![\"\"](\"https:\/\/newsroom.home.ona\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2014\/09\/Original-Map-1.jpg?w=800\")
But for some odd reason, it was lying at the entrance of my gated community. I realized that the phone might have been on my car\u2019s trunk the entire time I was driving \u2014 at least until I made that sharp turn.<\/p>\nIt was a summer afternoon in Chandigarh, India, like any other \u2014 unbearably hot and uneventful. I was home for summer break and was waiting outside the local market for my cousin, who was buying groceries.<\/p>\n
I sat on my car\u2019s trunk with my iPhone beside me while waiting for my cousin to bring the food. He finally came out, and we headed home. It wasn\u2019t an exciting drive, but I always looked out for one sharp turn that was perfect for burning some rubber as we drove into my neighborhood.<\/p>\n
After reaching home, I realized that my iPhone was missing, and I completely freaked out. I quickly mapped its location on Apple\u2019s Find My iPhone app to track it down. To my relief, the phone was nearby \u2014 only a couple hundred meters away.<\/p>\n
But for some odd reason, it was lying at the entrance of my gated community. I realized that the phone might have been on my car\u2019s trunk the entire time I was driving \u2014 at least until I made that sharp turn.<\/p>\n
I rushed to the spot, only to be told by an onlooker that a guy wearing blue shorts had cycled away with my phone a few minutes earlier. Leaving my cousin behind, I drove frantically, chasing the device\u2019s trail until the phone\u2019s location froze. I guessed the phone was either turned off or disconnected from the Internet.<\/p>\n
In the days that followed, losing my phone bothered me a lot. Of course, my little piece of technology helped me organized my calendar, emails, photographs, videos and more. But what I felt was more than just losing an organization tool; it felt like I had misplaced my digital passport.<\/p>\n
I noticed that I felt compelled to check my phone every few minutes for notifications or updates, even when nothing was happening. After a few days without it, I realized that I had developed an unhealthy addiction to the device, to the point where I couldn\u2019t imagine spending a single day without it.<\/p>\n
I felt ashamed at how important the loss felt to me. It was trivial compared to larger and more serious issues such as extreme poverty or racial discrimination. After this realization, I couldn\u2019t sum up the courage to ask my parents for a new phone. I started using my old Nokia \u2014 which didn\u2019t even have a QWERTY keypad, let alone Internet capability. I could only call or write short text messages, a clear downgrade.<\/p>\n
I was stripped of my favorite apps: Instagram, SoundCloud and Twitter, which brought me the latest music, news and photographs. Now I felt extremely disconnected and isolated with my life suddenly devoid of the usual constant virtual activity. I felt uneasy.<\/p>\n
Then something else started happening: Over the next couple of weeks, I slowly realized that I was talking more to people in person. I was giving them my complete time and attention.<\/p>\n
No more constant inflow of news updates, notifications, emails, texts and electronic reminders: Instead of listening to podcasts and music while browsing the Internet during bus rides, I started spending time looking out the window. Doing ordinary things in the real world seemed so new and unfamiliar without a smartphone.<\/p>\n
However, I wasn\u2019t happy and enlightened all the time. I\u2019d go out with my friends and not know what to do when they were engrossed in their cellphones. I\u2019d flip through magazines or read menus, even after we had already ordered food. I sometimes even felt like an outcast, just because I didn\u2019t have a phone with the latest technology. My phone had defined me in more ways than I liked.<\/p>\n
I did appreciate my new perspective over family dinners. Before I lost my phone, our dinner table conversations had become dysfunctional with my older sister and me so preoccupied with our phones. I remember itching to reply to text messages during meals. My parents would gently remind us to put our phones away and ask about our day. I would usually answer quickly and grab my phone again. Dinner was the only uninterrupted period of time we got to spend together, and I let most of that time be taken up by my silly phone.<\/p>\n
Now, I was more than happy to talk with my parents about anything that they wished to discuss while my sister still sneakily texted away. I could see in her what I was only a few weeks ago \u2014 someone urging to escape an immediate reality through virtual means. It was a bit scary.<\/p>\n
What I learned was liberating: I didn\u2019t need a smartphone to make me feel occupied or accompanied. I started enjoying life without a smartphone so much that I refused to get a new device a few weeks later when my father offered to buy me one. I didn\u2019t feel I needed it anymore, and I was noticeably happier without it.<\/p>\n
Soon, my summer at home in India came to an end. And the reality is that I couldn\u2019t imagine life without a smartphone in college, with stressful assignments and deadlines. When I returned to school at Penn State in August,<\/strong> I finally bought a new smartphone.<\/p>\n This time, I was determined not to become a slave to it again. It\u2019s been a month since I\u2019ve owned the phone, and I make a conscious effort to remain signed out of apps like Instagram and Facebook for a significant part of my day. I try and check them two or three times a day as a reward for completing an assignment or a small project. It usually works.<\/p>\n I want to ensure that I don\u2019t get untimely notifications and alerts during classes, meals and group meetings, so I mostly keep my phone on vibrate. Apart from that, I also prefer using a paper notebook for my to-do lists, calendars and notes. It helps me visualize my tasks better and keeps me away from my phone.<\/p>\n And although it\u2019s true that I have my iPhone connected via Bluetooth to speakers as I write this story, I\u2019m trying not to skip the song on my outdated playlist. It\u2019s a work in progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ONA VOICES: I realized that my iPhone was missing, and I completely freaked out. I quickly mapped its location on Apple\u2019s Find My iPhone app to track it down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10477,"featured_media":3650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[563],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"coauthors":[1142],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-voices","tag-ona14"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2014\/09\/web_akash_ghai_MG_0728-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5Q1c-1H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10477"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3977,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/3977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalists-org-develop.go-vip.co\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}