Friends: Lunch on weekends, sometimes stretches till the cocktail hour.
Family: A Few hour on weekends.
Colleagues: About eight to 10 hours a day.
Cellphone: 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Must be next to the pillow to ensure a sound sleep too.
At first read, this may sound like the schedule of socially inept people, but do a quick calculation and your life can also be divided into roughly the same time schedule. You can manage your typical helter-skelter home-office-party-home day without family, friends and colleagues, but try leaving the cell behind and hey... it's the end of the world.
Especially if you are a single woman in the city, says a recent research by the London School of Economics. The researchers feel the cell has today turned into a replacement for the significant other, a bodyguard and friend for women. We find out how...
Your personal bodyguard
Uhh, it's him again... the guy who doesn't seem to get it when you say 'no'. So rather than make another excuse about why you don't want go out with him or talk to him... just pick up your cell and... talk away to glory. So what if there's no one at the other end? After all, your cell is a physical barrier as well and the best way to tell someone to lay off. "Sometimes, when I want to avoid someone, I just pretend to call, or may be scroll the messages. Laugh if you will, but no one dares to disturb me while I am doing that," says actress Lisa Carey. But maybe you want to heed this advice: Don't try this on your boss even if his diatribes on your falling standards are sending you into a coma!
For the fix of gossip
The women respondents to the survey have termed the cell as "the new village green". The idea is to pass notes about the 'Ms-know-it-all' colleague, the siren who is giving your guy a once over or that hunk who's just joined your office today. No woman can resist the temptation of telling her buddy about this ASAP - so the SMS! "Aren't there times when someone or something is so irritating you that you need to tell your friends about it? Waiting till the weekend or evening would be too long. While I haven't done it often, it is a lot of fun," says VJ Kirstin.
Your personal companion
You are again stuck in a party where you know just one person, who coincidentally knows everybody else. Rather than merge with the wallpaper and be tagged as a loser with a capital L, women would prefer to have a tete-a-tete with their ol' friend - the cell. "There have been times I have checked out even the toll options in my cell to seem busy at a party. Believe me, it seems like manna from heaven then," feels design student Carolyn Barger.
Oh, that feeling of safety
Respondents to the LSE study say they feel safe with a cell around because according to them, "there are real people in there". "Whether I am out of the city for work or at my apartment or travelling late at night, my cell keeps me safe. It is some semblance of sanity in my life," says entrepreneur Tania Dally. And have they used this 'safety valve'? "Numerous times. When you're caught in a downpour with the car tyre punctured, just listening to a friend telling you to relax, it is going to be fine, is such a relief," adds Lamba.
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