On losing a phone (and probably two manuscripts worth of poetry)

I am home after a night (mostly) spent tossing and turning in a Side Upper berth in Kacheguda Express.

Mostly because I was missing the comfortable and familiar presence of my mobile phone in my pocket and because it isn't exactly easy for me to fit into a Side Upper berth along with my camera backpack (more about this later, hopefully).   

And also because I was stiff-legged from spending most of yesterday afoot on Thaverekere Road, Bengaluru, lugging along two bags (apart from my camera backpack, of course) trying to track down my lost (stolen, rather) mobile phone.

As I write this, when I try getting my number called, I am told there is a "phone switched off" message. Which means -- in all probability -- that whoever has stolen the phone has disposed off the SIM (or used up all the balance on it, or whatever) and sold the phone to someone who buys stolen goods or has mated it with another SIM or whatever...

Can't say I know much about mobile phones or that they interest me beyond a point.

That point (in this case also the reason for my day long efforts to track down my phone) was the qwerty keypad of my phone handset (incidentally, a cheap Nokia X2), which makes me a bit of a freak when it comes to sending long SMSes or typing up poetry, etc into my phone's memory using the "draft messages" feature. While birding or while walking around otherwise outdoors, or while moving on, in a train an auto and so on...

Yes, there were quite a lot of poems in there, in the Nokia X2...in all probability two manuscripts worth, even if most of them were first drafts.

And all that is now gone, poof. Life, huh?

I did try and try and try my (inadequate) level best. And yet again, I was surprised by the humane capacity of my fellow man, the kindness of strangers, as any number of auto drivers, cyber cafe owners and one mechanic and one postman called up my number on my behalf to help track it down.

(This was in addition to the friends I could reach by getting online using FB / GTalk. Thank you Vijay, Manju and Nivi, you guys were a big help indeed!)

And I did not give up hope that easily either, because (very very incongruously, in fact) whoever pinched the phone (yes, it was stolen, I did not drop it or misplace it somewhere) did not switch it off immediately and in fact even offered to give it back to me (as communicated by the nice people who called up my phone on my behalf) if I came to this auto stand or that bus stand. It was another thing entirely that, the concerned location kept on changing and 3.00 in the afternoon onwards, the phone was "switched off".

Maybe the mobile phone thieves of Bengaluru have a gameplan that is more advanced and innovative than that of the others. Or maybe they expected me to follow them up some more.

Either way, it would seem all that poetry (even if it is mostly comprised of first drafts) is lost.

All because of a moment of being mindless -- I had just finished my "first-glass-of-the-day" tea (at a tea shack on Thaverekere Road) after a sleepless night, I wasn't exactly in a great frame of mind and instead of pocketing my phone, I left it on my seat, while I went to get a refill of tea...

Oh well, it could have been worse, considering how much I have been pushing myself these last 4-5 months (incessant travel, physically grueling field trips, and the mental strain of having to again and again face up to my inadequacies).

Thank God it is only a cheap Nokia X2 that I lost... I could have forgotten my camera backpack somewhere or even lost my mind!