In Sync With Tech

It was 1982 and I had just joined my new company and was in Chennai on a six-month orientation course. Unlike most of my batchmates who had joined straight from their college, I had come here on the rebound; I had already done a four-year stint with the Ministry of External Affairs and married. Not only married but also expecting my first child. My wife was in Delhi and I was in Chennai.

As most of you would recall, the 80s was not the age of technology and there was no mobile or internet. We were still in the age of snail mail, STD and lightning calls. Of course, STD was a kind of revolution then, but that is a story waiting to be told.

I used to feel ashamed amidst the youngsters to proclaim my marital status. I felt old and mature and could not fit into their youthful world. There was no need to have felt ashamed, I knew, but these are feelings that you mistakenly create for yourself. As an anxious father-to-be, I was fretting and stressing myself. Unlike other fathers-to-be, I would not be part of the process of creation. My wife would have to brave it all alone and given the backdrop of our marriage and circumstances surrounding it, this was going to be challenging for her.

I had to communicate with my wife regularly but the only way I could share my feelings was by writing letters to her and relying on the postal department to deliver it as quickly as possible; which was at least a week after posting the letter. Then I would wait for her to write back. This process was more stressful than my actual problem. There was no other alternative but to resign to my fate. Yes, I could use the phone and book a call.

 The booking could be either a routine call or an urgent call or a lightning call. If you had to do a regular conversation, then you book an ordinary call through the telephone exchange. There was no guarantee that your booking will go through, or go through in time. You had to wait for hours for the telephone to ring and the exchange to connect you. The problem here was we did not have phones at our residence. So I had to call her when she was in office. Again, I was at the mercy of the single phone at my lodge in Chennai. If however, I had the money to make it an urgent call, the process would the same and maybe time taken to get connected would be shorter. A lightening call was very expensive and simply unaffordable. 

Those of you who are lucky to have been born in this age of technology can barely understand my suffering. Anyway, that was how I had to survive then. Ten years later I again happened to visit Chennai for some work. By now, new telecommunication called STD had been ushered. Now, you need not suffer the utterly ineffective telephone exchange to connect you. You can just go to an STD booth and make your call directly.

But new technology brings new problems. STD charges were different for different times of the day. During the day it was very expensive but at night it was the cheapest. It was therefore not uncommon those days to find empty booths during the daytime because very few could afford the luxury. STD booths during the night time was a different spectacle. Long and winding queues could be seen outside every booth in the city. It could take hours of standing in the queues to reach the phone.

As the night progressed, conversations took longer to end for they were cheaper. Husbands talking to wives about their routine during the day. Wives asking husbands for a detailed report on what they did and where they went and what they ate and drank. Parents talking to children endlessly worrying about their food, clothes, health and other mundane issues. Girlfriends talking to their boyfriends about how they felt and what they loved or hated. There was no sense of urgency as long as you reached your budgeted limits, which you could track on a digital meter fixed in front of you. There was no time limit. Many times, people waiting would have to return home as daylight broke and the charges changed from cheap to expensive. Well, technology cut both ways during those days.

In the late nineties, the pager arrived and died soon as mobile phones invaded the country. Now communication was faster, private and could be had any time you chose. There was email too which made communication instantaneous. Finally, in our current times, we have to thank WhatsApp for really making us communicate for 24 hours without a break. You can message, express emotions through emojis, update your location 24/7, track your wife or kids even when they are in the bathroom, call anyone anytime, anywhere in the world and also make video calls to physically converse with anyone.

Technology has done wonders for me. Now I barely sleep, thanks to people from around the world messaging constantly. Eating, bathing and other mundane activities have become irritating because I fear missing out on important messages or calls. I get anxious when I do not receive replies and worry about what could have happened? I have confusing thoughts on politics, religion, science and health. The more I read forwards, the more I get depressed. I am like a rat caught in the trap with no escape.

I love technology but I fear what I shall become one day, not too far from today. I fearfully watch my 87-year-old mother either lost inside the 65 inches, 4K Ultra HD smart TV watching soaps in the evening and religious programs beginning at 4 am in the morning; or checking FB and Whats App on her iPhone 11; glued to her iPad, deeply immersed inside the YouTube universe. I could clearly see where I and the rest of the civilization are heading.

Well, I have to stop now as Alexa tells me that a new series is beginning on Netflix.