Sign of the times

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With the advent of mobile telephony and the internet, while typewriters are a curio at best, money orders and telegrams have almost acquired the dinosaur status. But, there is a world beyond ours where these are still a lifeline, writes Shefali Tripathi Mehta

When was the last time you stepped into a post office? You probably don’t even know where one is located in your area. In the age of boombox and iPod, how the heart still warms up on seeing a curio-value, out-of-use gramophone and skips beats at the clickety-clack of typewriters passing by a court complex.

Standing tip-toe, I watched father fit all he wanted to say in ten words — the minimum charge for a telegram was for ten words. Fun as a cryptogram, I pored over to see him change ‘come at once’ to ‘come immediately’. Not that a rupee or two mattered, yet it was the done thing — reduce, save. Evolution and the need for speed necessitate change. We look back at these obsolete-for-us objects and relive the romance of bygone days.

But, there is a world beyond ours where these are still a lifeline. We have begun to take for granted that everyone owns a cell phone and the initial astonishment at the autowala or the house-help drawing out one has been spent.

Even those that you called on a PP (phone passby, nearest contact number) number after 10 pm when the STD rates were slashed to half have one, and which they use liberally too. It may be true that India has more cell phones than toilets but there is another India where people still await telegrams and money orders. With fifty per cent of our population still living in the villages, these are still the accepted and only means of urgent communication and money transfer.

Charmed, unconnected life

Today, speed is money. Everything’s got to be faster than it already is. A false sense of urgency permeates our lives. If you are late by half a minute, the waiting person calls you on your cell phone to ask. The restlessness of ‘where are you now?’ does not allow you to sit winding a gramophone. Even our radio hurls out frantic, high-pitched chatter that does nothing to calm us in the midst of our rushed lives.

While eighty per cent of Indian villages have at least an electricity line, not more than fifty per cent of the rural households have access to electricity. In these many one-bulb homes in our far flung villages, where electricity is unavailable or scarce, people still go to sleep at sundown, comforted by the silence of the night and watching the night sky that we in the lighted cities can never experience.

The country has 1.55 lakh post offices, out of which 1.40 lakh are located in the rural areas serving eighty per cent of the rural population. Rural families may be divided and scattered over towns and cities, but those that stay behind wait patiently for the postman to ride in on the dusty track to deliver a post card or a money order. Western Union is alien and credit cards are unheard of. Credit is still untrustworthy and, to a large extent, not very respectable too.

Innovate, preserve

Most city post offices have discontinued the service of collecting telegrams as it has become unviable to maintain the service. So, if you wanted to whet your child’s curiosity about this almost relic of your past, you would probably have to go to a bigger branch, if not the General Post Office. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), it is believed, spends more on a telegram than it earns. On an average, the cost of one telegram to BSNL is about Rs 40. It charges Rs 3.50 for a telegram of 10 words or less. The charge for each additional word is 50 paise.

In most other countries of the world, the telegram has already acquired the dinosaur status. In the UK, the telegram is promoted as a retro form of greeting and in Sweden they are delivered under the category of ‘nostalgic novelty items’. Frequently used in Japan, telegrams can be ordered online!

The typewriters are still used in the cities in courts and police stations for typing legal documents and affidavits. The advantages of typewriters in such settings would be very tough for a computer to contest. They do not require electricity or technical skills and are portable.

Jab we don’t meet

Robert Frost, in the wonderful poem ‘A Time to Talk’, writes:

WHEN a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Technology has a way of pervading our lives in ways that our people-to-people interaction dwindles with each advancement. In small villages, the post office serves a social purpose. It is another place for meeting and interaction between people. Everyone knows everyone else and their ‘business’. We in cities prefer our closed doors.

We start to speak into our cell phones if we see a neighbour approaching so we don’t have to make a conversation. We walk our babies and dogs either talking into our cell phones or listening to music, leaving them to their own thoughts. Social interaction is confined to planned meetings. Chance encounters are discouraged and frowned upon.

It is not just the gramophone that sits in the curio corner of our houses. The CD players and music systems that played out music that the family listened to together have lost their place of pride in our lives. In fact, aren’t the days of listening to music together over? With music that can be stored, streamed in cell phones, iPods and other miniscule devices, everyone has their own music stuffed into their ears.

