When cell phone becomes cause of death

Yet another tragic death from sheer callousness! Is it suicide by default? Incidents of young men and women getting knocked down by trains when they walk on railway tracks as they talk over cell phones oblivious to the danger are increasing in numbers. The latest casualty concerns Shantana Basak, a student of the Social Welfare Department of the Rajshahi University. No, she was not exactly on the rail line proper but close enough to be hit by the Padma Express that was passing the Fine Arts Institute area of the university at the time. Previously Dhaka's Tejgaon area has witnessed a number of such accidents and consequent deaths. Similar tragedies have occurred on segments of railway tracks in other places in the country.
As part of its social responsibility both the print and electronic media have drawn attention to people's inattentiveness to danger at the time of crossing railway tracks or walking right on those. All this while they are found to be deeply engrossed with conversation or listening to music with earphones plugged into both their ears. A most useful modern gadget thus turns out to be the cause or call it causa sui of their unnatural death.
So engrossed are the mobile maniacs that they are completely unaware that the rail lines belongs to trains and are not meant for walking on or carelessly and leisurely crossing over. Their carelessness costs them their lives. Usually they are young people with full of dreams. One wonders why these apparently smart boys and girls become so lax when they use their cell phones.
The fact is that these guys find themselves in some sort of a trance when they talk over their mobile phones or listen to music. The world does not exist to them. Even the whistle of an approaching train does not bring them to their senses. Spellbound and addicted as they are, they are totally divorced from the reality and therefore can ignore the danger from a passing train that cannot change its track even if it wanted to.
Shanta and the likes of her will never know what a void they have left for their parents to look at with blank eyes. Who are to be blamed for the premature death of their scions? Had it been a case of road accident, accusing fingers would have been pointed at the drivers of the vehicles but in this case there is no scope to blacklist trains because it reserves the right to use its track and others who come over there are simply trespassers or encroachers.
Cell phone users are maniacs who put at risk their lives unaware. But to survive in a world of mad rush one surely has to be extra-cautious. There is no liberty to be enjoyed without being responsible. Responsibility is a prerequisite for holding on to existence in a competitive world. Modern gadgets have given unlimited opportunity to people but becoming a slave to those for them, at the same time, means courting death and destruction. The need to be on the alert that the gadgets do not dictate the terms, it is man who should make use of those to his convenience. If the roles are reversed, tragedy befalls the weak and the unduly influenced.
So the need is not to yield to the temptation of the wonderful virtual reality. Whatever may be the attraction of the advanced gadgets, they are not more precious than life. And life takes its sustenance from the material world. The Earth, air and water are the basic elements for man's survival. Without those life will not exist. So, all animals cannot survive devorced from the basic elements. One must have one's feet planted on soil and at the same time face the reality of facing the mundane world on a regular basis. Caution can be thrown into the wind only to one's own peril. Careless cell phone users should take note of the tragedies that have been taking place for quite sometime now.