To Break Up or not to Break Up
Rajni Arora
HOW TO BREAK UP WITH YOUR PHONE: THE 30-DAY PLAN TO TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE by Catherine Price Trapeze, 2018, 192 pp., ₹ 710.00
April 2023, volume 47, No 4

The title How to Break up with Your Phone reminded me of an essay I had read many decades ago while in school. On ‘Not Answering the Telephone’ was a witty essay by William Plomer in which he expresses his dislike of owning a phone and discusses the inconveniences in having a telephone of one’s own. But the likeness ends there.

What Plomer thought of as a pest, and felt he could do without has begun to control our lives like no other addiction. Elaborating on the title, Catherine Price writes, ‘breaking up with our phone doesn’t mean we are swearing off it’; now that confused me no end! Why give it a title that you need to explain?

When I first saw the title, I wanted to know what was meant by how you break up with your phone. Breaking up in any case is never easy. Not only can it be heart breaking, it can leave you feeling bereft. However, once I picked it up, I realized the book is more than just a light hearted DIY that gives you easy steps to accomplish something you have been trying to do for a while.

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