I was agog with joy and nostalgia when I received that piece of sweet news. My NRI nephew, with his family, is coming from the U.S. to our hometown, Kollam, in Kerala. As they arrived, I was surprised to see them before me after more than a decade. I extended to them my warm welcome. We exchanged pleasantries. Meanwhile, he handed me a gift pack. Uncovering it, I found a tablet. Sadly, he announced that his stay with us would be only for a circadian day and that he would soon leave. So, I did not venture to ask him the operational details of the device he gifted me, though I had no idea of how to operate it.
Anyhow, with my limited experience in using a smartphone, I was emboldened to learn its operations myself. But it did not help me much. Another nephew of mine came to my rescue. He explained to me certain functional features. But that proved to be far from adequate. Sarcastically, he asked me to play with the tab as children do, and learn by missteps and flops. Tad annoyed, I thanked him, retrieved the contraption from him and cast it on my writing table. It lay there, an innocuous piece of modern communication, mutely raising a challenge to my expertise.
The coveted tab was growing into a source of annoyance for me. It daily consumed the lion’s share of my leisure. It ate into the quantum of time I had to devote to my routine. As a matter of fact, I was compelled to abridge my daily reading and calisthenics that comprised just jumping, twisting and a few vertical push-ups standing against the wall. Unfortunately, the tab started playing spoilsport in the performance of my regimen. A septuagenarian, I had to expend a lot of my leisure to learn the nuances of digitisation, leaving to the back burner my vital daily activities.
Finally, I abandoned the tab — for it turned out to be terribly costly for me in terms of peace, solace and tranquillity!
sadasivan.chc@gmail.com
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