope was all I had I realized.

The life of a smartphone-3

  She was with me most of the day. We were so compatible and inseparable, much to her parent’s dismay. I heard her parents shouting at her to put down her phone (me) and come to dinner. Her mother told her father once that it was a mistake getting me home as she had completely stopped interacting with people. “Always with that phone” I heard her mother grumbling to herself most of the time.

The first few days were the best. Then one day, I couldn’t feel her SIM card inside me. I didn’t know why this happened and I wanted to tell her that. Then, a friend came to her and said “I’ve been trying to call you, the call doesn’t connect. It says your phone’s switched off.” With a confused expression she turned to me. “This has never happened before” she said. “Yeah! I don’t know what’s wrong. So glad you noticed.” I was saying. She pressed a few times on my screen to no avail. I was afraid she’d get to that part and finally she did. She opened my behind to check if everything was ok. This will pass soon enough I kept telling myself. Moreover, I shouldn’t be afraid of this pain anymore. I was advised by the used ones. So I put on a brave face and bore it.  I felt her remove the SIM card and put it back again. Everything cleared. I could feel her SIM again. Phew! I thought something was seriously wrong with me. I could see the relief on her face too. “Don’t know what went wrong though” I heard her telling her friend. Things like this should never happen again I thought.

But then, it did. I couldn’t detect her SIM another day, she did the same thing and I went back to normal again. This started happening even more frequently. My behind was opened so frequently that I stopped feeling the pain, which was the only good thing that came out of this. I didn’t know what was wrong. I could see the irritation on her face whenever this happened. No! I didn’t like seeing her like that. She was always smiling whenever she was with me and this was new and I wasn’t liking it. Every day, I prayed I’d work fine. This didn’t happen daily, but once in 2 or maybe 3 days, it happened. And then, she started being rude and careless with me. She still was with me for most of the day, but she was not as loving and caring as she was before. She started throwing me on her bed or the couch which was in sharp contrast to the gentleness she used to shower me with before.

Then one day, she was downloading an application into me, but I was already bloating with so much music, so many pictures and applications. I didn’t think I had space for more and so, I told her that. The next thing that came out of her mouth was so painful, I can’t even describe how much it hurt. “Stupid phone” she cursed aloud.

The life of a smartphone-2

The man reappeared and I could hear what he was talking on the phone. He was talking about me. I heard him say ”I bought a new phone today… Yeah!...  Don’t you know about it? Everyone’s buying it these days… Yeah, it has been rated the top smartphone… I know, everybody in our house already has a smartphone and we got ours recently… Oh, yeah! Chutki can have it!.. I know, she totally deserves it.” Chutki, that caught my attention. Is that who my new owner is? “Yeah, the next time I come there we’ll give it to her… Ok then, I’m tired, Bye!” That was the end of the conversation. I wondered who this Chutki was and what it would be like to be with her, or was it a he? I didn’t know if it was excitement or fear, but I couldn’t wait to see Chutki.

I had to wait for a month and a half to be taken out and used again. The man who bought me had a family living in another country and he wanted to present me to some member in his family, so I had to wait until he went to his home country, I could make out that much. Then finally one day I saw the man packing his bags. The room in which he lived was being cleared and I also saw him handing over the keys to some other man. Maybe this was it. This was the time I would finally meet Chutki. Oh God, I’m such a nervous wreck. I’m simply unable to control whatever emotion I’m feeling right now. Before I could think further, I was picked up and thrusted into darkness. Maybe I was inside a bag, on my way to meet Chutki.

After 12 hours (I was keeping track of the time) I finally saw light. The moment the cover the box which was holding me opened I saw a girl. So Chutki was a girl after all. She had thick framed glasses which magnified her eyes. And her eyes, they were all big with happiness and excitement. She was so happy to see me and I myself couldn’t control my happiness. Girls are really good to their phones the used ones told me. I indeed was lucky!

We had a whole lot of fun that day. Only the two of us, we stayed awake till late in the night. I never stayed up so late. I was asleep most of the time in the past month. She first inserted her SIM and memory cards into my behind. She had a huge collection of songs in her memory card and they really were good. She started installing lots of apps apps. I was slowly filling up. Then she took lots of pictures of me and pictures of her using my camera. “The camera is awesome! I can take so many selfies with this” I heard her say to her parents. I was so glad she liked me. Fun times were ahead and I could feel it in my gut! We looked so cool together! I totally love her! Man, it felt good to be used!

The life of a smartphone

I used to live on a stand, open for everybody to look at. People used to come play with my screen with their fingers for a few times and leave. I always waited with bated breath for the one person who’d pick me and take me with them. Finally, a person did and he was middle aged man with a stern looking face and a thick moustache. He examined me a few times, played with my screen and told the person beside him that he wanted me. So I was taken to the counter and was wrapped up in my cover. I was not used to closed spaces but I felt strangely comfortable in my cover. It was darkness after that. I couldn’t see a thing and could only feel a few bumps inside my cover, like an earthquake. When I could see again, I was in a small cramped room with a bed and green paint on its walls. He took me out from where I was comfortably snuggled up and opened my behind. He examined me a bit and closed it. Well, it does hurt a bit when your behind is opened but it was a part of life. I personally wasn’t very much used to getting my behind opened but the used phones that came to the store told us how we must get used to getting our behind opened because that’s how frequently it happened. Some of the used ones were really scary. They looked hideous with their cracked screens and sometimes the covers for their behind weren’t there. But not all of them were like that. A few used ones were not bad to look at with only a few scratches on their screen. Scratches were a part of being used by people they said. They always had a smug face while talking to us and they always said being bought and used by a person is the only way a phone could feel complete. The hideous used ones always stressed on the importance of getting picked up by a good person, one who is “phone friendly”. They had really bad stories to tell about their owners and they always wished all of us newbies landed into the hands of good ones. From the moment I was picked up I was really excited. I wondered what kind of a person my owner was. Was he going to treat me well? Would I be happy with him? All these questions were cut short when I saw another phone on the bed. It was smart too, but it had a smaller screen than mine. It looked at me and said, “This one has gotten me recently. I’m new too. A few weeks old, that’s all. Is he bored of me already?” Well, there was no denying I was much better looking than the other one. I was lighter and had a bigger and a better screen. That one lying on the bed was fat and heavy. No wonder he got bored of it so soon. I was way better! But then, he came into the room and picked up the other one to make a call. Wait! Aren’t people supposed to be smitten with new phones? I thought he was so excited that he couldn’t wait to use me. The other one looked at me and mouthed the words “You aren’t for him” as it disappeared outside the door with the man.