BLOG Sammy – A Double Whammy

“My life was torn like wind-blown sand … then a rock was formed when you held my hand..Sammy (err.. Sunny).. one so true … I love you”… Boney M’s deathless number looped in my mind with melismatic flourish since the day Sammy zoomed into my life straddling the new year.

It was love at first sight. He was a true blue scion of the Samsung family — tall, dashing, and goose-pimplingly handsome. 

His charming, multifaceted personality vibgyored my life, injecting it with myriad hues of excitement marinated in bonhomie. I lovingly christened him Sammy.

Sunil, my husband, who wasn’t exactly kicked about my penchant for anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, threw up his arms in feigned exasperation..  ‘Sammy..?!’ Aww, c’mon… you can’t go moniker’ing a mere mortal machine! Androids lack human juices. 

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It’s a ‘smartphone’ all right..but no objet d’art…there are hundreds of doppelgangers out there… Besides, your ‘so-called’ Sammy might soon get overwhelmed by your mushy canoodling, and skedaddle (à la ‘Y-Chromosome’ syndrome) !’ he winked.

My acerbic retort was intended to stop Sunil in his sarcastic track. ‘Excuse me!.. If my Sammy’s just a phone, your Audi’s just a swanky tinpot, your Rolex.. just an overpriced armband, and youu..  just another homo sapien.. an expendable piece of flotsam bobbing up and down the sea of humanity..!’

That did it. Sunil thought it safer to let me continue my little fling with Sammy. If he was jealous, he didn’t show it. In fact, I suspect he was secretly relieved… because with Sammy now monopolizing my vacant hours, I had quit nagging Sunil about his extended work schedule.

Sammy, just a week into my life, had already reduced to redundance my iPod, my computer, my iPad, my music system, my diaries, and my board games.

No wonder, I had flipped for him hook, line, and blinker! As he cuddled snugly (and smugly) in the palm of my hand, we fused in a karmic connect, oblivious to the outside world. 

He sang for me; played games with me; classified all my musings and notes; connected me to my friends and my friends ke friends…Sammy was Mr.Who of the online Power Circuit. 

He was on first-name terms with Facebook, Twitter, and the like. He had google wrapped around his little finger. 

Really smart..my Sammy. He could dish out any information in nanoseconds. 

Where is Kakke Da Dhaba in Italy? What color is the weather in London? When did Kim Kardashian lose her virginity? Who was ‘Arnabbed’ on Newshour last night? Will BJP Modi’fy the ruling party’s off-tune RaGa? Will the ‘broom’ go national or wallow (as always) in the common man’s hand? Sammy had all the answers. 

Sammy was invincible. Sammy was my palm-size ‘Worldopedia’.

And here’s the clincher. Sammy wasn’t just intellectual brawn.

He had a romantic side too. He wooed me with a mellifluously flirtatious ringtone that lends a dash of oomph to even the most mundane incoming messages.

Every time I heard that whistle, I  blushed a deep crimson and coyly checked my updates. 

Sadly, at my age, only gadgets and appliances find me worth whistling at, but nonetheless, for that moment at least, the deja vu transported me to my salad days when pastures were green, and urban blighters, galore. 

Sammy’s whistle, to me, became a harbinger of good news.

And then two Sundays ago, I was enjoying a vodka-soaked evening with a bunch of friends in a 5-star.

Pleasantly tanked up, around midnight, I decided to powder my nose.

A stole around my arm, a clutch in one hand,  and Sammy perched precariously on my other palm, I headed for the powder room.

The loo was itsy-bitsy and my mind fuzzy-wuzzy.

As I tried to place all my belongings on the niche behind the WC, still negotiating where to keep what, my worst nightmare decided to come alive.

The corner of my eye noticed Sammy slipping off the niche in slow motion and plunging into the pot.

I’ve never seen myself react so swiftly. At the speed of light, I lunged forward and held Sammy by the glutes.

But alas..by that time, his head had already taken a fleeting dip into the water in the WC.

Pandemonium ensued. The vodka receded from my blood faster than Britney Spears from her 2-day wedding. 

My tippler effect was replaced, almost instantly, by the doppler effect. Incessantly chanting under my breath, I darted into the lounge area and attempted to resuscitate Sammy by massaging him furiously with a hand-towel. 

But poor Sammy moaned gently…blinked faintly…and then passed out permanently.

His lungs choked beyond salvation, his innards drowned in liquid melancholy, he lay there still. Listless. Soundless. Lifeless. 

I stood beside him. Speechless. Motionless.  Powerless.

The next morning, Sammy’s limp body was promptly moved to the Samsung ICU for restorative surgery.

After conducting intensive procedures, the 3G paramedics grimly announced that Sammy’s ‘motherboard’ had joined his ‘father(bored)-in-heaven’.

In other words… Sammy had kicked the bucket.

The news drowned me in a sea of guilt and regret.

If only I’d been a little careful that night, Sammy would’ve been alive and kicking in my hand today.

However, this regret soon morphed into a seething, full-blown rage directed at Sammy: ‘What an epicene pansy! What did the wimp think of himself? Did he have absolutely no will of his own to survive..? 

After all, that fateful night, I was drunk… he wasn’t!  I expected him to be sharper, shrewder.. and stronger.

Smartphone..haah!  How smart was he really, if a few piddly (pun intended) drops of water were enough to snuff the living daylights out of him?’

So Sammy wasn’t invincible after all.

He was just another wussy gadget that succumbed to a split-second of human neglect. 

Not worth my undivided attention, certainly.

The very next day Sunil graciously got me a brand new Samsung Galaxy 4.

This time, I’m not baptizing my phone.

But if I do, I’ll possibly go for an avuncular sobriquet like ‘Sampat Lal’ to keep it where it belongs…in my back pocket!

Puja Bhakoo, author, MOOD SWINGS