I was invited to visit a friend in the country side for couple of days. I was surprised that no one asked me if I need the WiFi as my phone wouldn’t work in the area, but no one asked and as everyone knows I am on my phone the whole day answering emails and replying to Whatsapp messages, leave aside the other social media places that I visit to share interesting articles or videos to my friends on those sites. ُ

The first day was almost over, my fingers were itching me, I keep on checking if I can link to any internet (that’s in a blink of course) and when nothing comes up then I switch off. I was half way through a book, so I thought I might as well finish it; had a few pages piling up from Quran, I did those. I went for a long walk on the grounds of the place I was staying in, enjoyed the trees and watched the birds. Then I had dinner and went to sleep, but prior to closing my eyes I had a final look at my phone, still noting on it.

The next day I woke up and first thing was my hands on the phone trying to see if I it had magically found access to Internet. To my surprise it didn’t. So i had my shower leisurely, changed and went down for breakfast, talked for a while with my host and then we all left and I hoped that I will find internet wherever we were going. I kept on telling myself to take a break but no my system is all about tweeting and snapping and instagramming abd facebooking and the other silly things that we have been wired to do these days.

I thought of the days when we never had handheld phones let alone smartphones, we didn’t feel bored if we didn’t share information as we were able to do that amongst ourselves by actually talking! I thought of the number of books we used to read and the picnics that we used to do. I felt that we had an utterly different lives then! Of course any child reading this will be thinking what? A picnic? What’s that! As if it’s not a phone that he or she are playing with it will be Youtube and spiderman on the big screen TV. Or in the case of my grand daughter it will be chuchu TV ( she is less than two by the way).

The third day arrived and my heart was sinking, what if something happened and I didn’t know about it? what if someone needed me badly? what if a student is in trouble? I kept on saying that I should have bought a local SIM! I consoled myself that it’s my last day of this short visit so let me enjoy it.

I actually loved the fact that the whole family gathers and talks around the table, so I forgot about my phone and used it as a camera instead.

When I finally got WIFI on the train, my messages got downloaded and believe me nothing was so urgent! Why did I torment myself!!! to add to this, no one missed me.

I feel that everyone must take few days off, switch their phone off and enjoy oneself company or the company of other people. Maybe redo the furniture, clean the cupboards, finish the half read books that are waiting for us on the shelves. You know that the characters in those books gets agitated if we leave them hanging.

Have a phone detox every once in a while