Oh! Those ole times!

Pardon me, but I am going back in time. Like, fifty years ago, maybe. I am taking you to the late fifties and early sixties. A time when a telephone was a luxury, a car was a super luxury and an airconditioner, almost unheard of, if not costing the earth, moon and sky together.

Of course, communication was not too much of a problem – no one was in a tearing hurry, anyway. The snail mail, known in those days as the Indian Postal department was quite an efficient way of communication. Internally, an inland letter or postcard would take an average of a week between two cities. An Airmal letter to a distant shore, maybe a month.

The telephone instrument made of black bakelite and featuring rotating dial had the best ring tones ever. And, no hello tunes to mislead you - if you were being received or ignored. People talked loudly into the cup-like handset; people still talk loudly on the most sophisticated Blackberry working on a super efficient network. Back then, if you wanted to talk to a distantly located cousin, you either booked a trunk call and waited for hours or walked across to the Telegraph Office, stood in a serpentine queue to await your turn at the hot and humid booth for the whimsical operator to connect you through. SMS? Not even coined then! Those days, a telephone connection was even part of the patriarch’s will to be inherited by his son.

So was a car! Willed, I mean. There was a time when the head of the house would book a Fiat or an Ambassador car and would not live to see it, let alone travel in it. His children would enjoy his benevolence. Such was the waiting time for a car to be delivered. Cars were a part of the family wealth – most of the time they would never be sold till it fell apart due to rust or misuse. Consequently, there were hardly any second hand cars, then.

But then, those days travel was not too much of a trouble. Roads were good and less populated. Buses were clean and frequent. Cycles and rickshaws were aplenty. And, life was trudging along at a leisurely pace. The car was primarily for a family outing to the beach, cinema or a festival mela.

Back in those days the ozone layer was intact. I don’t think the word ‘ozone’ even existed. Tree lined roads and avenues abounded. The sun didn’t seem too keen to display its power on the hapless human race. And, houses had high ceilings, mostly made of wood rafters and clay tiles. All this helped in maintaining the temperature at a cooler level, aided by the lazily rotating ceiling fan. The wide blade, heavy duty fan would actually condition the air to keep the inside temperatures on an even keel.

Whatever happened to those days, I keep wondering? Today, even while driving or riding a bike, if the cellphone rings, there is no question of waiting till you reach your destination, to answer it. Who knows, the stock market may have crashed; so let me answer it!

Today, one can’t imagine a few hours without an airconditioner. The skin would seem to sizzle and fry at the slightest hint of the sun.

Today, a hundred metre trip to the provision store needs a scooter or bike. And, anything beyond that, the car has to be taken. A middle level manager in an MNC wouldn’t be seen dead on a cycle, even though he knows that cycling is good for fitness. But, he would gladly pedal away furiously at the local gym in airconditioned comfort.

But then, ‘today’ is a word that becomes ‘yesterday’ before you can even say Jack Robinson. So fast is the pace of life today. Communication and transportation are two key factors that drive life, today. And, at that fast pace, the heat builds up and you need proper airconditioning to stay cool.

So, pardon me for going back in time. I have also got used to the new age props for ‘today’s’ living needs.

Nikhil Raghavan / Precious Features Syndicate

The I Word

Recently, in a newspaper, I came across a cartoon strip in which there was an exchange of views between a NextGen youth and his quite old fashioned father. The lad was observing that, in the age of iPods and iPhones, the country’s national treasures should also be renamed. For instance, he says, Indian Gate should be called iGate! To this, the father reacted violently, saying that his son had no respect or knowledge of his and his country’s history and ancestry. The lad retorted that he did know his history very well, indeed. For, he knew of a past Prime Minister who went by the name of iGandhi. The strip ended with that, but I can well imagine what the next frame would have been.

In the present day life, the word ‘I’ has become synonymous with ‘Power’. It is not any more a reference to being conceited. In the ‘I, Me, Mine’ sequence, ‘I’ is merely the ‘Intelligent’ factor. Intelligent – that’s Me and what’s Mine, including the iPod and iPhone!

When two youngsters of the opposite sex make eye contact, it is actually indulging in that good ole fashioned eye-to-eye ‘fluttering-eyelashes’ contact. For, they could actually be oceans apart, chatting on Skype or scrapping on Facebook. The buzzword here is ‘iContact’ and that’s where the connection is always happening – on Internet, with a stress on ‘I’.

For the youth of today, the word ‘static’ doesn’t exist in his vocabulary, other than in n the context of electricity. His world is one of constantly evolving nature, dynamic and improvising. His world is in his hands – in his PDA, his tablet notebook, his Blackberry, his iPhone – all of them connected to a hundred, nay, a thousand similar users through the powerful Internet. Text messaging is second nature to him.

The NextGen youth struts his ‘I’ at everything and everybody that crosses his path – both physically and virtually. His ‘Itinerary’ for the day largely comprises of how many iTunes he can download, how many messages he can send and receive and how many friends he can make over the chat lines.

To help him along in his quest for being permanently mobile (not of the phone variety, here), even the auto industry has catered to his needs. While Hyundai already has the hugely popular i10 car on the roads, in a recent development, bus maker Ashok Leyland has come up with the iBus concept with every comfort of a well-equipped work spot.

Now, with all these advancements, will our good ole planet be eventually renamed iEarth?

Nikhil Raghavan / Precious Features Syndicate