NATURAL INSTINCTS VS GADGETS
Three things happened on the same day in three different geographical locations, yet logically connected.
A young school-going child from France noticed some changes on the seawater in Phuket, Thailand, where she was vacationing with her parents. She was able to associate what her geography teacher taught and warned her parents about the oncoming tsunami.
A forest guard in Pichavaram, on eastern shores of Tamil Nadu, watching from a high watchtower observed, some strange behavior of animals. The animals were moving away from the shoreline to a high land and watched the tsunami waves ravaging the shoreline mercilessly. They moved to the shores after some time as if nothing had happened.
Against the initial perception of aborigines in Andaman and Nicobar perished in tsunami, no aborigine was a victim of tsunami.
All these three episodes as happened on the fateful 26 December 2004 at different time zones convey a simple truth. The truth, that most us are losing some of the vital and inherent faculties, endowed within us. Instead, our dependencies on “gadgets” are on the rise. We no longer have the acumen to identify an ill child in the household, as our granny does it with ease. A modern mother would scramble for the thermometer to tell her, whether her child is running fever or not, which a granny would have told with a fond touch.
I vividly remember an incident etched in my memory. In the year 1987, when I returned from work one evening, my baby was crying, and learnt that he was crying for a long time. My son was hardly one year old. The entire household was tensed up. Suddenly my mother’s face brightened and she said, ‘the baby did not pass urine for a long time.’ The moment the problem was identified, I knew the solution. My son relieved his hot jet to every one’s relief, on my mother’s face who was peeking at his little appendage, when I gave hot water fomentation on his loins. I can never forget the smile on my son’s face immediately after.
Though I knew the remedy, it was my mother who identified the problem. Before the advent of mobile phones, I remembered a minimum of one hundred telephone numbers, by heart. It’s the gadgets which are evolved and not humans. I am afraid in the future; we might encounter some strange things arising out of gadgets.
Nursing mothers would be taught to listen to the ‘beeps’ from the wrist bands tied to infants, indicating that the infants are hungry. It might be marketed as “LACTO-FEEDO METER”. The worst gadget I detest to see is “HIDLI” – an acronym for Hormone Induced Desire Level Indicator, telling the couples their desire level to initiate an action, which all of us do it so naturally now.