We don’t pick the ringing phone and exchange pleasantries with the daughter’s friend or husband’s colleague before handing it to them. We don’t know who the children’s friends are. Everyone talks with their ‘contacts’ on their own cell phones. There are more SMS exchanges between members of a family than face-to-face conversations. The mother-next-door tells me how her teenage daughter sends her SMS messages from the next room.

The great divide

These is an impressive list of the longest, largest. India has the world’s largest network of post offices; is the world’s fastest growing telecommunications industry; has the second largest telecommunication network in the world in terms of the number of wireless connections; and yet, not much of this trickles down to touch the lives of Indians living in remote, hilly and inaccessible areas. Whereas 50 per cent of the population uses the telephone in big cities, it reaches only two per cent people in villages.

What we have scored in the technology domain, we have lost due to infrastructure challenges. The hurdles of setting up the telecommunications networks in these areas are many. No electricity, no or bad access roads to isolated, far-flung and often sparsely populated areas, and low income customers. It was reported some time back that villagers from Karaj in the Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh walk 20 kilometres everyday to get their mobile phones charged! There is no electricity or proper roads in their village.

To overcome the electricity challenge, technology companies have tried to bring alternative cell phone chargers. Almost a year ago, a Mumbai firm launched a roll-on charger — one minute of manual rotation and three minutes of talk-time. But that path-breaking innovation which will catch on the fancy of the users and suit their pockets too, has been elusive.

Change is inevitable. Adapting to it is wisdom. But progress that is limited to some and creates more disparity cannot amount to much beyond figuring in the list of superlatives. The old will remain useful as long as there is use for it. As long as rural India has use for telegrams, money orders, typewriters and post offices, these will exist.

As for us, we must return to the ‘Search’ option on our laptops and share with our Facebook friends how, with the advent of mobile telephony and the internet, the iconic red telephone booths of London were sold off to be used as shower cubicles in homes! Quick, get a money order form. In two decades, you may like to frame it to display on your drawing room walls.

The Mystery’s in the Mail!

By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

Everything eventually gets IT-jacked, including your friendly neighborhood advise-auntie. The one who visited at three in the afternoon and headed straight to the bedroom to sit cross-legged on the bed with her pallu in her lap to tell you that mustard oil for bhindi and saliva for pimples work best. W3 nudged her out. Wiki, Google this and that were all a screen away. I never again rang her bell to ask exactly how many milliliters of water my indoor plant could do without.

When the doctor prescribed a treatment without sharing the diagnosis, I promptly told him that I knew it wasn't an ordinary zit but a KELOID and that though he wasn't telling me I knew already that there was no treatment for it and whatever he may try, I was doomed to live with a KELOID all life. Googled? he smiled first, Try black magic, he mocked. Very tentatively, reluctantly, I let go of googling everything that whizzed in and out of my mind. But the prompts lurking in the sidelines of the mailbox continue to tempt and tease, offering their unsolicited advice as readily as auntie. The moment I receive a new mail I look sideways at them to give me some clue about its contents. They are all but bells and whistles. It’s a game more stimulating than a migraine aura or a cryptogram.

Some are barefaced, easy to read. Like when I see ‘Free Jokes, Funny Photos, Laugh-while-you-can,’ wink and blink in the wings, I know the mail must contains words like laugh, funny, enjoy. Though it can also be from someone in the ICU moaning that though he could not note the number of the car that hit him, he would recognize the driver’s smile anywhere. If a sender as much as mentions 'author' or 'book', even if it’s in the context of 'book a case' or 'completely authored' the links beckon me to ‘First-day-five-thousand-copies-sold Publisher’ and ‘Rowling or Roy – Help with Idiom’.

If the sender writes, I’m sleepy now, ‘Top insomnia treatment’ lurks in the margins and if, I didn't get much sleep – ‘Sleep Apnea Symptoms, Sleep Devices Inc’. When someone complains that the new boss is a pain in wherever appropriate, it tells me to ‘Try Dr B….for aches and pains’! As soon as the Bank statement email comes, I am sucked into virtual tours of cruises on the Nile offering caviar foot packs and diamond under-tail clips for my pet. They may spy my mails but have problems counting the zeros.

