REMOTE

As I recline on the three-seater, watching the India -West Indies Test-match, live from Jamaica, I have the satisfaction of having full control of my gadgets with the plethora of handsets within my easy reach: the cordless hand set, the mobile, the remote for the AC, those of the DVD player, the digital STB of the cable and importantly that of the TV, giving me full control over the vast array of the cable channels.

Looking back at the good old days, when we brought home the black and white, 13 Valve TAXILA, that would light up like a Christmas tree on switching on. It had only one control, to control the only TV channel those days , the channel Four, for fine -tuning.

Life was simple: the TV was switched-on promptly at six in the evening in the TV owning houses, suffusing the colony with the haunting signature tune of DD and reluctantly switched off at 11 in the night when DD went of the air. Sunday was the Movie day and no social visits were encouraged: those unfortunate who landed, unannounced were greeted with baleful eyes by both the elders and the children, as the TV, then having the pride of place in the drawing room had to be switched off, to enable the polite conversation.

The perceptive, sensing the unease and freeze in the environment, soon left. And with the movie resuming on the promptly switched on TV, the relief all around was palpable.

Post retirement disposable money brought in the Videocon Colour TV with its remote: remote the new symbol of power, of the powerful in the house, with the hand set in hand, controlling the channel that had to be watched.

Soon we got a land line, on medical grounds as the wife was under treatment for a heart condition, and a cordless instrument to go with it from our visit to our daughter in New York.

The Mobile era was just dawning with instruments costing Rs 40,000 each and a tariff of Rs 16 per minute, affordable only by my son and available to me on as required basis.

The widow AC, which was acquired because of wife’s illness and for her to battle the Delhi summers, was manually controlled. However, the Split in the drawing room brought along it’s own remote: now we had four handsets to play around, soon to be joined by those of the DVD player and the Cable Digital STB.

The old AC eventually met a slow death and was replaced by a made in China remote controlled Voltas’.

By now, more affordable, I had also acquired a mobile, no big deal, and so had the two housemaids, the washer-man the vegetable-seller and even the cycle-rickshaw -puller.

With five hand sets to play around, each with a tendency to get misplaced, especially the mobile, of them at least two fall to the ground from my lap every time I get up: the advent of technology had made life more complicated and not simpler.

Moving from room to room with the cordless, getting all the exercise I need, yes now I have full control of my gadgets, of the TV, hopping from channel to channel wondering as to what is playing on the next, on the AC, constantly fiddling with the fan and temperature control, trying to find the optimum combination to keep the power bill in control, of the mobile, busy deleting the innumerable SMSs’ each pushing me for buying, selling or cajoling to do some favour.

Yes life was indeed simpler till the handsets came.