I go Nostradamus way (Ooooopieeesss)!

(Ahem...... hem..... em.........m..... As I clear my throat!!)

....... In the 1980s
Aunty Laxmi waits eagerly for her daughter to call from the US of A. Just recently married off, daughter Malathi is off to a different land, poles apart. Her only point of contact with her only child - a phone. When telecommunication was yet a researched field, and when "talk time" was an unheard term, aunty would just pray that her talk would be as long as possible for a person she craved to care for.

Ttring....tring ringed the bell....!! What better joy could Laxmi aunty wait for than this moment? She grabs the telephone and as usual tears start rolling down her cheek.... for she hears a voice that could only console her. Aunty wants every detail of what her daughter is upto. She shoots her share of anxious questions in what is a trunk-call!! And before she even completely knows how life is treating her daughter..... the phone line goes boink....!! (sigh!) that meant another long wait for a longing soul!!

Come 1990s....
Well.... things did not seem as hopeless as to begin with.....!! Aunty Laxmi has already seen her daughter 4 times since she was married off less than a decade ago.

Phone calls are limited to the weekends. But guess what! She can now make calls to her daughter! So what if it costs!!

She also owns a computer, her niece Nandu comes home to log her into whats called an Internet and then he goes click-click to open a box called a messenger that gets her talk English with her daughter!! Aunty now even can understand slangs that her daughter has picked up! Being a visitor once already, aunty can even correlate her daughter's mention of neighbourhood.

Come early 2Ks....
U just can’t guess how smart aunty Laxmi has become. She has her own recipe website (laxmiskitchen.com) and has a major fan-following. Thanks to Nandu becoming a software professional and he married off to a software company!! Laxmi aunty has not already seen him for the past 2 weeks. Wonder if he is already traveling to Oz/UK/US (Bet, aunty knows what they stand for!).

Aunty now owns a high-end laptop. She is able to see her daughter and vice versa!! Oh so lovely, aunty can even see her 2 grandchildren. She is hooked to her laptop like never before....!! She can even see what her daughter's cooking. Best of all, aunty can even sit in the pooja room and talk to her daughter. All chaturthis and panchamis are all with each other hooked to the "Internet". Phone calls..... well its more easier catching up on the Internet maccha!!

Going into a little further.....
..... Lo behold, before I go ga-ga & U assume this a fiction write-up.....!!

Before I churn on more stories of the Laxmis and Malathis...., think of what we have been through the past few decades. A technological revolution, where distances do us apart with closer ones.... but only to bring us closer to them on a virtual space called Internet!

Ahem..... Are you sure they are only close-ones? Oh no, the worlds opening up like never before. Thanks to all the networking channels, teenagers brag about friends from the most popular to the obscurest countries. I have friends who had a friend from Dubai (they met online) attend their wedding in India. (Dosti keliye saath samudar bhi paar karke aayega!)

Infact I knew that my good friend played the piano only after i looked up on his homepage. I have atleast 1 friend who is not around, who sends in an invitation for viewing their fotos almost every week. And a constantly open messenger, with friends from all over the world popping in messages whenever (jobless....!! ahem.... err) they want to! I chat/mail friends more than I talk to or see them!

I could go on n on over this tangent to.... but U do all that summary of pros and cons!!

On a quick thought, think of all those wonderful minds, who knew how to harness inventions to create more! Infact, I am wondering where do I get started: Electricity or telephony or computers or networks..... We could actually argue on the who’s who of this bunch of change-the-world protoganists.

My xyz cents!!
Well.... if technology still spearheads into better times of the world, there is little doubt that life is changing for better.

Perhaps, if i could make a medley of all the sciences that i managed to pass through in my academics, then I for one, surely foresee a technology revolution, where we get to TIME-TRAVEL into the future.

Now whats that, U wonder..... Well I am no Nostradamus..... but a real lesser mortal, who chooses to imagine, than hypothesize.....!!

