This tiny gadget has always been an object of deep scorn. One sound for milliseconds can launch a spear at you.
All eyes start hunting for the culprit. The guilty must act quick to stop it now, lest he sets off an official hunt. More sound and he must flee the crime scene.
Mobile phone - the small device which can easily sneak into your pockets, coats and handbags, has always had the potential to create biggest of the panics inside a court room.
For litigants, even a hollow sound means their way straight out of the court room - choose being escorted out or thrown out.
And for lawyers, a mistake can trigger different results. They can cut a sorry figure and be excused. Some can be hauled up. A few others would rather turn around and flee before anyone can notice them. After all, these officers of the court must worry about their images.
But it is this meekly tiny-winy equipment that seems to have the last laugh.
Having submitted to the rigours of decorum for decades, it is the mobile phone that is unfailingly coming to the aid of justice in these unforseen times.
Courts started functioning through video-conferencing due to Covid-19. But video links often fail. Faces of the judges, lawyers keep flickering. Their voices diminish and vanish too.
What should happen now? How will the hearings be conducted? And then enters the mobile phone - means of survival for many millennials, a lifeline rather.
Mobile phones have come to the rescue every time its big brother cannot keep up. Supreme Court registry dials the number, asks lawyers to keep their mobile phones handy. WhatsApp calls or voice ones, phones will sail you through.
Proceedings are conducted using the mobile phones. Orders are passed too. The device, which has incurred the wrath inside a court room for decades, is slowly gaining respect.
Its 'insidiousness' is slowly getting substituted by its utility, value. And the mobile phone can't be happier. For, it can steal the show from a technologically much-advanced video tools.
Mobile phones finally have a real sense of connectivity and community.
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