You know you are getting Old when ...

You are on the streets walking it down to catch up with a friend. You see a bunch of kids playing cricket, reminiscing you of the good old days. As you day dream, one of the kids hits a beautiful on drive and the ball trickles down to the fence, and comes to a halt near your feet. A loud chorus ensues “Uncle Ball dena”. You look around, there is no uncle in sight. You continue pacing down, when the same chorus goes “Uncle, please ball dena”. This time you get that ugly feeling. Could it be me? You give the kids a quizzical “Who me?” look. The kids yell “Yes Uncle”. Three times. What has my life come to. You pick up the ball and throw it back to them. The kids go “Thank You Uncle”. It wasn't just the ball which was hit for a four, but your mental well-being too.

Welcome to the age of Mid-twenties. When you are not sure if you are still young enough to be called “bhaiya” or you have just about touched the ‘u’ of “uncle”. Quite a few other things happen to an individual at this age which makes one feel “wtf dude, Am I really THAT old?”. So, you know you are getting old when –

• Your favourite cricketer is younger than you. We would have started off idolizing Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly. Now with all of them gone (Well, Almost gone), we have become fans of Pujaras, Kohlis and Jadejas. Umm Ok, Not Jadeja. The point here being our favourite current cricketers are either few yours younger, or of the same age. And No, It doesn't feel good.
• Your college classmates start getting married, and a few of them even have kids. A hard hitting fact. Personally, most of the girls in my class have tied the nuptial knot and a few guys have started with the procession too. One can never say If they are in a hurry, or Is it actually time.
• When you realize that 1990s was a good 20 years back. We used to see Disney Hour, the classic Cartoon Network with actually good cartoons, the night time MGM movies in CN, aahh.. the Bliss. The sad part being it is no longer just 10 years ago. It has almost been around 20 years since those glorious days.
• When you get excited about the free toys given in McD’s Happy Meal and people give you that WTF stare. Yes, those toys are not for you.
• “How’s your work going” is the conversation starter and not “Kitna hua tera”.
• Tinkle comics now cost a mind-numbing Rs.80 and Chacha Chowdhary probably doesn't even exist.
• The debutante heroines are actually much younger than you. You can’t technically have a crush on them. For Example, Alia Bhatt is just 19 years old.
• When you miss Boogie Woogie, even though Dance India Dance gives you much better quality.
• And Finally, the worst one “Dude. What Next? Not sure what to do with my Career man.”.

Nomophobia - Get Over It !

Case 1.Take a walk down any busy road. We see hordes of Ozone Layer Annihilators (Read vehicles) and then we see a sea of humanity walking with their heads bowed down. The issue here is their heads are not bowed down to check if they are treading the right path, and certainly not in humility. It’s bowed down staring away at the mean machine that is taking away all visible traces of Social Interaction.

Case 2. Take a flight to any destination. As the airplane’s wheels kisses the runway, One’s ears are treated to an imperfect symphony of beeps, tings and pings. Oh yes, its that same mean machine showing its ugly face to their owners who go about informing the world that they have just touched down. Cant it wait?

Cell phone addiction is real and scary. It is a materialistic form of substance abuse. With the smartphone industry growing at the rate of knots, the epidemic has just gotten worse. So much that Wikipedia has a separate page dedicated to Smartphone Addiction. Well Played wiki. With 6 billion active cellphone subscriptions as of October, 2012, and with thousands joining in each day, we are not far from the day when it will overtake the human population. It might already have.

So, where did this addiction come from? It starts with Cell Phones replacing almost every non-trivial thing in our daily life. We use our phones as alarm clocks, calendar, camera, entertainment hub etc. All this apart from “Connecting People” of course. The connecting people part of cell phones has also reached annoying heights, with people hooked onto messaging and calling their friends and relatives for abnormally long time periods. Actual Social interactions, and not texting or whatsapping people, has become next to non-existent.

People have become embarrassingly dependent on their mean machines. They almost feel insecure without their cell phones around them. But then if substance abuse has rehabilitation programs, this kind of addiction should be much easier to get out of isn't it? Try these few tips :

• Have a no cell phone time for yourself and stick to it. Let’s say 2 hours. Use that time to follow a hobby, learn something new or meet that friend who lives right across the street but all u do is text them.
• Use Prepaid and not postpaid connections. It might give you some sort of control.
• Smartphone users, turn off your mail notifications. No mail is that important that you have to respond to it the very next second.
• Also, switch off the facebook and twitter notifications. These apps send notifications for every damn thing, and it just increases your screen time.
• Perhaps once a week, leave your cell-phone home. The world was surviving before they entered our life and you shouldn’t face much of a problem too.
• Keep your phone in silent mode. Always. It has helped me lots personally.

 Try these small tricks. Your life will be better. Use your cell phone, and don’t let it use you. 

Oh! Just in case you are wondering, Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.