Symbol of freedom

Hello, after a long time!!

Hope you all are doing well and getting ready for the year-end holiday break.

Two decades ago, I was a doe-eyed teen entering college life, staying in a hostel, away from my parents, in a faraway town. I did not own a mobile phone at that time, and the only mode of communication with my parents was the dingy old landline of the hostel in which I stayed. This phone accepted only incoming calls and had no dial or keypad to make an outgoing call. So I waited by the landline every day, at a predetermined time, for a call from my mother.

I am not much of a talker, and I rarely had anything to say to my mother, especially when we were on a call daily. However, my mother insisted that the calls happen. A few months into my college life, keeping up that fixed schedule became difficult, mostly because of chatting and having evening snacks at the ‘anna’s shop outside the hostel with a bunch of my friends. (May I add that all that was at my friend’s expense, who is no more. Thanks for the countless Maggi noodles you sponsored, Joe. You will always be remembered.)

My mom, frustrated by this, mandated that I step outside the hostel and take a walk to the nearest paid phone booth (the now extinct STD booth!!) which was half a kilometer away. And walk I did, daily. Annamalai University was a truly big campus, containing several colleges, and the evening university roads were bustling with activity, a true representation of the college scenes from the 90s movies. Not many cars or two-wheelers, no honk sounds, just hordes of colorful students walking, talking, and laughing. I remember distinctly enjoying the daily walk to the phone booth. It would be a ten to fifteen minute walk (I was slow and fat!!), for a one minute phone call, and a fifteen minute walk again.

This got interrupted with the arrival of mobile phones. Mobiles had already been in existence for the past few years, but they got more affordable, with well-priced talk plans. (90s kids will remember the Reliance CDMA phone!!). 

My mother got me the iconic Nokia phone of those times. A Nokia 3310. It did a few things, unlike today’s phones, which can probably do almost everything. But it was excellent in what it did, was almost indestructible (weapon against street dogs), and had an awesome battery that lasted for ages.

I was very proud to have it. It was my symbol of freedom then. I could talk to my mother whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to walk for half a kilometer to make a call. (It was an entirely different story that I slowly stopped making daily calls to Mom after I got the mobile. You know how it goes: mobile is here, we think we can call anytime, and we never make the call.)

I do not remember for how long I held on to that Nokia 3310, but I do know this: I have been attached to mobiles since then. Which was not an issue when mobiles were just calling devices, but as the devices became more complex, my life grew more complicated.

A few stories that I could remember…

My friend during my post-graduation days used to joke, ‘It’s very easy to kill you; I just have to tie you to a corner of the room and keep your phone in the other corner.’.

I got married, and I was out on a honeymoon with my wife. I had a Samsung Galaxy S3 then, and it went bust on the first day of our trip. Few people who knew me said it was a good sign, and I would actually spend some time with my wife now!!

I used to stay in my aunt’s house during study holidays before the exams. A few days into my stay, during second-year undergrad study holidays, my mom gets a phone call from her sister (the aunt), ‘He is always on the phone; I don’t know if he will pass.’ (In my defense, I had a Nokia N-Gage gaming phone at that time, and I had recently discovered Sims. And yes, I passed)

I remember spending all the money I had saved up from my internship stipend (A measly 3000 rupees a month) on a Windows handheld device, which was utter crap. F**k you, B#ll G@tes!!

During my first daughter’s (Yes, there is a second one now. And I felt a bit weird while typing first daughter :D) birthday party; I was executing a garage sale on the side to sell my Android devices to fund my switch to iPhone.

Nowadays I need to keep a tab on my near and dear ones’ locations (Find My), a tab on my bank accounts (the countless bank and fintech apps), a tab on my budgeting (money manager apps), a tab on the markets (Zerodha), a tab on my friends (WhatsApp), a tab on my mind (Waking Up), and a tab on the world (Reddit). And hence, I need my phone, almost uncomfortably always.

A month ago, while shopping on Amazon, I discovered that the Nokia 3310 was on sale again!! It was almost similar to the phone from 20 years before, and I was smitten by the novelty and simplicity of it. I decided it’s time I reclaim my freedom from the ‘smartphones’ and placed an order for the Nokia 3310. While waiting for it to arrive, I charted an ambitious plan to wean away from my iPhone. 

Once the phone arrived, I switched one of my SIM cards to it, transferred the contacts, and that’s it. I was all set. I loved the simplicity of it. No backups to restore, no accounts to set up, no apps to install. 

I am sure you know that there is no fairy tale ending to this story. When I told my cousins that I was shifting to a dumb phone, they were like

To my credit, I lasted a week. All it took was a few missed messages in my daughter’s (first!!) school group and another business group of mine. I ran back to my iPhone, with my tail in between my legs.

I have retained the Nokia phone; I bought a spare SIM for it, and I religiously keep charging it every two weeks, hoping to return back to it someday. Looks like the Nokia 3310 is the phone I deserve, but I don’t need right now. (My first blog post with a Batman quote! Yay!)

When we think of a symbol of freedom, we might think of something unique or exotic. Like having all the money in the world, your own private jet, a cabin in your own forest, a house on your own island. Often, it could be something simple that you had before but don’t have now.

In the past, I have always equated financial freedom as my true symbol of freedom. Now I know it’s just a Nokia 3310.

Cover Photo by Photo by Marius Schmidt from Pexels.