Think of this, U want to go to New Zealand for a break. All that U have to do is log into the virtual space, time travel to New Zealand, and lo U are already in NZ just minutes later. U are in NZ physically. U can feel, sense, jump, run, walk, breath, laugh, talk ..... all in NZ. Boy-o-boy, U go to your favorite resto in just a click away. U are there a couple of minutes later in the NZ beach (oops, dont ask me the name!).....!! Life bangaya gentlemans......!! U are Around the world althru 365 days.

Jules Verne's "Around the world in 80 days", mite still remain a fiction novel, perhaps in a lesser fictitious way!!

My guess is technology would then take us to a point where we have a physical view of a virtual world. Talking to someone at a distant place, would only mean logging into a virtual space, from where on everything else is real. U feel, touch, sense much the way as in your own physical world. Essentially would mean U are anywhere anytime U want!!

U save everything ---- money, time, effort, most importantly health.

I name this product AIA (prounounced as yeah!!), expanded as "All In All"..... :D

But...... am I giving the aviations and tourisms a run for their money ;))??????.......... Nah, not for some more time, till they give halwa to all the junta!!

But Aunty Laxmi, let me console U, it’s a thing in the future and for all U know we might be part of that revolution too.....!!

It was supposed to happen someday and it happened when we could least act on!!

1 of those days when it was late (around 9:30pm) when I started from office. He had come to office to pick me up. The haplessly tired souls that we were, decided to eat out that night. Well at 10:00 pm in the night, we don't have much choice of eating out.

We went to this nearby Punjabi Dhaba (a decent hangout for most bachelors in this area), called New Punjabi hotel. The place was full of Northi men (except for him) and I could spot only another female at that hour. The place felt so North Indianish.

And, either of us have this technique of calling out some1 "Bhaiyya" just to start an authentic hindi-like conversation, but still continue in the broken Hindi, utmost shedding our ignorance in the language, which we rather are happy not to learn. Thats a technique we learnt when at Delhi.....

We ordered some phulkas and a methi roti. It was long since I had Rajmah masala. So I quickly concluded that we have Rajmah. It was not long b4, we saw food. I mean this was 1 hotel, where we would not have to wait endlessly for grub to arrive all with hungry tummies, droopy eyes and a sorry feeling for the other, unless we chose to eat in a buffet dinner/lunch. A la carte is sometimes painful. I could possibly go on with more stories of how much we have fought over lunch/dinner table to grab the grub we want in an a la carte.....

Well, it was a quickie dinner, and food was just ok to satiate our hungry souls. Long before 6 overs in the West Indies - Sri Lanka world cup match was over, which had hooked a few bachelors in the dhaba, we were done ordering and finishing our dinner. It was close to 10:20 pm then. And was time to head home........ to catch all the lost sleep at office ;)).

We reached home and he was parking his vehicle while I went to open the door. Oh no, I thought, I dint have the key, so I waited for him. I asked him for the key and he said he dint have it in what I thought was his usual frivolous tone. I was dead too tired and pleaded him for the key and his expressions told it..... We DID NOT have the KEY!! Both of our keys were safe inside the house!!

OH BOY!! It was supposed to happen someday and it happened when we could least act on!!

.....And it took us little time to gather that and we were stranded safely outside the house........!!

(Now..... don't ever tell this to my parents!!)

Perceptions And Realities!!

Pic 1: U spot the protagonist X (reasons that this is a public blog, the identity of X is a top secret :D) hanging from a rope? Well, the distance between her foot to the ground is all of just 20 feet. Checkout how naively she holds on to her life onto the rope. Also notice that she is hooked to a rope securely enough!! 20 feet is all that separates from a free fall.... But thats enough to scare her for a fall (THUDDDDDDD!!!!!)


Pic 2: U spot the protoganist Y (reasons that this is a public blog, the identity of Y is yet again a top secret :D) posing for a camera. Well, this time, she is at an altitude of 14000 ft from ground level, rearing to go higher up the mountains. And at this high an altitude, she seems to have not too much (I guess) a hassle with whatever she is doing......


Well, moral of the story goes thus (U cud well choose to disagree): It DOES NOT at all MATTER where U are on earth (at whatever height or depth), unless you have your FOOT FIRMLY ON GROUND!! ;))