Superwoman!

Long before the tag 8216;superwoman8217; was invented, my mother was one. A gold medalist at nineteen, a political prisoner soon after, a ...

Long before the tag 8216;superwoman8217; was invented, my mother was one. A gold medalist at nineteen, a political prisoner soon after, a lecturer in her twenties, a PhD at sixty, a cancer survivor at seventy-one, she has seen it all. She, however, has one handicap. She is technologically challenged. That is why when she returned from Netherlands in 1965 after a nine-month scholarship, she carried dozens of post cards but no photographs. She possessed a camera, she confessed, but never learnt to operate it!

In the mid-s8217;70s, when we stayed in a college campus in Delhi University she once asked me to switch off the transistor before I left the house. Seeing me flummoxed, she sheepishly explained that she did not know how to switch it off. For a woman who could traipse through Europe, this, I knew, would be child8217;s play. So I taught her how to do it. When I returned, the transistor was off, but not because she was an apt pupil. 8216;8216;I waylaid a visitor going towards the girls hostel,8217;8217; she said, 8216;8216;and asked him to switch it off.8217;8217;

On her 75th birthday, I presented her with a mobile phone. 8216;8216;Now we will not wait in suspense when she doesn8217;t return home till late at night8217;8217;, said my brother. The problem was how to teach her how to use it. When she dialed a landline number she forgot to add the STD code to it. When she clicked on the stored numbers she was stumped by the right button to press. Once when I rang her up I found her phone was dead. 8216;8216;I didn8217;t check on the phone, since it never rang,8217;8217; she said. When she went to attend a 8216;8216;satsang8217;8217; while staying with me for a weekend, and didn8217;t return till 9 pm, I was frantic. Ringing up her number, I found it ringing in my room. 8216;8216;I left the cellphone behind ,8217;8217; she retorted,8216;8216;What if I had left it in the auto?8217;8217;

The other day I received a frantic phone call. 8216;8216;I think the cellphone is lost,8217;8217; she said. I immediately rang up her number and my nephew picked it up. He had borrowed it from her purse to make a call. Mom was relieved. 8216;8216;You could have done it yourself and saved us this anxiety,8217;8217; I said. 8216;8216;Well8217;8217;, she confessed, 8216;8216;I couldn8217;t, since I don8217;t remember my cellphone number!8217;8217;