Mobile Internet-ed!

Inside an auditorium, before a standup comedy act, that was scheduled on Friday evening, a guy was shouting, without intervals “Check the stage, we have red curtains ready? Sound equipment has to be sound or no sound will be clear, can you hear what sound that equalizer circuit is making, and is it a sparking sound?” “Oh ho, the only sound that I can hear is yours”, the technician who was working on the equipment replied to shut the coordinator up. The preparations were all right, 65-70% tickets were sold, and that meant success. 

By 7:15PM seats were occupied, the show was scheduled to begin at 7:30. It was a weekly show, at an auditorium, near Churchgate in Mumbai. Every week people would come and enjoy. The good thing about the show was, only organizers earned money, performers did it for their own personal satisfaction and charged nothing. They had their day jobs; it was their hobby, basically. So, it wasn’t unusual that every time someone new used to perform, but organizers were careful enough to choose the good ones.

Today’s first performer was primarily working as a manager for a risk analysis team for a multinational bank. He came on stage and started, as the red curtains pulled up, and the mike was visible a man in black suit with a grey neck tie and a white shirt wearing a pair of glasses came and smiled and greeted the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to TryHardToLaugh.com, yes, you can access this website through your mobile phones, but after my performance is over. Thanks. My name is Ramesh Krishnamoorty, no need to google it, as the first result you will find is Kavita Krishnamoorty with a link saying she married Musician L. Subramanian in November 1999. Of course it will be a wiki page. So I advise you to turn off your GPRS connection, or 3G whatever you are using to access data over the internet, because it will keep you distracted from my performance.” 

“The guy in the 3^rd row 5^th seat from the right hand corner is looking at me and giving me a weird expression, I think he is thinking, dude, I bought the tickets to your show through that. Well sir, I agree and I am thankful for that, but I sincerely don’t want you to steal my lines of this performance and put them up as your status update and get loads of likes and retweets”. 

“I personally hate mobile internet, you know, it takes away a lot from your life, for example…….. Girlfriend”

“Unfortunately I faced it. She found her college sweetheart, from Sweden, and she dumped me, because that guy turned out to be an engineer and I was a risk analyzer. So, that guy located her through her sort of Blackberry Pin and convinced her that I might be looking for and avoiding risks in our relationship.”

“Don’t look at me people, I am not sure how does living in a relationship poses some sort of a risk, and I am still wondering how engineers can do anything. So yes coming back to my point, mobile internet, and I want you to disconnect it. Not a problem if you receive a phone call, that won’t distract me, but in case you have not done what I am saying, you will be distracted for the rest of my performance because I agree there could be funny people in your life and ping you on your whatsapp or iMessage or BBM and take you away from my act and someone’s life.”

“But I found someone too, because of it. I found my new girlfriend because of my phone. And no, I don’t have an app that finds and downloads me a girlfriend. I found her at a discotheque. But I went to the discotheque because my snapdeal app notified me of a free unlimited drinks coupon at this discotheque so I went there and found her. So you can say that I found my new girl friend because I have a phone with internet.”

“So ladies and gentlemen irrespective of how important internet is in your life, and you have the world connected to you inside a tiny device in your pocket, I once again request you to disconnect your GPRS or 3G because I am here in front of you and you do not need to see the live streaming of my performace on TryHardToLaugh.com’s youtube channel”

“Perhaps this is something unavoidable isn’t it. Way too important to put down, after all guilty pleasures can be experienced too. For example saving the extra buck for a text message or avoiding a phone call when you can whatsapp or skype, especially when you have wi-fi somewhere nearby, isn’t it? And that spoils us to an extent that we are forced to have data access one way or the other and perhaps it becomes an integral part of our lives and I can say that I am mobile.”

“Therefore ladies and gentlemen, for the first time tonight I am allowing you to use internet on your phones, because this marks the end of my performance as the next guy would come and take over, but before that I want you to do 2 things, first, if you liked my performance, then please show it on TryHardToLaugh.com facebook page by actually liking it so that other people in your friend list know about us, we need publicity and second, please delete the status updates in case you found any of my lines to be sufficiently amusing and put them up on your timelines, good evening and thanks.”

The red curtain falls as people clap and Ramesh bows.

This blogpost is submitted for Internet is Fun! competition organized by Vodafone and Indiblogger