Staying Tuned to Technology

My morning walks are mostly with Aunty, and occasionally with my son when his work-home schedule permits. With Aunty the chats are interspersed with basics of spirituality. She switches to fitness only when she observes me behind in pace. Her tips are of a high order, one of which is to have to wake up before Brahma Muhurtam (4 am). I lend my ears, nonetheless.

The walk with my son can be classified into three. One, dog-walk where he is less concerned with Max getting friendly with other pets than on preventing him from turning hostile. Two, when he attends a meeting with his headphone on. Marked by total silence, a passerby could easily mistake it for a two-man silent protest-march, with only a black armband or a red flag missing. Three, no specific engagement – and is free to chat.

“So, Appa, what are you busy with these days?” he asks on one such occasion. “I borrowed three large-print books from Library.” “Authors?” he quips, a stickler for complete information. “Jeffrey Archer, David Baldacci, and Mary Higgins Clark,” I reply.

“Did you finish any, by chance,” he persists, knowing his Dad too well. “No, not exactly. Primarily because I made the mistake of picking hard-bound versions. Too heavy to hold.”

Back home he briefs me on the ‘audiobook’ concept. Very convenient. Just mobile in pocket and air-pod in my ears. This had its flip side too. You walk around home listening attentively to the professional reader modulating his/her voice suiting the scene. Other members feel forced to have to give advance notice when they want to talk to me so that I unplug the air pod. More often they give up, with a never mind. This deprives me the best of both the worlds.

To overcome this, my son unearths one of the three Kindle tablets from among the debris in the five rooms; removes the label, ‘Shankar” from its back, summons the kitchen labelling machine used for ‘Sambar Powder,’ ‘Rasam Powder,’ etc., prints ‘Appa’ instead, and requests his sons to locate the cover. “Which one,” asks the younger one from upstairs. “Mine,” he clarifies. “You mean the oversized one you picked from Walmart just because it was on sale?” makes sure, unwittingly. ”Just get me that; forget its antecedents,” he commands, his voice raised. And here I am, having shifted from physical-, to audio-, to e-books.

While on my honeymoon with audiobooks he asked me one day: “so, still on fiction-novels or upgraded? Have you listened to any podcasts?” No, not yet, I said. “They are very interesting. I heard this one last evening.”

It was on Tony Fadell, a BS in Computer Engineering. He worked for Apple and is hailed “the father of IPod”. He left Apple, started his own company, Nest Learning Thermostat – a device that saved electricity consumption. Rather than concentrate on consumers to buy his product, he convinced Power supply companies of its energy-saving feature. They in turn offered financial incentive to consumers who installed Nest Thermostat. The Power companies used the saved energies for wider coverage. Google bought this for a hefty sum, and Tony Fadell joined them… and pursued several interests. As of now, with a net worth of $ 800 million, he is advising 200+ aspirants of start-up companies.

“Quite interesting,” I said as we stepped inside home. Sunita (d-i-l) heard the last part, and gave her own input. “Appa, I usually check the kind of books celebrities read. I picked two from Bill Gates’ selection, ‘The Choice – Embrace the Possible,’ and ‘Killers of the Flower Moon – the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.’

The first is a memoir of the lady-author who managed to escape holocaust, and her trials and tribulations before becoming what she is now. The second book, if I got the gist right, is how in yesteryears the less privileged section of the society was rehabilitated in God forsaken lands, and in one instance, in Oklahoma, how it proved a blessing in disguise. Oklahoma is oil-rich. Overnight, as owners, they became filthy rich and began employing whites for domestic help… and how in the end the system manipulated to reinstate status quo ante…

“Thank God,” I said to myself, “I have not booked my return ticket yet.” It could wait. “Miles to go…,” the line from Robert Frost’s poem that Nehru had kept by his bedside, flashed past my mind.