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Disconnected! Ever since the boom of IT in the 1990s, the word 'disconnected' became a household word around the world. Post seed stage, internet service providers (IPS) were naturally wet behind the ears, failing to meet the customers' expectations vis-à-vis service quality and response time.
In Nepal, the most common complaint used to be an exasperated 'disconnect vayo'. The word took on such a powerful 'net' connotation, as if one could get disconnected only with the Internet, and with nothing else.
Not that by now, the IPS' services are up to scratch everywhere.
Of course, they boast of Disconnected! providing it atop Mt. Everest, in the middle of the Pacific, or in Dolpa's nook and cranny. However, the point raised here is not about low or high-speed Internet 'connection', but about 'disconnection', a term monopolised by the Internet.
That is, for instance, when you overhear someone in Humla saying disconnected, regardless of whatever she implies by that, your intrinsic inference is that her 'internet connection' is disconnected. After all, nothing else seems to disconnect but the Internet connection.
By way of ubiquitous use of 'disconnected', we seem to be oblivious to various, and perhaps more emotional disconnections.
Examples of such disconnections abound. Kids grow up and wish to pursue their dreams in cities. Many go abroad in search of greener pastures. They leave their families, childhood friends, birthplace, the trees they used to sway on and pet animals back in the countryside.
At times, they definitely feel a sense of disconnection. Then, they endearingly speak of childhood recollections - of their schooldays, preferably - as they feel ruefully disconnected, and deduct that time is verily ruthless: childhood is a onetime delicacy, it is not served time and again, you just cherished it once and that's it, and disconnection persists!
Granted that we are scared or disappointed to get disconnected, be it in terms of the Internet, of our childhood or something else. Paradoxically, umpteen other species - more than one million species of living beings inhabit the planet - feel disconnected too because of a more cunning species - Homo sapiens. Again, examples abound in this respect, too.
Man fells a prolific fruiter as it stands in the way of a new dirt track. Birds, bees and butterflies are at a loss: shall we find a new fruiter, where we are not given a cold shoulder by our ilks? Their chirps, hums and clicking sounds convey a loud and clear message: we feel disconnected; let us just stay connected with nature!
And man, shall he relearn to stay connected with nature, too? Disconnected, he will arguably google it for counselling when reconnected!
A version of this article appears in the print on June 27, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.