From telegrams to internet chats

Half way around the world my Dad is fighting for his life. Having been diagnosed with acute respiratory distress syndrome, he is on a ventilator, tubes feeding into him oxygen, food, and everything else. The family can only wait and watch as the body unfolds its mysteries and the soul wields its will to live.

Sitting half way around the world, I continue to write and update my blog posts. I cannot do much but pray, be stoic and carry on with my work and keep that hope up. Also, I sit and think about how our lives have changed during the last few decades.

My grandfather (Mom's Dad) passed away in the early seventies. My Mother had just left India to join my dad in east africa. With a war going on during that time and very little "extra" money, she could not come back to see the end. A telegram announced the demise, my Dad broke the news to her, and I imagine that she wrapped her arms around my brother, then a toddler and cried away her tears. She wrote letters to her mother, tears streaming down her face, as she wrote.

My Dad's mother passed away in the early eighties. This time I was around. We were in europe,  living a pretty affluent lifestyle. The telegram came again, my Dad left for India. We stayed behind. I don't remember if my Dad cried but knowing him, he must have.

My parents were in India by the time the other two grandparents left us. I was not. When my Mom's mother passed away, I was here in the US, in graduate school. It was six in the evening when my brother called to give that news. I was close to my grandmother. I could not see her end. I could only listen to my Mom crying and trying to tell me how at the very end my Granny still clung on to the fleece throw that I had given to her.

Today things are different. There are no "trunk calls", no operators to talk to. With an iPad and a computer with an internet access card, I am there with them. I am in the room, I am outside the Intensive Care Unit, I am sometimes in my room in India, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes in the living room. One push on the green calling button on Skype and I can see my Dad trying to speak to me through his tubed voice. I can comfort my mother and explain to her the science behind ARDS. I can chat with my nephew and tell him that he need not worry about "Dadai", his grandfather.

I don't need to wait for that telegram to come to me. Instead, now I wait for that phone call at a weird hour to ring or see my brother online at a strange time at night. Yes, that is how fast news travels these days. That is how I knew my dad was in the hospital. My brother was up at 2.30 AM, an unearthly hour even by his demanding schedule. I knew something was not right. A few taps on the iPhone and I could talk to my mother, no pens, no papers, no writing letters, no tears to wet and smudge the ink. Now, the tears rolled down my cheek only to wet the screen of that smart phone that was in my hands. Constant texting from five different relatives giving you the updates that you want, sometime its too much, sometime its confusing- conference calls with other extended family members sitting in four different countries, we are all in it together.

Have we defeated time in some way? Does technology replace the need for that physical presence? What next?

A new project

I have decided to use my iPhone to capture one picture a day- a 365 project and record them.
Please check deconstructedandsimple.blogspot.com.
More on why I decided to do this, later.