Seven years ago my father and I were in direct confrontation. He strongly felt I had to pursue a safe career, in other words become a mechanical engineer. Personally I saw a very clear generation gap there. I was in no mood to sweat it out in foundry and workshop. They told me the computers in college were kept in air-conditioned rooms, them being fragile instruments. Well, fragile me opted for exactly that and ended up a software engineer.
Today, however, things are a little different. My dad has an air-conditioned bedroom and the computer at home is perched next to the phone in his room. While my dad could teach me a few tricks on the computer if I let him, I personally am a little sick of the thing. Seven years down the line my dad and I have come full circle - he loves the computer and I don't exactly jump for joy at the sight of it. Another thing that I'm sick of is people telling me how I.T. is the trendy new generation's byword. Hey, do you have any idea how old N.R.N. and Azim Premji are? I wouldn't exactly call them bubbling teenage geeks in jeans and T-shirts and they're making the best out of the I.T. thing. The computer is no more the bastion of the youth anymore than a bottle of beer is. In fact I'm beginning to doubt if it ever was.
The Internet compounds things further. Dad simply loves it. He's connected every other hour chatting with my brothers. I think they're a little tired of him popping up so often now, but if they're busy, hey, no problem, Dad's got a dozen sites bookmarked - NDTV, Indian Express, The Hindu, Times of India and maybe even a couple of Tamil magazine sites. He's there most of the time and I would have been worried about all this except that it leaves the T.V. free for me. Like Watterson, I believe the T.V. is my opiate and since Dad isn't interrupting me to watch the news on Sun or Star I'm not exactly complaining about his browsing time. Dad for his part can't be made to wait for the news capsules on T.V. to get his information - he prefers the minute-to-minute updates on the Net. I've never been able to convince him though that just because they update the site every 10 minutes doesn't mean the news must have changed. He still checks it out every few minutes.
What's even funnier is that while my friends give me a call when they need to communicate, Dad has his trendy new mode. He's busy sending e-mails apart from his regular phone calls. Well, at first my brother created a mail ID for him and then Dad figured out how easily a mouse works. He loves to point, click and type so much now I have no idea how many e-mail IDs he has. And to boot if he's finished checking his mail he cleans up my inbox for me.
Sometimes I simply wonder if his generation refuses to let go, kind of like they're usurping ours too. I would have thought that all the new technology would have scared the oldies enough to keep away from it (my mom still doesn't work the T.V. too well, although she types away furiously when she's chatting with my brothers). Hell no, the computer makes things easier for them and is probably the greatest utility since the wheel and the light bulb as far as they are concerned. The oldies aren't exactly going to give up on this one, that's for sure. In fact I suspect they intend to make up for lost time in all those years they had to put up without it. While that lasts I'll just have to twiddle my thumbs and hope Dad tires of it, that is, of course, if he doesn't find out about all the new stuff coming in everyday and he hasn't even started on the computer games yet. There'll be no stopping Dad if that ever happens.
You know, sometimes I actually wish the generation gap existed.