Mom and the PC

Mom was here with us the last two months. It had been her long cherished desire to visit Britain, and she was brave enough at age 78 to take the flight all alone from Bangalore to Heathrow. What I admired most was her tenacity, coming all the way from Pallavur, struggling with her gait and with a Quadra pod stick to assist, many medications, but she did it and went on to enjoy the sights and sounds of UK..

One of her requests to my son was, ‘Arun, will you teach me the computer’? Arun was initially a bit sceptical about the whole thing; you can imagine how it is at that age. A grand old lady trying to learn computing?? Anyway, he patiently went through the basics of browsing and the hardware with mom. What the mouse does, what the keyboard is meant for etc, where to type what. I overheard one of the complicated topics – The enter key = when and how to use the enter key. That really took some explanation. Then it was the 'double click' sequence, you will not believe how complicated that is for an arthritic hand…Mom soon got the hang of it.

She could go to the address bar and haltingly type www.mathrubhumi.com by herself, one hand.
From the moment the current edition of Mathrubhumi appeared on the screen, in large font, she got hooked. Then on, she would go the PC every evening and spend an hour catching up with news, Kerala elections, the monsoon report and so on. Starting with Mathrubhumi, she’d go on to Manaorama and then Deepika. Though she missed the feel and the smell of the ink on paper, and the surrounding ambience one has on the ‘kolaai’ at home with the bird cries, the humming bees and the such, it kept her in touch with her news, in a way the Daily Mail of UK did not.

She left back for India the other day, now it is the monsoon and various weddings at Palakkad that keep her busy. But I guess she misses the computer and the patient grandson.