Long before the first ray of light reaches his central Mumbai apartment, he reaches out for his smart phone. Lying in bed, he scrolls on the screen, catching up on events that unfolded while he slumbered. He keeps at it despite his partner's protestations over the emanating light that is interfering with her REM sleep.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

If this seems like a fairly ordinary scene, picture it again with a septuagenarian man and a sexagenarian woman. From having grown up in pre-liberalisation days when having a landline at home was a privilege to tsk-tsking over millennials' depleting attention span and inability to have conversations, many of the vintage generation are now themselves on the other side of the tipping point. Their bond with the screen is making their partners feel like "phone widows".

Rajkumari Thakur has learnt to not talk to her husband of over four decades when he attempts the Sudoku on his iPad each morning. "He gets agitated if I even attempt a conversation while he's at the math puzzle," says the retired school principal from Mumbai. Her 70-year-old husband dislikes being disturbed because it increases the time he takes to solve the puzzle. "'What was so earth-shattering that it couldn't wait until after I'd finished the Sudoku', he'll ask in annoyance."

What bothers Sudha Panicker is that her husband spends upto an hour each week painstakingly checking each and every Whatsapp message, photo and video before deciding what to delete. "Most are random forwards and junk. Yet he justifies it by saying agar kaam ka hoga to... (what if it's something useful)," complains the 56-year-old Pune resident.

Her husband, Ravindranath, who was gifted the 32GB Moto G5 Plus by one of his daughters when he turned 60 earlier this month, says that it's difficult to live without the smartphone because of the convenience it brings to his life. "Just this morning, I ordered my month's supply of medicines from Mumbai via an app," says the man who has downloaded 10-12 apps on the new phone. "It's a convenient tool. But sometimes I do feel some pressure to respond to messages as soon as possible," says Ravindranath. What gets Mrs Panicker's goat though is when he attends to call during meal times, especially dinner, even as the family waits for him at the table. "I know she doesn't like it," admits Ravindranath, whose work involves helping management students find placements. "But I have to take these calls because they are mostly from students who have to be told about their interviews and jobs."

When they were younger, it was their shared love for ghazals and shayaris that brought Mr and Mrs Parikh together. "A few years ago when he cut down his work hours, I thought he'd devote more time to me. But he'd spend hours typing out shers and shayaris on his phone to send them to family and friends," says Kanta Parikh, 56. "He'd even ask me the right spelling of certain words! Thankfully, he's stopped now."

And what can be more amusing than a teacher being taught a lesson. Former journalist and now dean of St Pauls Institute of Communication Education in Mumbai, Carol Andrade is candid when she says that among her favourite hobby is "talking about how cell phones and the internet have driven people further apart instead of bringing them together".

The 67-year-old recalls how she has stopped lecturing students about their phone habits, especially reaching out for them first thing in the morning after her husband once forwarded her a photo. It was, "a picture of me engrossed in my phone, still in my night clothes, looking anything but salubrious. The worst was the caption: 'Check the time'. It was 5.56am," she shares. "There should be a law against oversmart husbands."