Stored in the cloud

 Monsoon memories from a pre-smartphone era...

Whenever the skies open up during the monsoons, my mind immediately skips back decades to the time when I was a schoolgirl. During this season I would wake up early every day and rush to check if it was pouring down — because if it was chances were that my school would declare a ‘rainy day holiday’ and I could simply stay in bed and read a book. 

Those were some of the best days of my life. My mom would make crisp stuffed parathas for lunch; there would be delicious khichdi for dinner, laced with aromatic desi ghee; and if I got peckish in between, I could feast on piping hot pakoras. My best friend in the neighbourhood and I would venture out between meals to dance in the rain on the terrace, floating little paper boats in the puddles of water that had accumulated to keep ourselves entertained and return home wet to the bone, much to the despair of our mothers. 

Thinking of the fabulous times I had as a child I can’t help but feel sad for the kids of today who will probably never be able to enjoy a ‘rainy day holiday’ in quite the same way. Sure, they may be asked to stay home when the rain comes pouring down but they won’t get the day off. They will simply be expected to log on to their laptops and do their classes online (just as they did during the pandemic). It will be just another school day for them even though the heavens are putting up a spectacular show just outside their window. 

Or take the ubiquity of mobile phones, for example. Children and teenagers may clamour for them and eventually badger their parents into getting one for them. But being in possession of a mobile phone merely means that your parents have a foolproof way of getting in touch with you at any time of the day, no matter where you may be — and if they are tech savvy and not great sticklers for respecting your privacy then they will know exactly where you are as well. You could always refuse to answer the phone, yes, but that will just lead to the mother of all dressing downs when you come back home. 

So the kids of today will never know the feeling of complete freedom we felt when we ventured out with our friends in the pre-mobile phone era. Once I had said goodbye to my parents and departed for a day out with the friends, they had absolutely no way of getting in touch with me until the point I chose to return home. Yes, that’s right. They had NO WAY of getting in touch with me. Of course, I still had a curfew I had to adhere to. But until the clock struck that dreaded hour I was completely on my own. And it was sheer bliss to be alive and unsupervised. 

Sure, it wasn’t great fun conducting all phone conversations with friends on the landline that lived in the drawing room. But on the other hand, the absence of a mobile phone and of such apps as Instagram meant that there were fewer avenues for being bullied, ignored or even made fun of. 

Honestly, if you ask me, sometimes technology is not what it’s cracked up to be!