Newerways

Why? Do you do that early in the morning, leaving me at the mercy of the notorious invaders? I said, slapping the mosquitoes that charged through the open doors and windows. I want you to see the early morning skies and natural light and feel the fresh air. It is so beautiful outside in the garden. Many good things are for free. Enjoy them as they are, quipped my mom. Yes, I nodded in agreement. Everything is so expensive these days. This tectonic shift in inflation made me yearn for all I could get for peanuts, if not free. I remembered reading an article written by my mother's maternal uncle published in an old magazine, Saptahik Hindustan wherein he had compared the expenses incurred at his mother's wedding (which had been documented by his grandfather in his account books) to the present times. That was not a solitary incident. A  father narrated how his father-in-law gave him money to arrange his wedding when they migrated to India just before the partition. He carried a t...

ChatGPT revolutionizes the digital world with its immense potential. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, released ChatGPT as a sign of assurance regarding the unpredictable nature of the disruption just launched. The inevitable happened. Our morning dailies continued exaggerating their influence on modern societies, education, and businesses. Students began to use it to write their resumes and SOPs (statement of purpose), and the writer's group continued to emphasize their loss of passive income thanks to this generative malware (as few would call it). There is another group that has an uncanny ability to sniff out the latest trends. Their mantra was simple: FOMO, fear of missing out. This fear had fuelled their desire to succeed. They trotted along with the trendsetters. These visionaries embraced the latest trends. Thriving on their instincts and reveling in what others were hesitant to accept. Going into the depths of the internet world, I came across this signboard fostering a culture o...

  Nature provides us with tremendous opportunities to experience the wonders it has in store for us. So here I was observing the emerging butterfly from a cocoon sticking to the underside of the leaf in hiding. This emergence of a beautiful organism was a stunning sight. I got to see it just once in my garden. I had no camera to record the process. The excitement made me shout out to my grandparents to be a witness to this natural phenomenon, alas! Their arrival was late. When they reached, there were more concerns about my welfare than the ongoing evolutionary process. Living in those challenging times was causing stress and trauma. It was a time of upheaval and unprecedented struggle. There was no room to avoid the trauma. The only way to escape was with resilience. Coping with those life-changing events and turbulent times, I began a journey to express myself creatively. My creative talent oscillated between the two extremes. A papier Mache wall that I made for my living room ow...

  It is not the strongest or the most intelligent of the species that survive, but the one most adaptable to change. Charles Darwin. Technology is transforming us into a data set. What do we eat, what do we do, what do we see, what do we like, how do we entertain, what do we search for? Moore's Law emphasizes that the pace of technological change will continue to grow. Disruptive technologies are on the rise, disrupting our very existence.  Lately, there has been a lot of talk about ChatGPT; inquisitively, I wanted to try it. My tech-driven sons helped me and disrupted the otherwise creative process I relied on so much. It was inspiring to know that GPT could suggest recipes based on the ingredients you have, or even suggest travel destinations within your budget. Interestingly enough. The origin of these innovative ideas prompted me to think of a new, evolving species —a digital species, much like Avatar.  A digital species is a great idea to write about. I outlined my p...

Monetary transfers while traveling were fascinating. Hiding the currency notes in a deep pocket, such as the one stitched on the inner side of the vest, was all too common. My grandfather traveled this way with the money hidden from the pickpockets' maneuvers. He could even feel it with his bare hand on his torso if the need arose. My father, a generation younger, preferred to keep his money safely hidden in his socks while traveling. Unwilling to reveal his hideout, he continued to wear his shoes, unmindful of the discomfort they caused. As for me, I ridiculed the idea of such safe places, but I carried mine in the deep pockets of my jacket or neatly rolled into the drawstring pocket of my salwar. Generation Z did not believe in the cheat sheets that we hoisted. They went a step further and carried their bank in their pockets. Their cheat sheets consisted of PINs and passwords as they swiped or transferred. My Paytm account was messed up by cheats when my husband responded to a co...

A dhoti-clad man stood next to the reception counter where I stood to attend to my daily records. A brief look at his face made me question the nature of his work in the hospital. He opened up his file and handed me his papers. He had undergone surgery for sarcoma maxillary sinus, a carcinoma in the hollow bone adjacent to the nose, twenty years ago. He held a dentist responsible for the negligence caused in extracting his tooth. It resulted in this lifelong illness. My attempts to shake the belief he had held for twenty years seemed an impossible feat. So, I aimed to alleviate his current problem and provide him some relief. The man continued further; he pulled up his dhoti to his thigh. What I saw was no less scary and unsightly. It imitated the brown extensions of the roots of trees above the ground. The lengths and heights varied. Truncated lines existed on those roots and merged well with the background. Nature has its way of designing things up. The thigh from where doctors had r...

The least understood section in English, besides the tenses, was the figures of speech. It required years of work to achieve distinction in grammar. We received it, as a matter of fact, in barely a few hours. Mausaji continued to exalt us with his anecdotes, laced with puns, metaphors, hyperboles, onomatopoeia, and yet more on our visit to their home. He made us learn the figures of speech so effortlessly that edutainment became the hottest topic in family circles. My Hindi-speaking American niece required little explanation when she enquired him of his profession. He answered her by rolling his tongue and saying ' layyar ' that he made it sound like a ' liar ' when his actual profession spelled ' lawyer, ' It reminded everyone of an incident that my grandfather had narrated. In those times when people struggled to speak English. The ' character ' was pronounced as ' chara-actor '. Nothing could then be as confusing as calling ' Champagne ...