But it’s not often that I see conclusions stretch to incongruous limits such as when after a tiff with a friend I was directed to Hindi Bhajans and Hanuman Chaalisa! The exchange had been peppered with words such as sad and angry but it wasn't a Mahabharat kind of fight, so imagine my surprise when I spied one link, though last, like an afterthought, but just in case…of Packers and Movers!! For definitely fighters must be people living under the same roof! What if one of us was contemplating moving out? No business opp should be missed. One’s world may be falling apart but logistic help is always at hand.

Then there are those that hint at the bizarre. I’m cleaning windows, I write and am promptly, in highlighted font, advised that ‘Denims may guard against rattlesnake bites’. I love Curtis Stone, I confess and in all caps it warns ‘Recipe for disaster!’ Someone was late for work, I barely read when the margin glows with ‘Govt employees rejoice’. Those two sure go together! A friend shared his anxiety about visitors at an upcoming event ‘It could be a flood or a trickle,’ he wrote and I told him to organize boats because I was being directed to ‘flood warning’. A short note on this and that and nothing much led me to ‘Are You a Fresher? Let Companies Discover Your Talent’. I sifted and strained but words it wasn't. The sender had used green font.

The friend’s mail is all bold and unread. I’m looking more at the right, trying to figure out what it may contain. Curiouser and curiouser, I click. Atta, dal, kids, maid and the husband late from work. In big bold letters the offer displays itself ‘Exp:0-5yrs, Sal: 25-100K Submit Resume’. But of course! Someone working late must need a job change.

Everything that I ever want or do not want to know at my fingertips. Smug, I log in to check my mail. ‘No new mail’ it proclaims and promptly leads me to ‘Hysterectomy Via Keyhole Surgery is Less Complicated: Study’. Auntiji!

This piece was published in The Deccan Herald, Sunday, December 5, 2010 in a horribly mutilated form.  In the name of EDITING, they BUTCHERED and knocked the punch out of it! It doesn’t even read okay! Check out: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/117995/ineffectual-cyber-wisdom.html

It’s just too complicated

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It’s just too complicated

By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

She’s taller but that’s not why I have to make do with the hand-me-downs. It’s because she’s smarter. She learns of and adapts to up-to-the minute technology too quickly to stay awed with what she owns.

This is especially applicable to life-saving devices. Topmost on the list — the mobile phone. The doting father believes getting her the latest is just keeping her grey cells recharged.

But all grouse on that account aside, this way, I too get an upgraded version of the cell phone, year after year. The one she has no use of. The nerdy, geeky genes that were mutated to mute in me have resurfaced daringly unmuted in her.

But last birthday, perhaps just to make me feel like one of them, the significant other and the daughter gave me an iphone. iphone to me till then was no more than bad English for ‘my-phone’. Plus it was heavier, difficult to hold, difficult to pocket, difficult to carry, especially in those little colour-coordinated clutches I so covet. But this was just the horn on its head.

Soon I discovered that it had a life of its own and no intention whatsoever of being at my fingertips. It always called the wrong people. And always texted wrong messages to the right people. Touch and go! Oh stop! I’d shout and plead, ready to run after some invisible cord that could be pulled apart. ‘It’s touch ONLY, does not respond to voice commands,’ I’d be admonished by irritated voices.

But even before it did all this, there was the problem of moving my contacts from the lighter, handier, friendlier, familiar old one to the bad English one. The two heads came together again. I hovered, trying to involve myself in what was after all the problem with MY phone. There are compatibility issues, they discussed. I pulled up my chair.

Finally, they were taking interest in the affairs of the world. Poor dears looked so careworn mulling over the marital discord of the newlyweds next door. I nodded in support and leaned closer. Such propensity needed positive reinforcement.
But soon it was all Spanish again. And I realised it was the phone they were referring to. But they are not to live together, not even be in the same handbag, I intervened. Shush! Shush! mother/wife, they were afraid the walls grown geeky with them would hear. An entire weekend was spent opening and staring into two and three cell phones, computer screens, googling, researching, trials and… obviously ERROR! They lost and could not ‘retrieve’ my contacts!

