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Just yesterday, while making an online payment, I reached out for my mobile phone for the one -time- password or OTP. The battery was low and the phone went dead in seconds. Oh! I should have checked; how did I miss the beeps warning me to charge my mobile’s battery! After a few hours and a successful transaction, I thought of checking an update at a certain online site which was password protected. The screen prompted me to enter my password and I swiftly scanned through the rapidly degenerating ‘memory repository’ part of my grey matter. I typed… “Incorrect”, it said. Perhaps it was a hashtag instead of the star; or an underscore instead of the hyphen. Lazy to look for the nondescript pocket diary with the precious passwords scribbled callously, I typed a second time. The warning: “Incorrect” flashed before me again. I was reluctantly compelled to start unearthing the mystery of locating the ‘safely’ tucked away diary, in my mind; was it kept in the chest of drawers, in one of the many handbags or in the Godrej steel almirah, I wondered. A part of my cerebrum asked me to go for the chase, the other to relax and try again. Gallantly, I made my third attempt at the password. “Invalid password. You are locked out for 24 hours”! Exasperated but not one to give up easily, I thought of accessing another site to make up for this debacle. And, as I typed, it said “You haven’t accessed your account for 30 days. Please change your password”. To do as instructed, I had to type my old password and then the new. Was the first letter of the old password in uppercase or lowercase??? It was an encore moment!!!
I closed my eyes and thought of the good old days, perhaps sluggish but simple. Unlike today’s GenY or Gen Z, a wistful Gen X person like me can’t deny a certain nostalgia attached to the non- digital times. One- to- one human interaction, real, enriching and soulful were a part of the zeitgeist of those days. Simple errands like the monthly visit to a bank to withdraw or deposit money; the joy of finding no queues at the counters; the friendly nod and brief banter with the bank staff to whom you have become a familiar face; the disappointment of seeing a replacement staff in the next visit and hoping for an equally seamless service, all evoke fond recollections of the bygone times. A visit to the Post Office nearby, to send a registered mail or the more novel “speed- post” with the words proudly underlined in red ink on top of the envelope; the inevitable urge to enquire with the postal staff about its delivery and his sagely reply of “parson” or “the day after tomorrow”, would be received as gospel beating hollow the tracking of a Zomato order today. The thrill of receiving an inland letter, a handwritten greeting-card from a friend or the occasional “par avion” rectangular envelope from an overseas aunt; sometimes with a few “colour “photographs, exponentially multiplied the joy. Handwritten letters alas, are an endangered commodity today.
Most Gen X would fondly recall the orange colour air ticket for Y- class travel, by Indian Airlines. The coveted booklet would accord tangibility to the impending flying experience while the leftover carbon copy served as a memento.
My reverie is interrupted by a happy exclamation from my spouse; he has successfully managed to transfer an amount to our daughter studying at the Sorbonne university. “One could never imagine this kind of convenience, even till a few years ago, sitting in the luxury of one’s home! Digitalization is such an enabling revolution.” He quips. It is indeed. I agree. Quick, paperless and convenient.
The digitalization in varied fields is perhaps the acme of a global and developed world. Artificial Intelligence applications being the icing on the cake notwithstanding the risks of redundancies that economists fear. However, for a Gen X like me who has seen the transition from a black & white TV set to a coloured one; from single screen movie theatres to multiplexes; from VCR and cable TV, to smart TV and OTT platforms; from a calculator and a DOS operated desktop computer to laptops and palmtops; from the conventional telephone sets and the cordless ones to the cellular telephones and smart phones; from hand written letters to E- mails; from Musk’s Twitter to Zuckerberg’s Threads.
The change has been overwhelming!
Views are personal.
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