BENGALURU: My laptop has been in the ICU for a while now, and I have been feeling terrible. While I’ve quit alcohol and am focusing on my health, my laptop is coughing and sputtering while performing basic tasks. Truth is, laptops never peaked into their final form. They came into our lives as a transition between personal computers and smartphones. And hence, they ended up being neither here nor there. Most laptops spend a few days frolicking in cafes and parks, before eventually settling into the comforts of being a desktop that sits at home.
PCs had an aura of their own. Remember when the first computer came into your home? Everybody was in awe, and the machine was dressed in protective layers of clothing like a newborn baby. In school, we were asked to take off our shoes before entering the computer labs so that the computers weren’t infected by a virus! The room in which the computer sat was cleaned every day, and the device itself was treated like a time machine. Every time my grandma saw me in front of the Windows 3D Pipes screensaver, she assumed I was a Silicon Valley wizkid!
On the other hand, smartphones changed the way we deal with the world around us. Everything from gaming to personal banking made the switch to these handheld miracles. Smartphones proved that it wasn’t just the rich who could create works of art, and along with Jio, revolutionised the way Indians communicated with each other. Laptops unfortunately sat bang in the middle of these two innovations.
Ads for laptops showed slim, smiling professionals carrying the laptop and working from the moon to show the laptop’s portability. But laptops were always bulky, and came with appendages like charger, socket, and mouse. This resulted in the bag becoming heavy, and you were in permanent need of a deep tissue massage. Technically, laptops were never the best option for either gaming or video editing – these tasks were left to the desktop computers.
The cameras on laptops were never good enough, and anything shot on them would be rejected by even porn sites for being too grainy. Then there’s the anxiety of the battery running out, so you always kept an eye out for the battery indicator. A minor spill could cause permanent emotional damage, resulting in the ‘blue screen of death’ – that dreaded error message that made you want to tear your hair out in frustration.
We all have that one laptop we bought with our hard earned money. My laptop’s keyboard stopped working and so I had to carry an external keyboard for years. The battery was the next to suffer, and my laptop charger started to seem like a tail that was permanently attached to my body. The speaker was the next to go, which meant that I had to carry a bluetooth speaker with me at all times. All I needed was a CPU, and I would be carrying an entire computer along!
After feeling guilty of cheating on my computing partner, I finally purchased an iPad for my writing needs. It is light, so I don’t suffer from ‘Tendulkar Syndrome’ – a condition where the burden of the entire nation seems to be hanging from your shoulders. I am not constantly looking for a plug point like a hungry meerkat. On Independence Day, I finally liberated my buddy from the life of sorrow and pain. Goodbye, dear laptop! You served me faithfully for seven years, and as a tribute to your memory, I shall never own a laptop again!
(The author is a writer and stand-up comedian. Views are his own.)