Very recently my boss told me that I will be given a corporate mobile connection. That would mean I become a part of the coveted bracket of executives in the company who carry a blackberry. I said I need some time to think. My boss was amused. He probed further and found that I am unwilling to part with my Nokia 3310 that I have owned for the last 6 years!
Who in their right senses would ever turn down a offer to own a blackberry for a Nokia 3310? But then did I ever say that I am always in my senses?
My boss went to the extent of giving me 2 days to think. He said that company will anyway give you a corporate mobile. You decide when you want to switch over from your old one to the new one. If you do not want blackberry, then it can be any other of the same range.
As I drove back from office, I had decided I owe a review to my Nokia 3310.
I have lost count of number of times I must have accidentally dropped the phone. I don’t know what is it with me and my Nokia 3310 that almost every week or 10 days, it just slips out of my hands. Fortunately it has not developed a crack even! Luckily till date it has not been one of those great falls that Humpty Dumpty had.
I am very very bad at remembering important events and dates. In fact, it is my friend who buzzes me every now and then to help me out here. I just have to press the right buttons and my friend does everything for me! It is so simple and it has so much memory to keep track of all your important reminders.
The only thing I have an issue with is its capacity to store addresses. Now I know that the latter variants of the phone did come with more capacity, but the one I have had has some issues. It only allows for storing up to 100 numbers. As fate would have it, I am a very popular person(I know all of us are), so I need to keep track of numbers of people who call me up. **Once in a while I am forced to delete some unsuspecting person’s details. And then run into trouble when that person calls and I am not able to identify the voice as well!
This is the reason why I have not stored any official number as yet on the phone. Given how the pressure of higher-ups is mounting on me, I guess that day is not far when some more of my dear friends’ numbers will have to make way for my office colleagues’.
The best is yet to come . Well yes the best thing about this phone besides ease of use, is the sound reception. In fact the voice on the other end seems so clear that I sometime marvel at the pace at which technology is moving ahead.
Let us come back to my world, my boss, my office and my problem at hand. So again, yesterday the boss met me on the hallway asked me what have I decided. "I need some more time", I murmured. He got further amazed and could only say - "Hey man! Take the blackberry. This Nokia phone of your’s keep it in some showcase. Or is that you are planning to make some money by becoming someone who owns the oldest available model?"
From the age when keeping a mobile with you was a style statement and from the age when I was dying to get those ’special calls’ on my mobile, and again from that age of old world charm to the age of mobile becoming a necessity rather than a luxury, this Nokia 3310 has stood by me.
It has whispered those sweet nothings in my ears. It has been an honest friend who has eavesdropped on all my personal calls to all my SMSes but has kept it all to himself. I have developed an affinity towards him. We have been inseparable in some of my most trying(read crying) situations. How can I desert him now? In those trying moments it was this friend which seemed to have whispered to me and said - "You still have me. Don’t you?"
No I am very clear I will tell my boss on Monday that I will not want to go in for the Blackberry. I’d like to keep my Nokia 3310. But then he very categorically said that I have to go in for a corporate mobile. This means I need to either take a totally new number or just take the SIM out from Nokia and put it in Blackberry - this act I consider similar to taking out a vital organ from a living being!
People change and so have I. Priorities change and so have they, for me as well. I will keep my Nokia in my drawer and come back to it the moment I change my job(I promise). Sometimes in life even little things matter a lot.
But then no one changes a good job for the sake of an old friend. Right?
Why is it in life that the things we are associated with most, the things we care for deeply, are to most people inconsequential or senseless?