Drops of Jupiter

“Oops! Sorry”, I told and turned around simpering. I’d plugged in my earphones deep into my ears. It was my favorite song and I made sure that what I was singing wouldn’t be audible to the people around me. This is not the first time this had happened to me; only, this time it got a bit too audible that people 4 cabins from mine actually stood up and peered in my direction to find the source of that grotesque squeal. It was a high note and I had tried real hard to keep my voice low that ultimately what had escaped my lips happened to sound strangely like a fat mouse being strangled by a debilitated cat. Quite immune to such humiliations, that I am, I went back to my work. But the thought refused to leave my mind. ‘EAR PHONES, EAR PHONES, EAR PHONES…’ maybe I should let the haunting thought leak out of the neocortex of my brain, through my finger tips via the keyboard onto Microsoft Word.

Ear-phones have become the newest inclusion in our list of ‘Oh-I-can-never-live-without-it-you-know’ gadgets. Earlier they used to come as feeble metal arcs supporting a pair of flimsy sponged circular disc large enough to cover the external auditory meatus and an awkward part of your pinna. (Ah! Come now! I really couldn’t find another term to call them). Later they started getting bigger as well as smaller at the same time. The huge ones began serving the pilots while the smaller ones went to the cool dudes. Well, some to hot ones too. Ever since, there has been too much talk about it. Or maybe not!

I happened to hear from one of my friend’s friend’s friend that people have started turning into zombies- not the flesh tearing, berserk, havoc creating type, but the prosaic, listless, inanimate sort. I mean, they don’t smile at each other or form gangs or trip the solitary geek zombies and watch them fall flat on their faces and laugh. Well, you know what I am talking about. Now getting back, I was quoting one of my friend’s friend’s friend. She claims that people have become more like zombies, each with a pair of ear phones- not to mention, they imperceptibly happen to get stuck with the wax in the earlobes. She was upset, people hardly spoke to one another, or smiled. To be annoyingly redundant; maybe that is why she called them zombies. Apparently it took a lot of consoling and cajoling from my friend helping her ameliorate from her bewilderingly dismal discovery. Two weeks later I saw her in a bus station; waiting for a bus obviously. But that was not all. She didn’t smile at me. She dint wave back a ‘hi’ when I did. She had ear phones plugged in. Ah! The irony of it!

In addition to being the source of perturbation for a few of my friends, the ear phones have also caused some evil aberration in some. The other day I happened to over hear from one of my other friends that he always wore ear phones when in a crowded party. He claimed that, this way, in addition to being able to pose himself as one of the cool dudes, the smaller ear phones landed with, he was less necessitated to indulge himself in the ultimately stupid conversation a group can head to. He also says that one major advantage of being in a crowd with an ear phones is that people tend to consider you momentarily deaf and you might even get to hear stuff that you shouldn’t be or at times wouldn’t. He was all glee that one such incident did happen, when he overheard his classmate tell one of her primetime-gossiper friends what about my friend annoys her the most. From then on, he has been royally picking on her. Tut tut... Very unhealthy.

Despite this common characteristic- ‘zombieism’, the ‘ear-phoners’ as I would like to call them can be categorized into two spectra:

First are the ones that seldom care about their ears and let the music blare out so loud that sitting ten feet away from them, you would still be able to hear the music as loud as if you were in a rock concert. I wouldn’t be so much concerned about their ears if the cacophony from their screeching ear phones had not bothered me. It just rendered me curious. And what annoys me the most is that, in case they happen to break out of the trance, and wish to communicate, these absolute morons tend to holler at you as if you were diagnosed with an ear cancer and had been stone deaf all your life.

The second category consists of those that are too very concerned about their ears. Incidentally, they drop their volumes to such levels that all they manage to ear are occasional THUMPs and THUDs and at times even a few raw squawks that amount to being the highest pitch attainable by a violin. Plugging in their ear phones is a ritual. Music is optional. Would I put myself down if I admitted I fall under this category?

P.S: Now if you happen to be wondering what on earth ‘Drops of Jupiter’ has got to do with this article, nothing actually. It was the song I was listening to when I wrote this. I ignored one of my colleagues telling a ‘hi’ to me and didn’t smile at her, because I had my earphones plugged in.