Talkobile

The strident ring of friend Poosinikka’s mobile phone while he was driving his car was an ear jerker but having read in the papers about a case that has curbed button-happy-phoney people’s instant response to the summons by the instrument in their pockets, and a freezing look by me, Poosi ignored the call. But for Justice N. Kirubakaran’s edict to the police to be awake and pounce on motorists whose crooked arm nurses this fell instrument to distraction when more than two ears and eyes are necessary in our chaotic traffic culture, Poosi an inveterate caller would have started one of his mobile talkathons enroute to, perhaps, hell…

There have been libraries containing immortal judicial prose as conveyer belt to convictions for the rash and negligent driving, under Section 304-A and other sections of the I.P.C and The Motor Vehicles Act, but the biggest potential killer on roads, the distracted motorist through drink and mobile phone seduction, had a sort of immunity from Law’s reach, until Justice Kirubakaran divined the possibility of this danger pandemic, worse than the blown out-of-proportion, ‘Swine Flu’, which has at the most, killed about 35 people in India, which holds the world record of about a million deaths on its rotten roads mostly caused by the new disease called ‘TALKOBILE”.

Buying a mobile phone is as easy as buying a gun in USA which sells that instrument of death to anyone. India has, reportedly 30 million mobile phones, a majority of them being used by minors, who, when they graduate as majors, can get driving licences too… If these chaps can vote, so can they drive and talk sweet nothings while at the wheel and to make the trip more spirited, a halt at the TASMAK kiosk would be an additive!

If the person at the wheel has to talk or bust, he/she may pull out of traffic, stop at the kerb and until foulmouthed by the traffic cop, can drain the battery of his phone. That’s his funeral, not others’. “This judgment has come at the right time. Already most of the schools have banned the use of mobile phones. Colleges too should ban it. not only because it poses traffic hazards but to stop jaw motion. When I see these phonies the picture of the cricketers comes to mind, for they are always chewing gum.”

“Yes, yes. They chew so intensely that like our distracted motorists, they forget their immediate mission. That is when they lose wickets or drop the silly point catch just as the driver goes blind to the red light and cruise past into a green lighted path, to kill maim or worse and give judges cerebral flashes to throw light on the dark recesses of unexplored judicial activism.”