It was just another birthday gift that I presented to my dad on his 60th birthday. But when he unwrapped the gift, it had a smartphone inside. His first reaction was a mild snub to me. Though he was happy inside that his caring child had saved all the money from his paltry salary and bought this gift for him, he politely showed his little displeasure over the waste of my hard-earned money.
He had always been averse to modern gadgets and was strongly of the opinion that this invasion of technology had damaged the fine fabric of human relations. Most of the time, he would find youngsters like me glued to their gadgets. We would not even spare a few moments to have a word or two with our siblings and parents—one of his strong gripes against modern technology. He would often call us fools and our virtual world a proverbial fool’s paradise.
On top of that, he also clung to the belief that these wonders of technology were not wonderful at all, as they had enslaved our generation with their addictive impact on them. But now willy-nilly, he had accepted the gift. In no time I filled his smartphone with apps like WhatsApp and Facebook. Like a nursery kid initially he had to struggle to learn their operational mechanism. I took him under my tutelage and he was optimally trained by me to make use of them. I was surprised that a great positive change had occurred in his otherwise bland and monotonous life with the arrival of this gift. The boredom and ennui associated with his retired life had begun to take their toll on his physical as well as mental health. He was sitting idle at home all day long and various worries would lick him inside out.
But after receiving the smartphone he was experiencing a smart turn in his life. Many of his friends have added him to their WhatsApp groups. Though some messages they post in these groups are just meaningless jokes, they give him a hearty laugh. Some shoot a volley of meaningful messages and share valuable inputs too. Now he too keeps participating as he has skilfully learnt to post images and texts from his tech-savvy son. He also remains as busy as a bee on Facebook. It is indeed akin to a reunion for him where he has met almost all his school and college friends. The gift has added many new colours to his life. But now whenever my mother catches him glued to the gadget, she lovingly teases him and says, “Mr Fool, you have also finally joined the world of fools”.
Shiv Sethi
Email: shiv.sethi@ymail.com