5 months! No blog! How busy I am! Busy loving. Busy working. Busy cracking jokes. Busy playing cricket. Busy visiting places. Busy watching movies - I am waiting for Businessman. Had a memorable new year celebration in the sea. I have cold. Though my jamoon is trying to make it disappear with her talk, my cold just doesn't go. And I was trying to take steam in an old fashioned way while my cool Ajji comes to me with this machine which gives steam out. I was surprised. Machine for everything, I say. And my mom is in Mumbai.
There was a time I could multiply 891 by 992, call my friends, family, followers without referring to a phone book, remember the birthdays of those who mattered most to me, spell every word I knew without the slightest hesitation. I never owned a dictionary nor a phone book. I remembered the statistics of every Indian batsmen.
Today I use my cell phone to add and subtract, recall phone numbers and faces, remind me about birthdays. My laptop tries to correct my spellings, language, grammar and often makes mistakes itself. I can still beat the computer at chess but it's so easy I have long given up playing. No, I don't need to remember anything at all. Google helps me find it in an instant. Who directed Blood Diamond? How to make a bomb? How to fool your manager? What is K V Kamath’s educational qualification? Google has an answer for most things, from curing your neighbor’s Lab's loosies to which old bookshop in Bombay may have the speeches of Nani Palkhivala on Taxes and Budgets. When Google fails, there's twitter. Somebody, somewhere will always have an answer to the question bothering you. The answer need not always be right. None of us look for right answers in life. We look for answers that comfort us. It's a bit like finding God. If he doesn't exist, we'll have to manufacture him.
No, it is not Alzheimer's nor stress (nor the refusal to eat fish) that's slaying my memory cells. It's this continuous acceptance of technology that's being thrust into my face, demanding it be used. I may not be as quick as a calculator but I'm certainly better than a dictionary or thesaurus. I may not be able to do Rubik's cube in under two minutes, but I'm ready to take a Mensa test with anyone. The problem is not in my faculties. It lies in the dependencies being forced onto me by technology I have no need for. I am ashamed I have to remember my grand-father's death anniversary by an alarm on my cellphone.
I'm not alone. That's pretty obvious. Without Facebook, I am sure nobody wishes nobody on birthdays. Nobody knows what’s happening in other’s lives. Even I forget so many things. Thank God she reminds me.
Do we need so much technology in our lives? Do we really need taps that go off on their own or lights that come on when we walk into a room? Don't we want to do these things ourselves? Do we really need 10 digit phone numbers that no one can recall without assistance? Must we perfunctorily celebrate all birthdays? Why not stick to 10 people who really matter to you and call them instead of sending fancy bouquets to hundreds of people with notes from florists? Why send a V-Day e-card when a simple kiss can do? Why do I need 8GB of music on my iPod while travelling to office? Why must technology isolate us instead of bonding us with a real world of real people, real passions? How can internet sex be a substitute for The Real Thing? Yet porn is the biggest business on the net. How can any cell phone chat (with a zillion call drops) be a substitute for talking face to face with someone you love? Yet 700 million cell phone users here cootchie coo on it.
So as this year begins, I make this promise to myself. Let me slave technology, not let it run my life for me.
Jd.
