'I change gadgets every six months'

Lawyer Hemant Batra has a fetish for gadgets, and he obeys the injunction, If you’ve got it, flaunt it. “They are the only things which I splurge on, and I have always been fascinated by them,” says the managing partner of Kaden Boriss, a law firm which specialises in corporate and commercial legal practices.

Batra is always on the move and spends a good chunk of his time travelling abroad. Take a peek into his laptop bag, and you will find a plethora of gadgets.

First, he carries two phones. “The BlackBerry is switched off after 7 pm, and I use the other one after that,” he says. His BlackBerry Bold is for official purposes, and the other is a regular Sony Ericsson. When I say “regular”, it’s because the poor Sony looks very ordinary compared to the kind of high-spec phones Batra carries.

He also carries two iPods with him always, and says that, being a frequent flier, he gets so used to the movies which airlines show on board that he prefers to carry his own collection. One iPod is reserved for music, while the other one he uses for catching the latest movies.

“Personally, I think the iPod is one of the greatest inventions of all time, especially for someone like me who seldom finds the time to catch movies otherwise.”

Batra tells me that he shops for his gadgets only abroad, and that he has a habit of not using any one for longer than six months. “I always gift them or pass them on to colleagues or friends,” he says.

Deeper in his laptop bag, we find a 500 GB portable, hard disk drive, which again is loaded with movies. “I am a complete movie buff,” he confesses.

Though the disk drive also acts as a mailbox, Batra says that he doesn’t keep any information in his laptop memory space. “All my data, mails, et cetera, are in this tiny little thing,” he explains. There are a couple of headsets as well, which he always carries along.

Back to phones, Batra says that he has a Vertu as well, complete with titanium plating — though he doesn’t use that one very often. Then, there is another Samsung cellphone, which he picked up in the Philippines, and which has a useful dual SIM card space.

Apart from his mobile office-in-a-bag, his office in Gurgaon is also fitted with loads of gadgets. Hi-tech Joma speakers have been installed there, and of course a huge LCD TV adorns one wall.

With all the gadgets in Batra’s bag, one actually forgets that his laptop is a Dell. He plans to upgrade to a MacBook Air pretty soon.

Well, we’re sure the MacBook too will have to compete for space with a plethora of ever-changing gadgets!