It’s great fun to watch videos of Kurt Cobain smashing his expensive guitar after the end of his concert and purple hazed Jimmi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire on-stage with the audience screaming in joy and awe. Smashing things gives the smasher a rush of adrenaline in his body and makes him feel great and powerful for some moments.
Years back, I also smashed and torn apart my hollow guitar out of sheer rage turning it into an unchained anthology of myriad montage of wood crumbs and haywired protruding strings. The exact reason for my fury was something to do with my parents scolding me about my arrogant behaviour and wasting my time strumming six strings, hardly touching a book. It was a Givson (the spelling of the original one is “Gibson” which was unavailable in India during the time and even if it were available I would not have the resources to buy it), maybe made in Dimapur by some lungri-clad hairy freaks. Cobain could have bought a dozen million-dollar guitars the next day after his guitar-smashing concert. But it took me a dozen months to buy a new one. Luckily, Fender had arrived in India during the time and India had started manufacturing its different varieties in collaboration with Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC), United States and mine was the one, coffee brown, from amongst the first batch of DG-4TS. It was acoustic, still the cost was exorbitant and it caused a crater-huge hole inside my pocket.
Six out of ten people in the world smash and break things when they get furious. It’s an unwanted human trait. For those who can’t control, anger is a state of the mind where rational thinking vanishes. In fact, it is a sort of mental darkness. If you are in darkness when the power goes off, you grope for your torch-borne mobile phone or a matchbox or an emergency lamp or inverter, which means the darkness doesn’t engulf your mentality. But if you are in mental darkness, however bright the ambience is, just like raining in your heart on a sunny day, you will, even if momentarily, not be able to distinguish between what’s right and what’s wrong – the main source of mayhem, chaos and destruction. That’s why the yogis perform “pranayams” or breathing techniques and advanced “asanas” to control their anger or any sort of emotional variations and maintain their calm keeping their body, mind and soul in a tranquil state which of course take lots of relentless practice and patience.
Technology makes life easier, saves time, maketh the world virtually smaller just like a global village. But technology always comes at a price. Now the world is abound with smart gadgets. India is also flooded with Chinese made products which look attractive, particularly in North Eastern Region. The bitter truth is, their products don’t last long. Due to their aggressive marketing policy and cheap labour, their gadgets be it smartphones or smartwatches don’t come in numbers but in bulks, maybe in kilograms or tonnes. To them flash and bulk sales at marginal profit matters unlike Japan which doesn’t compromise with the quality of their products and thus the prices are also not compromised. With smartphones from China available at highly affordable prices, a mammoth populace of Manipur moves around with smartphones in their pockets or dangling from their neck even though some prefer iPhone and other expensive ones. And with various social media platforms coming up alongwith smart messaging apps, everybody seem glued to their smartphones. This is where the problem crops up.
To the present generation, particularly teens, night time is the bonus time to cuddle in the bed with their smartphones, free from the peeping eyes of their parents. I can still recall a nice tag put up by someone in Facebook, “Its easier to remain awake upto 4 a.m. than to wake up at 4 a.m” and it sure is happening among many youngsters and even adults. Teens and youngsters of nowadays spend the night away texting at Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Hike, etc till their thumbs get sore and lie in slumber for huge portion of daytime, thereby distorting their sleep pattern accruing themselves with various health hazards. Researchers have opined that most of the sensory organs are hard-pressed beyond their capacity when one fiddles with a smartphone for long hours let alone the ill effects of radiation emitted thereby leading to lethargy, less creativity and lack of alertness.
Infidelity also crops up among many adults, particularly couples as they swindle for long hours texting at social media platforms leading to mistrust, unfaithfulness, disloyalty and anger between the partners. I have seen many youngsters who haven’t entered marital life smashing their smartphones in anger just because they heard their girlfriend or boyfriend talking to somebody else. But one true to the bone fact that I have witnessed is that the number of adults who have tied their nuptial knot smash their cellphones more than the youngsters. Some out of silly reasons, some out of arguments getting overheated and the main reason being infidelity. I have seen many couples breaking their cellphones, buy a new one the next day and then repeat the same procedure every time they engage into a tussle. Smashing a cellphone in front of their spouse tends to become more of a power-show, the man showing he is the superior species and the woman sending the message that she is no inferior to him.
Out of all the many couples, I have witnessed one couple, both of them are extremely possessive of each other. An unknown number on the screen or chat records of a mutual friend of the opposite sex on Whatapps or Facbook Messenger means an assurance that the cellphone is on the verge of being torn apart into pieces. If the status quo takes place on the male’s cellphone screen, the female smashes it into pieces and then it spells doom for his smartphone. If it happens on the female’s cellphone screen, it spells doom for her smartphone and the same procedure is repeated umpteen times like a vicious cycle. On an average, they might have smashed more than 17 mobile phones. While I am writing this piece, the number might have increased also, only Heaven knows. At some point of time, I wonder whether they are competing for entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for breaking the largest number of mobile handsets. In fact, they have got addicted to smashing mobile phones. It is said that addiction is a disease, is there any medication or rehab for this kind of addiction in the world?
It is a really bad trend which we should discourage. We should contain the urge of breaking mobile handsets when we get furious but its easier said than done just like preaching is to practicing. Just the other day, me and my wife had a tussle, the reason for my fast and furious rage being loss of my individuality. Every couples sleep on the same bed, sharing the same pillow and explore their physique, knows each other inside out. But however physically intimate a couple is, there are still some things that you keep private from your spouse. If you go inside the toilet, you keep the door of the toilet closed.
That’s the most intrinsic example of individuality. If you lose your individuality, you don’t feel like a human anymore, instead you feel more like a guinea pig. Maybe she loves me a dozen times than I love her, but her possessiveness is really getting me on my nerves. She would check, scan and re-scan my smartphone umpteen times a day as if she is a living Anti-virus software. So, out of sheer rage, my mental bulb was involuntarily switched off for a few moments and while I was in mental darkness, I smashed my smartphone, setting my Canvas Fire on fire. When the mental bulb inside my head involuntarily switched on by itself, I saw my smartphone scorched, melted and strewn everywhere on the floor. I was really shocked to see the scene and felt like COL. Luckily, my kids were not there to witness it. Shame on me!
(The writer can be reached at www.kambamsamarjit0@ gmail.com)
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