I cried rivers. Then shouted at them. Then stopped speaking with them. But none of it brought back my contacts and so I gave up being normal. First, I returned their present. They could have it for all it was worth. Bad English wasn’t such a concern with them, anyway. Then promptly, I wrote an email to Dear ALL, asking them for their phone numbers. I tried to hide my geeklessness behind the freshly acquired ‘not retrievable’, ‘incompatible’, ‘no back-up’ and suchlike.

Now keying in a large number (as I had unwittingly expected) of names and numbers into the old reliable would have been a massive task so I wrote to Dear ALL to text me their names.

Smartypants that I am, I had clearly imagined how this would work. I would receive a text message from a ‘number’, open it to find the sender’s name, and save the number in that name. So simple… it wasn’t. People just emailed me back. And not their cell phone numbers. Their names!

Being the board mother

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Humour

Being the board mother

By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

The end of the academic year requires me to relinquish my title. Surprisingly, I am reluctant to let go of that which I was as reluctant to assume. That of a Board Mother.

No mistake here. Not ‘bored’ mother. Yeah, I know many. I’m them plus this — Board. This title came by virtue of the daughter’s appearance in her first Board exams.

I laughed off the initial dose of friendly dos and don’ts. A fellow Board Mother was getting the house painted before the academic year. In other Board homes birthdays were being celebrated, relatives being visited, vacations taken and books read — all a year in advance. Never were life’s forever-pending joys and jobs so readily and hurriedly being checked off.

During the early part of the session, we took a few breaks. Now and then. On weekends and on longer weekends. It’s easy to lose count when you’re a Board Mum. You can’t be bothered with the small stuff. And it’s ALL small stuff compared to the Boards. Then a friend enquired if the breaks and travels were not ‘distracting’ for the daughter. Distracting from? Nitwit that I am, I shot off before I could gather my Board motherly persona. Now she thinks my long-term (Board results stick for life, you see) memory loss is a definite distress signal.

I must be doing something dreadfully wrong! The thought engulfed me ominously. Visiting the other board homes, I realised that ours was acutely devoid of a broad Board feel. Giving myself to hyperventilate every now and then, I tried to uphold an alarmed air about the house. Only the air was alarmed. No movies, no celebrations, no eating out, the teacher told me in the raised-index-finger tone after the pre-pre-pre Boards. She also set a strict study schedule for daughter. Eight hours of study every day. There are eight hours in a day? This time, I kept the trap shut.

My days dragged. I lapped up film reviews not worrying if they revealed too much. No way was I going to catch a movie. Television-watching was restricted to the news, volume to a suggestion. It’s another thing that the Board daughter took a 15 minute break from studying every five minutes and watched TV. Needing fresh air, she strolled out for a couple of hours every evening, while I made badam shake and besan ladoos. Don’t shout at her, she needs all the TLC she can get, the grandmums reminded in glaring-eyed tones over phone. And the phone! I was allowed to hide under the covers and talk only if my withdrawal symptoms threatened to come between my daughter and her studies.

I never really chummed up with neighbours. Actually if they wanted to, with me, they’d need nice, heavy ice picks. But suddenly, I was so exposed! Every time I stepped out and noticed a movement at a distance, it quickly metamorphosized into a neighbour outfitted with a triumphant smile and walking straight up to me. So what if I didn’t know them from their block — Pine or Needle, or by face — the fighting fellows of somewhere upstairs or the barking dog dudes from somewhere downstairs. They knew me. Board Mum was an invisible marathon bib I was wearing at all times.

“Not to be seen?” I would smile. “Busy with daughter?” I would smile more. Keep it short. Showing teeth would be asking for it, I’d calm myself. Knowing-full-well-but-getting-to-it question, “Which class?” What now? I’d weigh my one option. I could dash back indoors and pretend I never met them. But it would only ram the rumorang. It’s certainly getting to her, they’d declare. “Tenth,” I’d say as naturally as I recited ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’ in class three. “Boards, eh?” they’d lean over to dig in their teeth. Duck! I’d break into cold sweat. Phew! Just another sympathy hug.