Who died and made Samsung God?

I have half a mind to sue Samsung.  The nerve of that company!

Before I bought their S5 phone, I was riding my moral high horse with the confidence of one who had spent a lifetime doing it.  I had almost perfected the art of looking down my nose.   If you don’t believe me, just ask my daughters.  As the lucky recipients of my daily lectures, they can and WILL attest to it.

In the days before their S5 smartphone, the minute one of my daughters sat down to peruse her phone, I would set my work aside to go sit with her and begin my lecture gently.  I would start by pointing at the window saying how there is a beautiful world outside that is waiting for her attention.  Please note that at this juncture, I would sport a soft smile.  Then boom!  I would switch tactics and with a stern face, give a grim warning that blindness is inevitable if she continued to glue her eyes to the little screen.  This tactic throws children off their rhythm and is most effective.

Anyway, gone are those days of moral surety and sweet lecturing.  These days I am forced to walk everywhere with my phone all thanks to Samsung.  Who died and made them God, I want to know. By carrying a phone myself, I have been made to forfeit one of my birthrights as a mother which is to lecture my kids.  It is a hard blow indeed.  One from which I have not yet fully recovered.  I place the blame squarely (to the question 'why not circularly', I have no answers) on Samsung's head.

Samsung's S Health is a tracking app which keeps count of the number of footsteps that I take each day.  Could there be any worse invasion of privacy?  I strongly believe that a person’s footsteps are sacred and private to them.  One must have the freedom to walk and not have the world know all about it.  It is probably the only information Google didn’t have on me till recently.  

This app not only adds up my steps, it sets goals for me too.  The nerve of the company!  Want to guess how many I am supposed to take each day?  10,000 steps. 

Psssstttt!  Get a life! 

The grand total of my footsteps on the day that I discovered the app was a whopping 187.   If I hang my head anymore in shame, it is sure to snap off my neck so I won’t bother.

So now I do what any Desi worthy of the name would do in these situations.  I find loopholes and I cheat.  I have started drinking buckets of water so I could make many trips to the little ladies’ room with the phone in my pant pocket.  Each trip earns me a total of 18 steps.  It may not sound like much but take 10 trips, it sure adds up.  When I watched the counter climb up to 502 steps by 5 pm last Tuesday, I almost cried.  Who would have thought I would cross 500? 

Two days ago, when my kid passed by me with a load of washed laundry on her way to her room upstairs (climbing 17 steps in the process), I was sorely tempted to slip my phone in the laundry basket.  If not for the law-abiding aka desi chicken gene in me, I would have walked away with 40 bonus steps that day.  It may not have been technically mine but I don’t think we should get carried away with little details like that.  The important thing is to watch the counter climb. 

The other day, I was putting trash and recycling out at curb holding the phone between my teeth as there was no pocket in my pants.  I never knew I could be so shameless and determined at the same time.  Life teaches you all kinds of lessons.

Usually, I am not comfortable with the current social norm of greeting in gatherings.  Every time we go to a party, there is a fresh epidemic of hugging.  From best friends to general acquaintances, everyone wants a hug.  I do my best in such situations though.  I stand stiff like a tree in an embrace and do a ‘there, there’ kind of awkward pat on the backs of all those super-loving people.  After S5, I am beginning to see the advantages of this hugging business.  It gets me close enough to slip my phone in and out of active folks’ pockets and purses.  This way, I get to relax in a chair munching the bajjis and pakoras while the active friends help my counter climb.  If I can hug them, they can carry my phone.  Friendship is a two-way street, you know.

Is your counter climbing?

Whoopi saves the day!

“Can you see what is happening?  Pleasssssse tell me.”  That was my frantic plea to my family, one evening this past winter break.  Bruce Wills was just about ready to jump off the bridge in Die Hard 3 and I was taking a well-deserved break from the tiring task of chewing non-existent nails when it happened. 

Du-doom, du-doom, du-doom…….

That was the collective pounding of 4 hearts in front of our TV.  Samuel Jackson and Bruce Willis were lighting up my living room with some serious action.  My dog lying next to me suddenly yelped.  Caught up in the movie, I might have squeezed his neck a bit too much.  Oops!  I felt bad.  I took my eyes off the TV for a quick second to turn and apologize to Luke.  Guess what happened when I turned back to the big screen.  The movie was not there.  It was a bad case of that ‘Poyindhe, its gone’ ad on TV.  Oh no, where did it go?  Who changed the channel?  I turned murderous eyes looking for the one with the remote control.   

