I write after a long hiatus of ~ 8 years. It isn’t that I
haven’t given a thought to writing in these 8 years, let me just put it this
way, “there wasn’t too much to write about which wasn’t already being discussed
on the internet”. With all the “noise” that surrounds us these days on social
media, the good old blogs have lost relevance. Everything has become smaller –
our gadgets have reduced in size; our homes have become more compact and so has
our attention span. Drawing a parallel from Cricket: it’s the T-20 version (Twitter,
Snapchat) which has become the apple of the eye and the good old test match (blogs,
articles, Op-Eds etc.) is losing its sheen. Nevertheless, I want to take a
plunge today.
I had the pleasure of going on a leisurely evening drive
along with my father-in-law and the missus today. (I am visiting my in-laws).
We saw lots of countryside during the 2-hour drive and absorbed the beauty as
much as we could. We saw young kids playing in the fields, animals wander
carefree in their natural habitat, local village folks sitting outside their
homes and chatting. It seemed we were in a different world altogether, a world
which does not worry about the traffic that builds up once people start leaving
office, a world which does not care about what to cook at night (for they make
do with whatever they have), a world which does not know that something called
the internet exists (let alone the shenanigans of social media). At one of the
spots, ~ 40 kms from my in-laws’ town something incredible happened. We stopped
for a cup of tea and the tea vendor knew my father-in-law. After being
introduced as his daughter and son-in-law, the tea seller did not want to let
us go empty handed and quickly rushed to his home to get some local delicacy
which he could give to us. This had us (missus and me) thinking if our
generation, or the ones to come, could ever establish the bond/connect that our
fathers’ generation has. Moreover, with us living in cities and chasing our
metaphorical dreams, is it even possible to have such a bonding? This took me to
one of my favourite subjects: ‘Technology’.
If you were to ask me, what is the greatest invention that
man has produced in my lifetime, my answer to that would be ‘Internet’. With
internet coming in, distances have reduced, information parity has increased
and the applications of information technology has created employment and
provided so much convenience to the lives of the people. I would be using
internet and technology almost interchangeably from here on in the blog,
assuming that I have made my point. With anything that creates so much
positive, there ought to be a flip side to it which is often ignored. While
internet has made us self-sufficient and independent in our cash-rich but
time-poor lives, it has minimized human interaction altogether. Let me take a
stab at all instances in my daily life where I adopt technology – I book a cab
for my office commute, I order grocery while on my way to office (to be
delivered at a later time), I order lunch, I get back home to realise I had
forgotten to take the packet of salt which was much needed at home, I Dunzo it
and it reaches home in 20 mins. Having the convenience to book the cab at my
finger-tips does prevent me from the haggling I need to do with my auto-wallah
but more often than not, I do not even know the person who is driving me. If
there is any confusion with regards to which route to take, I do not even need
to speak to anybody for Google Maps provides me real time satellite imagery
with expected time to reach my destination. The good old charm of bargaining
with the family grocery store has been replaced by tons of VC-backed cashbacks
that the grocery app offers. The only way I come to know of any new snack stall
that has opened in my locality is by seeing it in the food delivery app. If it’s
not there, it doesn’t exist for me. And at 9:30 pm in the night, when I
realise, I had to bring a packet of salt and it presents me with an opportunity
to borrow it from the neighbor (& in the process get familiar), the Dunzo
App constantly reminds me of ‘Why Fikar, Dunzo Kar’. This takes me back to the
pertinent question, will our generation ever be as close to the eco system
(physically) as our previous generation is?
Is it a question of the Jio-fication (internet
penetration) levels being low and hence the smaller towns still have their old-world
charm preserved and intact? Or does the average small time person chase greater
things in life like spending time with family than chase materialistic
pleasures like a hefty pay hike, the next foreign trip, the next modern car
etc. Sometimes I wonder if our generation ever got its priorities right. Most
of us leave our homes and stay away from parents and are often not with them on
regular days when they would need us. Instead, we are chasing our dreams and
trying to stand on our own so that one day, we will be able to suffice for what
may come. In the process, we end up staying apart for most of the time in order
to be able to support when in future we stay together. Blessed are those who do
not have to leave their parents or homes.
The other day I was watching a movie and there was a scene
where some foreigners were being taken through ‘Dharavi’ (Asia’s largest slum,
in Mumbai), and were being given the tour of homes inside the slums in exchange
of money. This is a legitimate business where the tourist is curious to see how
the slum folks stay and are genuinely willing to pay money to get a glimpse of
it. I now think of it, we are moving one step back (or front depending on the
way you view it) and getting ourselves familiarized with our rural eco system.
With the fad on farming increasingly getting popular in cities, people are now opting
for a village-like living on weekends in the garb of adventure. The day is not
far when we will re-connect with our rural counterparts and get amazed at how
simple living can cure most of our technology inflicted urban stress. I often
wonder if I should move back to a small town set-up and start living a more
meaningful life where valuing the other person’s life and giving him/her the
required time is going to matter more than earning quick bucks at the cost of
time. I also wonder that whenever my baby is born, I would want to give her/him
a taste of how the world looked like in the absence of technology – when writing
letters had its own charm, power cuts in the evening signaled time to play out
with other kids with no dearth of open spaces to play and not having to book a
court using an app.
But I then back out. For it is time for my only free
2-hours-per-week-to-do-things-i-want-to to end, I have plethora of excel sheets
to analyse and prepare a weekly report to be presented to my boss the next day,
which would position me good in my professional equation at work & augur
well for my incumbent appraisals which would then make me earn extra bucks
every month, help me go to Europe for vacations, buy insurance for myself and
my family and what all and what not.
