20 Years of SMS

Have you ever wondered how lovely those tiny messages that visit your mobile’s inbox daily are? How many of you have worried when your dear ones skip or forgot to SMS you? Life won’t be the same if Matti Makkonen hadn’t introduced tiny characters twenty years back. Yeah! SMS is celebrating its 20th birthday today. From simple ‘hi’ to serious political discussions, SMS has grown as major power of communication among majority of the population in this world. The sharpness and strength of these 160 characters have even scared politicians. The fear of the power has let the authorities to ban group texting when some issues arise in an area.

Oh God! I speak like a criticizer, very formal words. Since this is a personal blog and I’ve scribbled a few posts about messages, regular readers of my blog could easy identify my craziness to text. Yet I should admit that these days my habit of messaging has reduced drastically. I was really surprised when I saw a feature in an English daily saying that the trend of SMSing has declined so much. It is not that I follow the world trends blindly. Still I wonder how I could stop texting without any regrets. Blame it on social networks and online life (blogging too)!

While rewinding, you could meet a village girl who never kept her phone down. She will be always busy texting her friends and relatives. She had most of the numbers of her schoolmates, college friends, colleagues and relatives. If someone is there in her contact list, they cannot escape from her texts. In the initial days of messaging, just 200 SMS was more than enough for a month. Slowly, it became 100 per day and later unlimited. Apart from usual forwarded messages and other SMS, she also typed small poems in the cell phone. Most of the poems in this blog were first framed as texts. Gradually she stopped sending messages. None bothered to ask her what happened! If anybody asks her, she does not have an answer. Sometimes, the answer will be just single word- boredom! Is it that the exact answer? Well, it may be so…

There was a golden time of messaging for me. Every SMS was read with so much of affection and replied punctually. I don’t know whether I can do the same in future. At present, I am not interested to text. But I am always thankful to those little SMS which made me smile, cry and shout. If there was no texting, I wouldn’t have so many nostalgic moments to think of! So here is a birthday wish coming straight from the heart of an SMS fan. Many Many Happy Returns of the Day! May you live long happily and cheerfully!

Read other posts about SMS from my blog:

• Tiny Worlds of SMS
• Lolz