I learnt a new word last week. Nomophobia.
“Nomophobia is the irrational fear of being without your mobile phone or being unable to use your phone for some reason, such as the absence of a signal or running out of minutes or battery power. A phobia is by definition an irrational fear.”
Due to a technical problem with my thumbprint not amenable to be read for identification purposes for some applications, I had transferred my mobile phone number to my son as a temporary measure. Not needing to use that application anymore, I was getting quite frustrated with my name not being associated with my phone number in this highly interconnected world so dependent on internet for just about everything. Having recently acquired a brand new smart phone, I wanted my name back as the registered user of the number. I therefore applied for retransfer of the name to mine with the service provider and a new adventure started.
Let me not go into all the gory details but, suffice it to say that it was frustrating. My able secretary, my dear DIL also got frustrated as I was depending on her to get the mess sorted out.
Finally, after three weeks of toing and froing and innumerable telephone calls, complaints etc, the deed was done but, I was adviced that for 24 hours my connection would be disconnected to sort our their own internal problems. I agreed to that having no option but was not prepared for the connection getting disconnected for 72 hours! Immediately after the 24 hour period was over, I started enquiting about when the connection would be restored and after repeated phone calls and some threats to escalate the matter, the connection was finally restored.
During the 72 hours, those who wanted to contact me desperately, did on my landline as also I used the landline for outside calls. Since I had a WiFi connection at home other services like WhatsApp and Twitter worked and that helped keep my sanity. Particularly frustrating was my inability to use the OTP service for various online transaction during the three days. The saving grace however was the absence of promotion calls and SMS services though the same service was the reason for my not getting the OTPs.
This experience shared with a friend resulted in my getting to learn the new word “nomophobia”. No doubt that I suffer from it!
What a relief to get the connection back and great pleasure that the number is now registered in my name!