A Page in History

Spring-cleaning takes time; and we needn’t necessarily wait for spring to start cleaning! I “indulge” in the exercise as and when I feel like it. I say indulge because the endeavour can be an extremely therapeutic one. The longer the interval between clean-ups, the more therapeutic it is. Throwing away stuff that hasn’t been used in years, or discarding stuff that was retained during the previous cleaning, and doing away with all the clutter can actually make one feel de-burdened and free. It is, perhaps, all in the mind, but I enjoy it nonetheless. I like it more so because I often end up discovering things—things I lost ages ago, things I kept so safe that I was unable to find them when I needed them most, or things I had completely forgotten about, but those that had a whole lot of memories attached.

It was during one such cleaning-spree that I found an old pager. Yes, a pager. It is perhaps one of those few tech things that wasn't used much in our country. It came, but didn’t quite get the time to conquer. Before long, we were flooded with mobile phones, and the little old pager became an obsolete piece of junk. I can still take an old radio and tune in to old songs, still listen to the gramaphone, still walk around with a Walkman despite ipods, or still watch movies on a black-and-white TV, maybe not as many channels. But what does one do with a pager?

My son is almost eight, and when he saw the pager, he just couldn’t imagine it as a means of communication. I had to explain that using it was similar to receiving an SMS—you could receive it, but not reply, at least not through a pager. 'Why page when you can phone?' I had to tell him that this was from the time when phones were only static, never mobile. I tried telling him that it was a bridge the world took to go from landlines to mobiles. I am sure the idea has just passed him by, just as the pagers have.

Pagers aren’t exactly obsolete everywhere. They are still in use in Europe and USA in places where cellular coverage is weak or absent, or where such signals can damage equipment and, often, in hospitals where it is difficult to use mobile phones. There have been new developments in the paging industry and might see a resurgence, but not so in our country. The pager is as good as extinct here, and, for all purposes, has beeped its way out.