Cell Phones: Cement or Fragment??

Just back from Solapur...

Overheard this cell-phone conversation, as the young fellow talked first to his mom, and then his girl friend, even as one of his chums sat opposite... the guys were sitting across in the AC three tier.

The first thing the two guys commented on, as soon as they boarded the train Hindi-movie style while it was leaving the platform, all out of breath, is 'Arre, yahan recharge point nahi hai '. (Me - oldgen - I was thrilled enough to see clean purdahs and sheets, in our esteemed Rlys, now-making-a-profit ka AC dibbas)

Laloo, Laloo, suno toh sahi... While one of them swore he had seen it on a recent trip in another train, the other was a tad skeptical about it. Meanwhile, the skeptic received a call - ring-tone the default Nokia one - from his mom. Conversation in monosyllables, though mom, like all moms, seemed to have lots to say.
Apart from the 'Hmmmms....', 'Ji....s', 'Haan, Ma....'s', he got agitated at one point when his mom must have asked him - well, we can all guess what she asked him ... 'Ma, woh shahar ke ek kone mein rehta hai, aur mein doosre kone mein, kaise mil sakta hoon'?... and then, his phone got cut off...
Commiserated other friend , 'In today's time and age, this cutting off of signal is criminal.'
Nokia ringtone happens again almost immediately, though young man is sitting back not trying ...
'Nahi, Ma, yahan coverage nahi hai... YAHAN SIGNAL NAHI HAI...'
(listens) 'Main pahunchkar baat karta hoon... BAAT karta hoon.... nahi, Ma- TUMSE baat karunga...'
Had just about finished this conversation, when a piercing & loud police whistle went off with car-horns blaring, in the quiet of the train-night.
That - we all soon figured - was his ring-tone for girl-friend's call coming in...
'..Yeah, my phone was busy... was on an official call.... Sorry, i can't hear - there's poor signal.... No, no, SERIOUSLY, please believe me, coverage nahi hai... sach...
Arre bhai....
'Bhai' is just a figure of speech, yaar, hey-hey'....
Phone cuts off again...
Says sympathetic friend from the other side : 'In one or two years, we'll not be able to give the poor signal reason to anyone you know, what will we do...' (I made note and added to young gen's list of future problems in life in India)
Our friend (the one with the mom and the gf) is frantically trying to dial through - and getting jammed...
Piercing police constable whistle happens.... Train chugs along. All of us junta stoically do our own thing...He puts on the phone, not to his ear - first, to his mouth.
'Hello... Hello.... Mike... Testing... Testing....'.....
'Just checking.... Yeah.... OK, I am joking now....'
'Yeah, hey-hey - me too....'
'Warning you OK? The signal's not good, I am warning you, OK? Don't tell me later I didn't....'

So what do we call this aaj kal wale conversation and dialogues - is it two way/ three way / no way??? All that was spoken of, was the absence of a signal! While there was one voice I heard all through, funnily enough I never heard him - it was three other voices that were really speaking, speaking. Besides, if we remove 'signal' talk/ the cut calls, will service-providers start earning a lot less??

Mikhail Bakhtin, that great Russian thinker must be jumping up and down in his grave in delight... Back in the 40s, and later in the 60s and 70s, he had postulated the 'polyphonic' concept... the human capacity for simultaneous multiple voices; what he said was part of a 'dailogic imagination'... and his thoughts emerged out of his dislike for any structural codes of language.
Wouldn't he just adore this new fragmentedly together world we live in!!!