Memoir

WhatsApp- A Social App Or A reason for the conflict

As most of us know WhatsApp is a social app that has brought many people together. Friends, relatives, cousins who couldn't stay in contact because of distance and rapidly increasing call costs are brought together by this one App.

    We all know that its not easy to stay in contact with a person who were a part of your life for a brief time but then for many different reasons got separated from you, Like our old school friends. But its another truth that the distance may separate them from you physically but  their memories stays with you forever and remind you of them now and again and make you long for a contact you lost with them. Those who have become a part of your life but now are too far away to keep in contact because apparently geography and economy have a bigger role in your life than your heart, which desire to meet those friends and loved ones.
      But WhatsApp has solved these problems and broken the holds of geography and economy and brought families, friends and cousins together.

But is it all that the app has done?

For people like me WhatsApp has brought me closer to my cousins. We have so much fun in last one and half year that we could have never had in a lifetime. It gave us all a way to talk to each other. Every night we get together and chat. We may not have something meaningful to talk every day but our silly talks, day to day worthless chat has brought us close, closer than our two-three nights every year ritual where we all stay at the same place and talk, bicker and play childish games to pass our time. Or the ghost stories that everyone like to tell after 1 at night, after which we fell asleep, slightly afraid of dark yet confident that we are all together at 3 in the morning. We still keep this ritual through WhatsApp and its really fun to be able to remain close when you're miles apart from each other.

    It's so good to have WhatsApp but again is it the way for everyone?

NO!

Not everyone feels about it the way I do. There are people who do like the app and the freedom to talk to anyone they want that the app provide.  But the same people who use it, just can't accept the idea of someone else, someone close to them, using it and having the freedom they have.
      There are many examples, especially of couples, where having WhatsApp has become a matter of conflict,  especially when the girl in the relationship talk to their male friends or colleagues. And suddenly WhatsApp is not the friendly social app but a social evil that cause conflict and fight between partners/friends.
      I will share such an example with you guys here.

The incident happen last year in May,2014. It was the last day of my exams. My aunt and cousin came the previous night and was leaving that afternoon. I came home after my exam. My aunt was just getting ready to leave and casually asked me to go with her. I wasn't opposed to the idea as I was already thinking of going to her place because of my cousin's wedding next month but leaving that very afternoon wasn't on my mind. I was tired after an all night study session and running on just a couple hours of sleep I was exhausted and travelling in that state of mind was a bit risky for me. As I don't like to travel much and even an hour of travel make me sick so the thought of travelling in a bus for hours wasn't appealing to me.
But after a bit of insistence from my aunt and taunting from my brother I agreed to leave for my aunt's place. It was a four hour journey to her town, a very long one for a person like me who turned sick very easily and in less than an hour (gross I know but its reality).

Within an hour we were on the bus that took us to a city three hours away from my small town where we then changed the bus that took us to the small town my aunt live in.
    Thank God the first three hours of our journey were uneventful and I didn't get sick, it was a relief for both me and my companions who were well aware of my fear of getting sick while travelling.
        So at the city we changed the bus that would take us to our destination. The last leg of journey was supposed to be as uneventful as the previous one but it wasn't. And it was the highlight of my journey. Surely it was unexpected and when I think about it I felt embarrassed about my own actions but still every time I meet my cousin now, we always talk about this. The incident has taken the residence in our mind in a way that we can never forget about this.
    What really happened wasn't really funny or a laughing matter but it was both for us as we were just the bystanders and it wasn't happening to us so we can't feel bad, but still we felt bad for laughing at a fighting couple which were supposed to be in love and trust each other.
      So what happened was simple, Me and my cousin were sitting on a berth in the back of the bus and my aunt on the berth behind us, as the seats on the bus were too small to fit my fatty ass and two other person together so only my cousin and I sat on the berth. A couple came and sat on the berth ahead of us just as the bus was about to start. We didn't paid any attention to them. The first half of the journey was quiet. There was a steady flow of songs from eighties and nineties,  not very popular songs but tolerable. The roads were clean and it was strange that the ride wasn't bumpy but again the city was home place of the previous C.M. who stayed in power for ten years. So the good condition of roads and infrastructure was well expected.
Just as we left the city premises and entered the bypass road that goes through villages the voices from the seat ahead of us started. The couple in front of us was fighting. Their voices weren't hushed but they were not shouting either, so we can hear what they were saying but we decided to ignore them.
      I looked out of the window to look at the scenery outside. The sun was getting low in the west ready to set so the colours in the sky were beautiful. I noticed in my peripheral that a guy who was standing near the seat ahead of us suddenly sat down next to the fighting couple. It was strange, he was standing there for at least twenty minutes and the seat was vacant then too, so why sit now? The answer came soon.