My dearest Smartphone,

Hope this letter finds you in the pink of health!

I have so much to thank you for that I don’t know where to begin. You are much more than mobile doorbhash that allows us to talk to people in far off places or even see them now through various video calling apps. Your sassy chats that graduated from simple SMSs to WhatsApp to Snap Chat to what not add spice to our lives. The abbreviations, the emojis and the GIFs (that I often don’t understand) say so much yet say nothing. You give me weather updates, you send me news alerts, you give me directions. I shop with you, I bank with you, I romance with you, I socialize with you, I read with you. Now I have even started keeping notes with you. You are my dictionary, you are my Pictionary, your browser throws up information on anything and everything. You have captured the whole universe in your slim and petite frame (or the universe that matters to you). Life is unimaginable without you!

I look at you as soon as I wake up, I check you out before going to bed. At night you are the closest thing to me, lying at an arm’s length on my bedside table. I pick you up if I hear you ping even at midnight, lest I miss out anything. I am glued to you, I am addicted to you, yet I wish I could go back to the days before you.

You have brought the world to my feet dear Smartphone, but not without a price. You have brushed aside anything that came in your way, everything that your smartness made irrelevant. The sonorous telephones that used to be the centrepieces of our drawing rooms are gone. We don’t need to bother about the neighbours who would drop by to make or receive a call. The letters, that we once wrote fondly to each other and so looked forward to, were your casualties too (and yet I choose to write a letter to you). Your older cousin Hotmail (though not so hot anymore) probably led them to their demise by taking them to the digital realm, and you with your sassy apps just swept them away like dry leaves. Who needs so many words and sentences and pages after pages when you can smartly say so much or so less with emojis and images and videos? Alas, my letters writing pads are gathering dust, my fountain pens long forgotten. Verbose me chockes with words, as I dabble with your chats.   

You kicked out the albums next and the prints of photographs – black & white and then coloured, that would get botchy with times yet smell of the moments gone by. The Sony Coolpix that I bought with my salary is lying in some drawer forgotten. Who needs a Coolpix when your camera is so much cooler? Thousands of photographs are stored on your cloud that I rarely revisit. We get clicked to get likes on social media it seems.

The torch under my pillow, the table clock with an alarm are gone too. For you have a torch, an alarm and you set all kinds of reminders for me. I video chat, I audio chat, I talk to my friends in different corners of the world for hours. That little radio, I don’t need it anymore for you are loaded with music apps. You are with me all the time. I am drawn to you like a moth to the flame. Oh, I so wish I could fly away before your flames devour me or be reborn like a Phoenix.

I have gained so much with you; I have lost so much for you. I have so much to tell that you that your chats will not suffice. I had to resort to the long-forgotten letter that you will probably open with a sneer.

You’re becoming smarter by the day no doubt and I admire you for that. We wait for your latest models to add to our smartness. But dear Smartphone you’ll never know the whiff of the old letters, the smell of the old photographs, the sonorous ring of the telephones. We marvel at your smartness but never get attached to you. You are nothing like old letters or greeting cards or journals that we cherished for years. You’re changed without a second thought the moment your smarter variant is launched.

No matter what Smartphone, I can’t think of a day without you. So, take care and write back, or send me some witty messages.

Sincerely yours,

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