The mobile phone is already an integral part of human beings. A well-functioning mobile phone, preferably a smart phone is omnipresent in pockets. Often, it’s secured in belt pouches. As pockets cannot be always trusted. As they’re hole-riddled, thanks to inflation and galloping cost of living. Vital organs like the heart or the brain figure way down the priority list for the caring they receive compared to the mobile phone.

That is why people continue to smoke and helmets are placed between the thighs by two-wheeler riders. Phones make their presence felt through obnoxious ringtones, alarms and alerts in places of worship, hospitals, offices, and at funerals.

Solemnity of the funeral of an aged woman was broken by the ringtone-that of lajjavathiye( a popular Malayalam film song) that broke the sound barrier in Kerala sometime back.  Mobile phones might ring from the graves too! Who knows! The only place where its presence isn’t encouraged wholeheartedly is the washroom. Mobile phones do not survive in water. People are concerned about taking mobile phones into the washroom, as they’re not aquatic gadgets. If they do, they ensure their safety within belt pouches and in the depths of intact pockets. They avoid stooping over the commode with the phone in their shirt pocket.

But presence of mobile phones inside washrooms is often lifesaving or a Godsend as these two incidents prove.

Sometime back, my wife and I visited a friend of ours. She was my wife’s best friend in medical college. Soon the bosom friends took to ‘catching up with time’. A process which was louder than a Boeing taking off. Not much interested in the rackety tete-e-tete between friends, I decided to relieve myself in our friend’s washroom. Relieved, I attempted to join the friends. But the lock of the washroom door had other ideas. It refused to budge to my efforts to unlock the door. Attempts of a terrified person trapped in a washroom, which amounted to yells to draw my wife and her friends’ attention drowned in the din of their seemingly endless and loud ‘catching up’. Better sense got the better of me despite the panic. I realized the presence of my mobile phone in my belt pouch. I phoned my wife. I was back with civilization instantaneously.

 Few years after the above incident, my wife received an SOS from our younger daughter who was trapped in her washroom. After her bath she realized to her horror that the toilet door wouldn’t relent. She was alone at home. She has the habit of taking her mobile phone to the washroom while bathing to listen to music! Her quirky ways proved ‘lifesaver’ that evening. She phoned my wife to inform her of her predicament. I left the hospital with my driver to secure my daughter’s release. My daughter, before proceeding to the washroom had locked the front and the back door of the house leaving behind the keys in the locks. She enhanced her safety by securing the doors with tower bolts. I had the keys to both the doors. They were of no use as they couldn’t be used as my daughter had left the keys in the locks after locking them. Moreover the doors were secured with tower bolts too.

Reassuring my daughter over her phone periodically, I sent an SOS to the carpenter who arrived in a jiffy realizing the urgency. With his help we broke open the constraints of the backdoor that led into the kitchen. Wasting no time, the rescue team released my daughter from bondage, who chose to while away time and distract herself from anxious moments in captivity by watching Netflix on her mobile phone!

Citing these two incidents, I advise that mobile phones are carried into washrooms to summon help if trapped inside a place you least want to be in. To encourage this I request mobile phone companies to manufacture genuinely water-resistant phones.