Musings on technology

I always seem to resort to writing when the power goes off.Computer and television seem to be prime deterrent to productive writing .Thank God I am not adept at using my 3G phone as a PC .Apart from occasionally checking my mail or peeping into Facebook ,for me a phone is a phone -a gadget with which I talk to people.With everything said I have great admiration for the techies of this world .without them where would we be?How connected are we today!No doubt world has really shrunk to a small little laddu!
                              My daughter who is working for an IT firm in London calls me up every other day during her lunch break in her office.I just have to log into my skype account ,using her Apple i phone she takes me on a tour of Kings  street ,where  her office is .Every shop ,her restaurant and the sudden London rains are becoming familiar  to me .I can see the veg sandwich she eats sitting comfortably in my Coimbatore apartment. For a person like me who grew up in Gods own land without having seen a TV or a computer while in school or college this is indeed a great wonder. Thanks to rapidly growing technology and all the techies of the world.
                                  Talking about all this technological revolution and the happiness of staying connected I cannot help travelling down the memory  lane-three decades back to my school and college days.Hailing from a small coastal town in Kerala ,I am forced to think about the innumerable ways in which we used to stay connected in those days .Telegrams used to be the fastest mode of communication in those days .My father who was a business man used to get an average of fifty telegrams a day .We always did have a telephone at home but if you had to make a long distance call it was no easy thing.We had a big black phone and you had to dial each number,pressing a button was unheard of then .When the phone started ringing you will be jolted out of your seat for sure!The tring tring used to be so shrill. I think these phones can be seen now only in museums .My father had business associates in South Africa and used to get overseas calls almost every day and the calls would start coming mostly after 2AM and continue till the wee hours of the morning .My mother used to call the phone her black villain.Indeed after a day of hard work when she would hit the bed for some peaceful sleep here was the black villain waking her up with the shrill tring tring......STD calls came much later .In those days if you want to make a long distance call you must call up the telephone exchange and book a call .You will be given a number for your call will be in a queue there . Thank God here too we had someone to help us out .Pappa akka [a family friend and to this day I do not know her real name],who worked at the telephone exchange would always connect our calls first!My mother always had a soft corner for her and treat her to filter coffee and roasted cashew nuts in the evenings!
                                    Then came the STD era .Everything seemed so smooth now. You just have to dial the code and number and you can talk to anyone anywhere at the drop of the hat.Long hours of waiting for a call was over.It was around this time that I moved over to Kerala,s capital city to pursue my post graduation .It was just a two hours drive from my home town,but for my mom I was going off to a far off land,to stay  in a hostel and study. The only STD code she knew by heart was that of Trivandrum,s and every evening she used to call me .But in my hostel there used to be a serpentine queue for the phone.Every mother would be calling her  daughter from different parts of India and we daughters were totally dependent on that one single phone in the office room of our hostel.Now when we all roam about with a phone in our hands I just cannot help wishing that mom was alive today.Gone are the days of isolation and loneliness. As a comedian in an old Malayalam movie used to say "TECHNOLOGY  HAS VERY MUCH IMPROVED".

Comments

  1. This is really an interesting piece of writing :-)

    Thinking writing as a passion seriously has motivated me to read a lot.

    That is how I stumbled here.

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    Replies
    1. thanks a lot .nice to know that you like it

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  2. I am of this generation but still I could also recall those black villian phone days as childhood memories :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yeah we all have memories of that black villain dont we?

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