Collective Isolation-Bringing closer or Getting far

I belong to a small village and living in a city. Like most of the people in the city, I depict to be a busy person who is having little time for social interaction despite having a lot of free time. Simply, in materialistic environment, with having a lot of people around us, we are living a self made physical and mental isolation. Being busy, having no time, tight schedule, less interaction, these are terms that became fashion words in this time of deceptive world. But alone we all think that we cannot leave alone, we need people around us to talk with, to share with, to lesson to whom but our masked faces restrict us from doing so as we may be called backward people living in the world of fantasies.

I rarely go to my village, usually two to four times a year and that is mostly on Eid or some other occasions. Despite having very much little interaction with the local people I always got very warm response from them. This is something we usually don’t see in the cities. On the main road to our village house the distance is about one kilo meter that I usually pass by foot. During this travel of one kilometer, if I come across 50 people, almost all of them used to greet me, in fact not only me but every one on their way. And this was the beauty of the village that I always liked despite all its backwardness and lack of facilities.

Last year, I had to go to village to attend a function of my cousin’s wedding. I dropped on the main road and from their to my village house as usual I traveled by foot. But this time I felt a lot of difference in the behavior of the people. Except of few elder people, hardly 30 out of an average of 50 people greeted me. The rest were so busy that they even bothered to look at the other people. When I reached to the place of the function, the same situation was also there. And the reason for this change was the installation of a mobile phone tower in the village. Indeed this was a communication development and a step to contact my backward village to the rest of the world. But the facility that meant to shorten the distances, to bring people closer has brought such changes in the people minds that have even lost the people near around them. On the way to my village, I was greeted by those people who were not having mobile phone, the rest who were having this facility were either busy in miscalls, typing/reading sms, listening songs or playing ring tones. Similarly in the wedding place, despite a big gathering of people, everyone was busy either showing their new phone to others, typing/reading text or just talking on phone or playing the games or listening the songs and ring tones. Those without the gadget were free to see people around them and to interact.

I am not against the development but against the curse of development. We people have turned to be blind followers. We are losing our own identity, while portraying to be what we are not. The Eid, that was a big occasion to bring people closer, from Eid card, to phone call, is now just limited to an sms. What I feel is that we are going towards collective isolation. Despite having around a lot of people like us, who dress like us, who talk like us, who eat like us, who behave like us, we are alone.