Think again.

Right when you think you know all there’s to know about the people around you, they’ll throw up he biggest of surprises. Being young and snobbish I happen to think the older freedom struggler generation and the latest technology could never really go together. Until this happened.

Recently my dad’s mom, my grandmother, turned seventy something, I’m not sure which exactly, but its on the wrong side of 75 (I know, I should know these things, but that’s not the point..) so my dad, always enthusiastic about buying gifts, decided to get her ..a mobile phone! Everyone in the family pooh poohed the idea of course, especially me and my brother who had a hard time comprehending why a guy who took five years of going back and forth before buying us phones could come up with such an idea !

A phone, that too for our paternal grandmother who dropped off from school in the 3^rd standard and whose life revolves around her beloved cows, her spinach farm and an obsession with temples of all kind. The fact that a similar experiment with my very educated, very cool, retired headmistress maternal grandmother had failed miserably wasn’t very encouraging either.

But dad was adamant, so off we went to the mobile phone store, and bought a very basic easy to use phone for my grandma whose closest encounter with technology is probably the TV and the electronic voting machine. Then we dutifully filled the speed dial with contacts of all my grandma’s our off springs. In the evening dad went off to present the phone to her and to give her instructions on using it. He came back happy with grandma’s response and we all felt pretty optimistic that at least we’ll be able to call her on her very own phone rather than depend on the ‘land line’. Soon we all forgot about it.

Then one morning a week later, my mobile phone started vibrating me off my bed at bloody 6 in the morning. I flipped it open and it’s a call from grandma ! She was calling to ask whether I and my brother would be coming to the ancestral temple at kumbhalanghi for a ritual. I said something and passed the phone to my dad. From then on there was no looking back. Apparently my nearly eighty, almost illiterate grandma was taking the phone everywhere she went. We got calls from her as she temple hopped all the way to palani and guruvayoor and god knows where else. Dad was ecstatic at the success of his 'mission bring mama to 21st century'.

All was well for a while, the family rejoiced at their 'forward' thinking.But recently the phone has become an eyesore for my uncle and aunt with whom my granny lives at the old house. Now, my grandma’s a very stubborn little lady-a tough nut-so now, whenever a little tiff happens between her and my uncle, my dad’s mobile would ring off the hook. An endless stream of complaints would burst forth. Then dad would spent time pacifying her. Same goes with my aunts as well, one little thing – temple festivals, an abundant harvest of chikkoos or yams to give away, another fight with my uncle – and grandma’ll hit the speed dial! I started feeling a whole lot of respect for the lady. She had lived all her life taking care of a tough husband and four children and an endless stream of pet cows. Yet she had defied all our expectations and embraced the new technology like a pro. The only people miffed are my uncle and aunt. They’re apparently tired of granny calling all the people we know and complaining about this and that at home!... (She even called the temple priest up on his mobile phone and complained that my uncle never took her anywhere! ) so now my uncle always thinks twice before saying anything insensitive to my grandma which could potentially throw her into a phone rage… go grandma!... a woman liberated :)

smoke

I’ve heard that when we face death, our whole life would pass before us in a flash. One flash. A single moment when all the moments that touched us flicker one last time in our eyes.

Made me wonder what I will see if I was to face death today. Life seems so long and endless sometimes but the moments I’ve lived, truly lived, are so few and far between. Almost twenty years of life and what have I felt? Large stretches of my life are like air trapped in an empty bottle in the attic. No ripples, no fragrance, no rising dust. Then one of those moments happen when time that had stood still until then suddenly becomes real. But soon the sudden tide settles and the waters become still until another one hits.

If death were to stare at me in the face right at this moment what would I remember? What would flash? Maybe the sudden joy when mom and not the maid came to school to pick me up after school just once in kindergarten. The numbness when in my head as my dad lifted a four year old me, covered in blood from a gash on the forehead, and ran as he waved to halt a bus to take me to the emergency room. Running wildly through the light and shade of the old acacia trees in the old school court yard with the best of friends. The sudden shock when a trail of red down my legs took away a childhood and left me with secrets to keep and things to hide. Moments of warmth, sitting on the rails of the school bus stop, samosas in hand, talking about anything and everything. Whistles. Blushes. Waking up to the song of birds outside and walking out into the morning to discover a world changed by the night’s downpour. Other moments when you die a little, when the bed room door slams and the room fills with hate and the pink pillows become wet. Some moments stand out , those of hope, of peace. The flash of smile on grandma’s face as I walk unexpected through her smoked kitchen door, that feeling of having come home. A walk on the beach, a lonely sunset. Moments that make one dream.

Twenty years leaves one with a handful of moments. As though life existed only for a few short seconds, as though the rest was smoke. There’s no reason to crib about the loss of time then. No reason to pound at the watch as you wait for a friend on the park bench. Life happens it its own sweet time. A year lost in idleness? What does it matter? Was there one moment in it to cherish? Then you’re compensated.