This is the story of my life, till now. It’s nothing special, because It’s not mine alone. This might be your story too, or maybe of someone you know very well. This is the story of my generation, the people I see. Oh world, here I confess.

My childhood days were great. I have many cousins, who are nearly my age. Whenever there was a family meetup (which happened often) , we used to play together. We ran around the neighborhood, built play shops and houses, climbed trees to get fruits, played cricket with made up rules and bat carved from coconut branches. And yeah, we went to bath in the nearby river, caught small fishes using our towels, and played even more. My childhood was awesome!

Then it happened. We grew up. We became teenagers. One of the weirdest times of our lives. We knew we were not kids anymore. But the elders never saw us like grown ups either. Things changed. We had secrets now. We used to sit together and share stories from school and stuff. We still played together sometimes. And watched TV more.

I started playing games. It was some kind of wonder back then, something that never failed to fascinate me. I started with Space impact and Snake in my dad’s first phone, the old bulky Nokia 3310. I competed with my brothers to push high scores. It was followed by the nostalgic 8 bit video game console. The star games included Contra, and duck hunting with that gun thingie ☺ Mario in nintendo console was pretty damn awesome too. I didn’t know that it was a starting point for what’s to come.

My dad changed his phone a couple of times by then. I started playing around with it, mostly downloading and playing new games.

The real killer was the computer. I didn’t have one at home. So I went to my friends’ and neighbor to play with it. I started gaming with Dave, Road rash, Prince and the likes (Ohh, damn you nostalgia..). Then I began visiting internet cafes for gaming too. Project IGI was one game I played a lot then.

At that time, I got along with the fascinating world of the world wide web. It was so cool. I started using internet more and more as I grew older. I started my social media life in Orkut when I was still in school. I kept discovering more and more of the internet as I was using it every now and then.

When the facebook bandwagon came about, I jumped right in. It was a little dull first, since most of my friends were still using orkut. Eventually, Facebook was the rage and Orkut fell in to oblivion.

Oh facebook, how I hate you. But still, i can’t let go of you. You have me in chains. I wish I had never fell for you. If I had another option, I might have already left you. Countless hours of staring at the screen, pointless chats, childish games, counting likes….damn.

For most of my college activities, and other programs, facebook is the only hub for sharing information. Even my homework assignments are shared in it. I leave facebook, I lose them all. I stay, I become more tangled in its grasp, and my privacy gets closer to being a dream. Well played Zuck.

But I should Thank You for one thing. I got a lot of fake friends. It became easy for me not to remember birthdays of my friends. And I got a lot of my time wasted. Hell, I changed my dp even when writing this stuff.

It was when I was 15, that is just five years ago, that I got my first computer. I must say I learned a lot of stuff. But I also spent more time just gaming. And so, my younger brothers started this much earlier.

Mobile phone was a game changer. When I got one for myself, I started spending my time browsing and playing games in it. But it was a lot better compared to texting. I think it’s not wrong to say that I was an ace texter. Communication between me and my friends became mainly through sms. Everyone used to forward those funny messages they got, and texting was at its peak. And when I got a girlfriend, the amount of texts I send and received just spiked. I was in some other world then. We kept texting always. It was as if my world has shrunk to that small tin box in my hands. I failed to marvel at the wonders happened around me, to care for those who cared for me, to maintain my relationship with relatives intact.

When I finished school, I got a new android and it was so cool. I fell for technology again. I am a constant learner, a tinkerer. I kept tinkering with my phone. I became an appaholic.
I wasted my time changing the rom, tweaking the appearance of my homescreen, trying out useless apps, I felt like I’m in the servitude of technology…

I got a new laptop for college, and it was bought mainly with gaming in mind. In college, we started playing multiplayer games. We spent countless hours challenging each other in FIFA and yelling out playing counter strike. During my first vacation, I went home with nearly 100GB games in my hard disk. I kept playing and playing. I forgot other stuff I had to do. As I played more against the AI, I played less with my real friends in ground. I was spending five to six hours of my days gaming.

What am I doing? I have asked this question many times to myself. I was just getting lazier. I was sitting in chair and feeling accomplished with the adrenaline rush I got from the games. I knew I was doing it wrong. This was not something I wanted. And so, I decided something. I deleted all my games. Quit windows and moved to open source. Since then I am a linux fanboy. It was very hard in the first few days, but still, it was a lifesaver. Since I can’t play any good game on linux, I had to quit gaming, and I was happy that I did.

But one way or another, I was still stuck. As I quit gaming, I began surfing the internet more and more. I learned a lot of stuff, connected with people, read a lot of quality
articles, but yet I was unproductive much more than the productive time spent. I was obsessed.

When I parted with my girlfriend, I quit texting too. It was great. I had more time in my hands now. I needn’t worry about the sms notification tone, that I used to eagerly wait for in the past. I didn’t have to make up excuses for not returning a call or a message.
And I felt like I raised my head dipped in the mobile screen, and started seeing the world. I had more time with my family. I listened to people who spoke to me, and I talked to
people. I laughed with my friends, instead of smiling looking at the screen. I felt relieved.

But alas, I think I’m back in the pits again. This time, it is Whatsapp. I started messaging again. and I started to smile looking at the screen yet again. I had to reply to people since they can know whether or not I have seen the message. They could know when was I last
seen online. Damn, this tin box again have me staring at it and tapping my fingers all around.

Here I am now. Hoping to go back, wishing I had never grown up, and desperately trying to break out of the chains of technology that I have set up for myself. Pardon me, for not marvelling at the subtleties that adorn our world, for the countless hours I wasted being a
slave of technology, for not smiling back at you since I got a text at the moment, for not listening to you since I had a call to attend and for not coming to the ground with you since I was busy breaking jellies in candy crush.

I am sorry world. And I promise I will change. Or at least, I gotta try.

This post was first published on Sublime Reflections blog.