I stepped in and made my way through the aisle to locate my seat number. A little further, a jerk here and a twitch there, I found my seat and made myself cosy. Soon, the bus hostess clutched the microphone, recited a prayer and proclaimed the rules and guidelines.

With this last chore done, I was now free for the next two hours of my journey. However, what does a person do in their free time? I mean two hours are not a moment or a short period to let them pass by unnoticed, especially when this has been your weekly routine for almost four years, and you still do not know how long it will continue. Something has to be done to pass the time, but what?

Being an avid reader, I usually comfort myself by slipping out a book from my knapsack and placing it directly under my eyes to decipher the imprinted ink. But I am always hesitant to do so.

Why? It is because my vision captures not the twisted figures turning the pages but, the slanted necks illuminated by the multitude of colours emanating from smartphones. Sometimes, observing those crumpled shoulders and how they move their fingers is a sight one just cannot ignore. However, when you are surrounded by such figures and you pull out a book, then it is you who becomes the centre of attention. Although, no one cares what you do, I can’t help but feel I am the odd one out and fear being noticed. And that’s what happened that day.

I remember it well. It was night, the bus giving slight jerks at irregular intervals, aisle lights faintly illuminating the space. I slouched on one of my favourite classics and the passenger next to me was looking at his screen and sometimes me. I stretched my neck for a moment and caught him in the eye at which point he said that he thought that people like me had become extinct. I believe he was correct.

The progression of our society is clearly evident, travelling in a bus is just a small example, albeit a quite convincing one. When you see people everywhere hooked to screens and simply digesting content with the swipe of a finger, it does seem like a problem. I have observed a lot of people travelling alongside me in buses. I glanced at their screens, unethically, observed their body pattern and noticed their attitude. Most of the time, they waste their two hours. They do not even spend it on entertainment fully. Listening to a playlist, watching a show or getting absorbed in a match, all this is acceptable. But what I see is that people click random videos, do not finish them and slide to another. Then there is a lot who checks WhatsApp every other minute and then locking and placing the phone in their pocket.

However, I feel pity for those who start a film, watch it for 20 minutes and switch to another one, continuing the pattern till the bus hits the arriving station. The worse thing about this group is that they always look bored or tired of their life. Each trip brings glimpses of such folks.

Well, one can say that it is not a problem if the passenger rarely travels, he is only wasting his two hours for a couple of times in his whole life. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I have witnessed routine travellers like me who are addicted to this habit. If one rises his head and peeks out at the crowd around them anywhere else too, this is exactly what we will see.

We have become addicted to unproductivity, wasting time is no more meaningless to us. Instead of reading a book, having a chit chat, pondering upon life’s strangeness or just enjoying the scenery, we have morphed into vampires hungry for their smartphone dose.

This is entirely true for what happens in our offices as well. We tend to make a thousand excuses for not delivering the work on time. We want to change the country by doing nothing. We aim to remove the shackles of poverty, illiteracy, fanaticism and segregation by wasting our time on random things. This habit, which is visible at a macro level in the bus, appears at a bigger level, the trait of us as Pakistanis. This is, I believe, one of the reasons why we are still a mob rather than a nation, because we love to do random imprudent acts and fail to unite on worthy issues.

One may say that I am aggravating a minor social problem and you may be right in saying so. However, then one must find the answer as to why everyone seems to be stuck to this habit. Is this the future? Is this beneficial?

An anthropologist or a social major may give a better answer, but this problem manifests in our society at various levels and none of its manifested form appears positively. Then does it mean that it is part of a bigger problem or a product of another problem? Have we become oblivious to our surroundings and given up on our thinking faculties, just like what we do when we get acquainted with loads of irrelevant information with the swipe of a finger?

Maybe we have advanced, and this evolution demands our connection with electronic gadgetry. But we do not see progress akin to this transformation. Well, we can also deduce that my bus experience has been worse for the past couple of years, and this does not translate to our national trait. Numerous objections can be hurled on my statements, all of which are acceptable.

However, it is bit difficult to ignore what Ovid said, “Habits change into character.” Or how Virginia Woolf put it: “Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.”

Maybe they all (these writers) were fools, and we must not pay heed to them at all. We are good hooked to our devices and swiping away our life with a finger on the screen.

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 4th, 2022