The remote was lying untouched at the end of the couch.  Uh???  I hurriedly swallowed the fiery words that almost got out.  My husband and daughters looked up at the ceiling and muttered something after watching me put the brakes on fire-breathing.  It could have been a silent ‘thank you’ but I can’t be sure. 

I turned my eyes back to the TV.  Wait, I see something.  Is that someone running?  No, wait!  Was that an explosion?  Squeezing my eyes to a slit, I strained to see beyond the shades of grey on the screen.  I could hear the compelling voices of the classic duo so gave thanks for at least having the sound.  Well, I suppose I thanked the power above a bit too soon.  The audio faded out now finally leaving the 4 of us gawking at a 60“screen that had no picture and no sound.   

Then I remembered that trick.  I got up and thumped the floor hard with one foot.  I had seen Whoopi Goldberg do it in Sister Act.  One whack hard enough to trigger an earthquake in the next town but who cares?  One, it was in the next town; two, it worked.  At least the sound was now back.  Smiling widely, I took a bow and sat down.   This time, I decided to forego the edge of the seat and sit back comfortably.  After all, there was nothing to watch. 

Grabbing a bowl of popcorn each, we all agreed to take turns in thumping the floor in case sound went out again.

 

I wonder if Whoopi Goldberg knows how much she has touched our lives?  

Hope is eternal!

It has been a roller coaster of a week for me as, I am sure, has been for a lot of us whose family dropped out of contact in a flooded Chennai.  A week of unsuccessful, not to mention, frantic phone calls and whatsapp messages trying to reach the unreachable.   A week of listening to ‘This route is not available, please try after some time’ in Tamil, English, Kannada, Telugu and other unidentifiable  regional languages of India leading to the pulling of what little hair was left on my head. 

News of reservoirs being opened to dump excess water, water entering houses to sweep away hard-earned belongings, cars submerging under water throughout the city, power outages everywhere….what was, just a week ago, an active and thriving city turned into a devastation of nightmarish proportion.  To one who is averse to checking news of any form, Facebook was my one point of contact with the real world outside this past week.  Pictures and news of the devastation poured in through the social media giving my flighty imagination a boost to soar high.

I imagined my aged parents wading in chest-high water trying to get in to a rescue boat that the army sent to evacuate the area.  I imagined my mom losing balance and falling in the water.  I imagined my Dad holding a knapsack of his important documents over his head trying to help my mom to the rescue boat.  I imagined my sister and her kids all alone in a dark house that was slowly filling up with water.  After reading a FB post that said 40 crocodiles had escaped from a nearby park, I imagined the rescue boats on the streets being escorted by crocodiles on all sides.  All in all, I imagined way too much but that is nothing new.   I have been known to knit a king size blanket from a 2 inch thread all my life.  J

What my fertile imagination neglected to show me was the incredible acts of kindness shown by strangers throughout the state helping one another.   Thanks to FB, I saw people opening up their homes to give shelter to those that had lost theirs, strangers cooking and distributing food and medical supplies to all they can, college students wading in chest high water to rescue people marooned in their buildings with no food or water.  I saw humanity surface and stand tall against all odds.  I saw the rich and the poor work together to save their city.  I read stories of Hindus and Muslims and Christians and Sikhs working together to provide relief to those affected around them. 

What is it about disasters that bring out the best in us, I wonder.  Why aren’t we able to bond like this every day and break through the walls of religion, caste and language?  Why does it take a devastation of a massive kind for us to put our differences aside and stand together? 

This very moment what do I feel?  What am I proud of this day?  I am NOT proud to be a Tamilian.  I am NOT proud to be an Indian.  I am NOT proud to be a Hindu.  This day, I am proud to be a part of the human race.  It gives me incredible pride to stand with those that see the suffering of others and feel their pain.  In today’s world of constant chaos, of terrorism and bickering, I feel hope watching a flood-ravaged city practicing the rules that Mahatma Gandhi lived by - tolerance, compassion and kindness.  It gives me hope for the future. 

May TamilNadu rise up from the ashes and live to tell this story of incredible human kindness.  May the people that lost a lot find the strength to put back their lives together and move on.  May God have mercy on TamilNadu and put a cork on the rains that is still lashing out at the battered city.  May we all, who live far from the disaster, find it in ourselves to donate money generously to help our friends and family back home.   As someone said on FB, may the Bay of Bengal also find a good psychiatrist soon and get out of depression. :-)