Addictive Additives

Grasping relentlessly was Mahima, with her hands chasing restlessly, the elusive mobile in the wee hours of the morning, in its quest for grabbing it. It was her peculiarity to forward “Good morning” messages to most of her friends on the list and some groups. One would wish to term it a voracious flaunt of idiosyncrasy!! Oh yes! Indeed. Fingers rallied across the keypad in a rage, until she was done, while her mind was hooked to the screen.

For quite sometime Mahima was at the receiving end of these greetings. Most of the time she’d even ignore them. But ever since her friends expressed their inclination of love as the objective behind forwarding them, she charged herself with the dominant role of being in the driver’s seat. This led her to an empowered feel.

An acknowledgement of 'good morning' in return from all of them would bring in certain energy and good vibe for that day. For this mundane act of hers, Mahima had been labelled as “Ms Whatsapp Suprabatham”. A label that might suit her??

A typical 'good morning' wish meant, “You are so special to me, that you occupy my thoughts very early in the morning”. It was a perfect virtual setting for like-minded friends to hobnob with each other. The sooner a friend forwarded it, more the torrent of praises showered on her. The moment she rose up to a fresh dawn, it became a regular feature for Mahima to forage for this inevitable piece of technology. It was habit-forming as well. It invaded her senses to a large extent. Was this a good habit or a bad one? Good habits die hard. What about bad habits, they lurk in the mind constantly punctuated by a feeling of obsession. An additive techno- piece that was supposed to serve as a mere addition, eventually transformed to be dizzyingly addictive..

Not only was Mahima well possessed by it, but she was also wired to receive the continuous WhatsApp forwards at random throughout the day. Slowly and steadily this had impacted her mind to such an extent, that she started having a curious penchant for the ping -ping, tring - tring and ding - ding. It brought a great sense of zing. If she ever failed to acknowledge she felt grumpy.

Mahima's well-wishers cautioned her time and again to be away from this and advised h

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er to contemplate on other chores. But such advice never dented her fanatical dedication.

To curb this tendency and to reform her from its clutches, one of her well-wishers updated her status to ‘Temporarily hibernating’.

It takes willpower to resist an addiction that lingers on.

That said, Mahima' obstructed her brain holding the sensible part from staying quiet.

In order to control the rumour – mongering, she countered it by forwarding the following message-

"To whomsoever, it may concern" -

"There’s been a persistent effort to reform me from my social media (Whatsapp /Facebook/Instagram/Twitter) addiction. Kindly be informed that my will wisher is on a status rampage attempting to create a false-bonhomie among my circle of friends by updating my status to ‘Temporarily hibernating’. .And that no 'good morning' wishes or any other forwards thereafter would be entertained on this number. Friends attempting to violate the status are doing so at their own risk and are liable to be blocked".

"As such I would like to categorically revolt the above status by declaring that I have in no time during the course of a day stopped forwarding or receiving messages. Nor did I ever brood over such a complex idea. Leave alone executing it".

"I therefore, in the larger interest of my friends would want to make it clear that these are blatant lies thrusted upon me by my well wisher to taint my hard earned title of ‘Ms. Whatsapp Suprabatham’. And to impede my smooth flow of greeting exchange".

"I request you all to be relaxed and continue to send the forwards".

The recipients laughed their heart out and admonished Mahima to take it in the right spirit. They also counselled her to withdraw her addiction.

It’s a tough call to abandon the astute piece, that may steal her of her peace. But in her endeavour to give up, Mahima hoped to be successful!

It's a very easy task to cultivate a bad habit, but a herculean process to overcome one.

Now, can I request you to put forth your ideas of phone de-addiction?