E-Free Day :No electronics for 24 hours

Written for Indispire

 

 

Imagine getting up in the morning and no one greets you with a virtual Medu wada or a GM, complete with a bouquet of e-flowers!

Imagine getting  up when your eyes naturally open, without a digital alarm waking you with a cheesy film tune that screams-“Get up, Subah ho gayi- Its morning!’

That’s right , no electronics to nudge you or greet you before you’ve had a chance to let go of your early morning dream.

This can only happen on a day when someone confiscates your phone and all the electronic gadgets that you surround yourself with all day and night long, clinging to them for dear life as if they are your lifelines.

So anyway….it’s morning. No WhatsApp, No Facebook. You have no idea what your friends across the world are up to or whose birthday it is. In fact, your brain has lost the power to remember birthdays or dates. After all what is FB for ? And what good is a phone if it cannot tell you what date it is.

So E-Free day promises to shock the body and brain in more ways than one.

But just imagine, , what a typical day will be like without these gadgets glaring into our sleepy eyes and buzzing into our stressed, over-informed brains

7 am: Oops, over slept, but hey what is that sound? A rooster crowing? The ringing of the milkman’s cycle……..

8 am. I actually look at my breakfast as I eat it. There are no ‘jokes’ to amuse me. I don’t have to LOL at people’s forwards or send them e-‘namaskars’ randomly and so generously when I don’t mean it. I just enjoy my simple breakfast, chewing on every bite without choking.

8:30am: I look out of the window on the way to work, listening to the sound of rain and watching it quench the parched earth.

10 am . At work. I seem to have tons of free time. Why am I not feeling tired as usual? Something is missing. I hate to admit it but I feel lighter not just because I’m not carrying my wretched ‘over-smart’friend but because I’m not feeding myself useless, utterly useless information.

1pm: Lunchtime. I’m actually looking at other people, as in, looking at real people across me and looking at their food. I feel like talking, as in, actually opening my mouth and attempting a conversation, speaking. Yes, I can speak. I almost forgot I could! Hmmm feels kind of nice to speak.

5pm. time to go home. No games to play on the commute home. I am missing my Candy Crushes!By the time my station comes, I feel energised, because I managed to doze off for a few minutes. Hmmm maybe I will bring out the old badminton racquets and play with my cousin, this evening.

8 pm: I am at a fancy restaurant with my family, all without their ‘smart’ pieces of luggage. The food arrives. Alas! No food photos, no selfies. What is life without recording what we eat and drink!! So we admire each other in person, compliment each other and actually appreciate the aroma of the food, the presentation and eat our dinner slowly, cracking jokes and pulling each other’s leg.No ROTFLs needed, we just laugh wholeheartedly only when we feel like.

11pm: No one is wishing me Gn or Tc. Do people even care about me? But  today I actually managed to cuddle my child and say a proper Good-night.I look at the crescent moon outside.It’s been ages since I saw clouds drifting lazily across the night sky. The sky is lit with stars. Real stars. I can look at them for hours and hours.The breeze touches my cheek and I realise that I cannot ‘forward’ that feeling to my 1052 e-friends even if I had all the e-gadgets in the world.

At the end of the day, we realise that all the Es in our life have robbed us of the simple pleasures of life.

Our bodies and brains deserve better. Surely we can live one day of our important and busy lives without all the E- stuff that runs us.

Just ONE day- an E-Free day. Is it that hard? Who knows? Can we do it? Are we brave enough ?

E-Free can be any day of the year or several days of the year.

So unhook yourself from the thing that lives your life for you and Get a Life!