Ssshhhh...Ovens Have Ears...

Summer boredom makes me think disparagingly of all things around me. I fret - like Keats' Immortal Youth - I fume and I am generally moody. I think badly of my good-for-nothing friends for sitting at home in their own hypnotic trances just like me. I think badly of myself for running into the door of my bedroom left slightly ajar by my brother as he left for tuition. I think badly of whoever it was that had the audacity to leave the soap in my bathroom on the side of the basin just like that. Without the soapdish, I say! I raise my fist at the sky outside, for being so merciless with the blinding light and the heat that tints my world to that ruthless yellow of lethargy and lazy idling. I condemn West Bengal State Electricity Board for playing Peekaboo with electricity in my locality every five minutes.

Speaking of inanimate God's creations playing mindgames with innocent people for sadistic pleasures, electricity I'm quite sure, has a sixth sense. Its always there in the winters, when you hardly need the fan or anything. But come summer, and it starts acting big and all. It flickers, it takes leave from work, it pretends to faint and just as you get up concernedly to check what the damn matter is, it comes back with a smug grin. The problem is, in these days of incessant boredom and lack-in-life, the Internet is all I have. When I'm not having my iPod moments of course. So when the electricity goes flicker-flicker, it sends my broadband connection crying home to its mommy. Its gone if the light flickers for a millisecond even, and only comes back after endless raging, cajoling and hand-folding in front of my modem.

Thats what makes me think even electrical/electronic appliances have a sixth sense. They know exactly when you need them, and start getting uppish with you. Like the other day, when my father said he wanted a printout of some airline tickets. I tried to stop him as he instructed me on how to go about it, but it was too late. He said it right there, in front of my printer, who was listening in obviously. Result: It took me a day and a half to get those prints. An inexplicable, mysterious illness had come upon it. My next witness, my modem. Whenever I switch on my computer, my modem responds immediately, connecting with whatever host computer its supposed to do, and giving me high-speed connectivity. But if I switch on the computer with the intention of checking my ISC marks, or taking a quick check of my inbox, its suddenly too busy to listen to me. I beg and I plead, I rage and I pacify, but its no use. It comes on by itself exactly 5 minutes after I pipe down and not a minute less.

My cellphone, the one device I have always expected complete obedience and loyalty from, always gives me bhao and nakhra these days. I'm lying on my bed at midnight and chatting on the phone, like every good boy does, and Poof! My network is gone. Just like that. I call again, but that call also gets disconnected within 2-3 minutes. And here is where the supernatural part really shows its colours, you know. When the breeze blows in through the window, the network goes. When the wind blows out, the network comes back. When I'm on my bed, my right ear does not get network. Its only my left ear that gets some degree of reliable network coverage. And thats the conspiracy against me. My left isnt my stronger hand and keeping the phone against my ear is a pain. Also, my left ear doesnt do phonecalls that good either. [No, thats not weird. Case in point: Caesar who said to Brutus one day, while they were strolling through the streets of Rome followed by a chidden mass of Romans - "What you saying man? Speak in my right ear, the left one doesnt have good reception and all."]

My iPod to date is the only truly reliable electronic gadget I own. It gets me away from constantly feeling the summer. I love it for this. Its sleek, dark and sexy, and drains me of all my tension. I want a girlfriend like this later. No fretting, no past issues, no problems whatsoever. As yet.

I'm typing this into my computer, and my iPod is plugged into my ears. So it could well have access to my brainwaves as I type this. Or the computer could relay this text-matter to it. I'm helpless. I don't know what I can do. I've tried it all. I've practised meditation, so that I can keep my mind a furious blank as I kneel down to switch on the computer. I school my mind into nothingness, before I touch the printer or the refrigerator. My hands tremble as I pick up my iPod. Will it remain mine? Or will the incessant socialistic pressure of my other electronic matter coax it into betrayal and high treason? Its mine now. I know. But for how long?

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Summer boredom. It does this to me.