There is a noticeable change in the older generation in our family. You will know what it is if you open your Whatsapp, or when you log in to your Facebook account. It could be a text from your mother who just discovered emojis, or your selfie-addict of an uncle has uploaded another picture of his from a weird angle. The older generation has discovered how wondrous and amazing the internet is, and they are loving it.
This year I taught my father how to download movies over a FaceTime session. While I was the one teaching him the multiple steps in downloading, it was a lesson for me to stay patient with my father as I watched him falter and fumble right from step 1: which is to open a browser, to the final step: transferring a movie from a computer drive to a portable hard disk. In the end when he gave me a thumbs-up sign–like a child who had just learnt to ride the cycle–the creases all over my face vanished, the forty-five minutes I had spent with him seemed worth it. This was after all a man who told me “It’s alright”, when I banged his car out of shape while learning how to reverse it.
“Tomorrow can you teach me how to download subtitles?” he asked, wary of the fact that he had eaten up a lot of my time.
“You bet, dad” I thought to myself.
A couple of weeks ago, I received a “hi” from my mother’s Whatsapp number. My mother was the last person I would expect a message from, because she often blamed the phone for her inability to figure out how to make it work. So when to my surprise I got her message, I replied hoping all was fine. In return she sent me a picture of a cat that she had taken.
“How is it?” she asked.
“It’s nice” I texted back.
“Gee, thanks” she replied with an emoji. The emoji got me even more paranoid, making me think someone was forcing her to type all these with a gun to her head, because my mother was someone who isn’t known to be expressive, let alone use emojis on a whim. I called her to check if everything was fine. Everything was fine. It was just that she had discovered the joys of instant messaging. Since then on I’d receive videos and images of cats and religious deities everyday, not sending a reply despite the dreaded √√ meant I did not find her texting skills impressive, and she’d text me back asking why I did not reply.
Once I got comfortable with the idea of texting my mother, my one-worded replies were replaced by sending her funny videos, like Obama dancing to a kutthu song I’d come across on the internet. Soon I began writing how-to instructions on Whatsapp for my mother on how she can forward videos and images to multiple people.
Internet may have managed to bring the world closer for us, but what we forget to notice while connecting with people from different corners of the world is how the older generation in our own family has embraced it. Uploading a photo, sharing a video might seem like a child’s play for you and me, but it is a worthy achievement for them; something they expect to be patted on their backs for.
While we are busy expressing ourselves and calling out others we hardly know on various social media platforms, we have our own parents trying to communicate with us using the applications that we use.
In an age where technology grows obsolete every six months, the elders in our family are looking to stay relevant. Their attempts in trying to come to terms with technology will make for a cute story to share with our friends, but if you look beyond it, they just want to fit in with our world. And that in itself deserves a 😃
alltalknosense 