Ever since mankind discovered that he could SMS everything instead of using more conventional and less intrusive means of communication, life has been a series of blanked out beeps.

It was alright in the beginning. Most of the SMSes you received were from friends and they stuck to essential communication. Where are you? When are you coming back? And so on.

Then the marketers discovered SMS Heaven. And the deluge started. Sales, Exhibitions, Shows, Plays, Food Festivals, Movies…all of them jumped onto the bandwagon and started harassing the poor mobile user. Soon the field was crowded with Banks making financial offers, agents making life insurance propositions, professionals promoting themselves, collection agencies reminding you to make payments, bills, bills, receipts, proof of transactions, bank updates and what have you.

All this of course was a function of you being counted amongst the high net worth individuals in some warped database or the other. But unfortunately we live in a society that cannot or will not distinguish between a businessman and a courier when tracking his frequent flier miles.

So the higher up the value chain you were, the more innovative the SMSes would be…and everybody from the club to the homeopathy doctor started using the SMS facility to jog your memory.

For those of us who have been gradually weaned into the use of the mobile phone and especially those of us who predate the ‘born with a silver smartphone’ era an SMS still rings with urgency. If there is no hurry, people give us missed calls and expect us to call back at our convenience…but SMSing is resorted to only in case of emergencies.

Now imagine my sleepless nights as bulk messages after bulk messages find windows in the traffic pattern and find their way to my phone. Beep Beep. Oops it is a ‘Balance in your Account’ SMS. Beep Beep. It’s a Credit Card Bill Payment Reminder. Ok…but at 2 in the morning!!!

Give me a break. There are still a few of us left in this world who like to sleep at night and not practice fake American accents on unsuspecting Yanks calling up 24 Hour Helpline Promises.

And then you thank God for friends in the Cellular Service Providing Company. Not only do you register for a service called DND (Do Not Disturb) but you also make sure your usage pattern is not reflected in any saleable database.

Slowly but surely the frequency of the attacks reduces. Your SMS tone is heard but rarely and life begins to find a peaceful rhythm. And then…

The Usage Pattern Tracker at Idea Cellular or any other service provider kicks in and decides that you are getting too few SMSes. And you are an important client, remember. So with the primary purpose of ensuring that you do not die of SMS Deprivation or suffer from SMS Anxiety Attacks, they decide to brighten up your lives.

And they start sending you SMSes. Since these are from the Service Provider they do not apparently contravene any of your DND rules. And then, because they are too cheap or insensitive to hire a good content generating team, they start recycling SMSes.

The same old drivel…billed amount, unbilled amount, caller tune rentals, receipts, reminders…six to eight times a day. And if you are one of the unlucky ones who has two numbers…well, you can do the math. I have, as they say become a robot responding jerkily to SMS beeps and to make things worse, the message is what is called a ‘Do Not Reply’ message most of the time.

I promise you I am on the look out for an alley where the Cellular Signal is weak or non-existent..I want to invite my service provider…and tie them up in the dark…with the only light they can see being their mobiles…and the only sound they can hear is the beep of the SMS…

Will they die? Or just go mad!!! Doesn’t matter…at least I can use my phone to converse and not to replace a telegraphic machine…

(· · · – – – · · ·)…that’s SOS in Morse!!!