M.A. Tech

If you think I’m tech-challenged, blame it on my maternal genes. My Ma and Technology are definitely not twins separated at birth.

She talks back to the Voice Recordings from the bank. I overheard her telling the phone voice the other day, “I already pressed ‘2’ – I pressed it 4 times already.”

She once called me in office in the middle of an important meeting to ask me, “The second orange light on the washing machine is now beeping. What should I do?”

She is almost single-handedly responsible for keeping the Indian Postal Service alive – pain-stakingly buying cards and writing long-hand letters and buying stamps etc… and takes it a personal insult if someone sends her an e-card in reply. I’ve offered to write her emails, if she dictates them. Ever-willing to give it a try, she starts her emails with ‘I hope this reaches you on time, and finds you in the best of health.’ (Ma, I object, this will reach instantly, and he was in the best of health when he sent you an email 5 minutes ago, to which you are replying. His health couldn’t have deteriorated rapidly in the last 5 minutes.)

She whacks her DVD player when a DVD gets stuck while playing, and IT STARTS AGAIN.

On second thoughts, she doesn’t really need technology, see. She has an in-built memory chip which remembers the birthdays of all her cousins, nieces and nephews, down to the time they were born (making it impossible for anyone to fake their age). She gets the stains off the kid’s clothes when the washing machine has thrown up its hands in surrender. She bakes better cakes than any auto-timer microwave magic could dream of. And she’s got some patented copyright to make her grandkids feel that they’re the smartest guys around. Now, that’s something that technology hasn’t invented yet.

Ma 1, Tech 0.