Do you fiddle with your Blackberry when a film is running on screen? Do you discuss the price of stocks and shares when Kareena and Shahid Kapoor are romancing in Jab We Met? Did you ever pick up a fight with your girlfriend/boyfriend for everyone to listen to when Race in racing on the screen up there? If you are, then you are certainly making an ethical mistake.


 
I hate the cell phone because it monitors my movements and intrudes into my privacy at every stage of life. I specially hate the cell when other people talking on their cell phones make me privy to their love life, hate life, criminal conspiracies and financial jugglery. I hate people talking to me with that cell phone stuck to one ear and trying to listen to me with the other, but not really interested. Above everything else, I hate the cell specially when I am watching a movie and the theatre does not care about asking the audience to keep their cells on silent mode or switched off during the screening.
 
I happened to be watching Delhi 6 at a multiplex in Kolkata where most of the audience is more interested in bringing in a tray full of global snacks such as American corn and Italian pasta French Fries than in the film being screened. Within five minutes into the film, ring tones ranging from Vande Mataram to the Gayatri Mantra to Jai Ho to Choli ke Peechhey began to echo in the Dolby-sound-fitted theatre, drowning the antics of the kala bandar, Abhishek and Sonam on screen. No amount of coaxing, cajoling and even shouting bore fruit except leaving me with a hoarse voice. The bantering over the prices of stocks and shares went on, while a housewife updated a friend on the stakes at the latest kitty party. I then had to summon one of the prim and propah English-speaking attendants to set things right. Trained to be politically correct in the right time and at the right place, he tried a bit of fence-sitting and when he saw me turn red in the face, he coolly suggested I calm down. Thankfully, by then, the ethically wrong cell phones had been switched off because it was disturbing the audience across the board. But then, looking back on Delhi 6, I considered the din I had made was not worth the trouble. I could have easily walked out of the theatre without losing anything and the cell-happy members of the audience would have cheerfully gone on with their business of hogging the delights they had paid for through their nose, catching up on the antics of the kala bandar on screen, and going on with their conversations on the cell phone.
 
Parents gift their growing kids with sophisticated Blueberrys as birthday gifts. Behind the veil of parental benevolence lies the secret plan of keeping tabs on their movements once they have stepped outdoors. But parents being gullible fools they are, the fact that children are the biggest liars in the world so far as truth with their parents goes escapes them completely. Which parent will really know whether the boy is where is says he is and is doing what he says he is doing if he chooses to hide the truth with a modern take on a fairy tale? If I tell my boyfriend that I am off to an interview while I am actually two-timing him with another guy to test the waters before I take the plunge, he has no option but to believe me or give me up for good. The place you are calling back from does not show up on the screen and with sophisticated technology that makes it show up, there must be some other gizzmo to keep the place out of the screen.
 
The other day, I discovered someone checking on his e-mail on his Blackberry. Why the hell did he walk into the movie then? Because he had a suspicious wife at home who constantly stood over his shoulder when he checked his mail, simple. A close friend gifted her husband a cell phone on their wedding anniversary. In reality, she wished to know whether he was really doing overtime when he said he was, not knowing that he already had another cell-phone she knew nothing about and collaborated with his girlfriends with that one! One good thing is that this husband never goes to the movies so he is not likely to disturb me.
 
I have heard of youngsters who keep their ears plugged to their favourite music on their MP3s or MP4s while they are also watching a movie! That brings me down to the most important question you want to ask me since you began reading this piece. Do I own a cell myself? Yes, I do. In fact, I own two cells, one for business purposes and one for my personal contacts. Now don’t ask me to define what is ‘personal’ and what is ‘political’ in my dictionary. The definitions keep on changing according to the double or triple lives I decide to live at any given point of time and place. After all, don’t we all belong to a multi-tasking generation? Don’t film people always have one ear glued to their sophisticated little hearing machines? Yet, they are the ones that tell you to keep your cells switched off when you are watching their films! It is a strangely mobile world we live in, don’t we?