Generations Abridged

My grandpa, who is in his mid-eighties, is sort of tech savy. Though medicine is his first love, he is forced to become a computer geek at 8:00PM IST, daily. Thanks to his twenty-month old great- grandson, who instilled that geeky urge in his great grandpa - the two-footer, my legal heir, who is situated twenty thousand miles away from Madrasapattinam, would get ready by 10:30AM EST and eagerly await his great grandpa's arrival. While the budding toddler would be able to get online effortlessley via his 6MBPS AT&T broadband, my grandpa would have to wake his techie-alter up, to wage a war against the 256KBPS BSNL narrow-band. To add to the intensity of the battle, Yahoo Messenger and it's voice/video suite would shower a quiver of Plug-in missing and Version Incompatible error messages. After fighting all odds, just when my grandpa would be about to win the battle, either the microphone, or the headphone, or sometimes both, would simply refuse to work. Not withstanding the technical harrasment, my grandpa would place an international call to the technical support for assistance. The lady at the technical support center would cheerfully greet him with the usual message, Howdy Thatha! How may I help you today?. After several minutes of remote-troubleshooting, the cheerful technical support representative, my wife, would finally get my grandpa's system up and running. The virtual ordeal by then, would have augmented my grandpa's desperation to get a glimpse of my son. Finally, after all invitations to view the webcams have been mutually accepted, the moment of epiphany would dawn - Yahoo Messenger would start broadcasting the video and audio in a small box, at the corner of the screen - he called it, the box of love. For the next several minutes, there would be shrieks of joy, yellings of triumphs, and exchanges of love. For my grandpa, it's a heroic moment; swimming- against-the-tide kind of thing. However, after he begins witnessing his bloodline in flesh and blood, he would forget all the technical challenges that he had to face in getting himself online. In other words, he would radiate the same amount of joy that he would have once radiated, before clicking on the BSNL Broadband icon on his desktop. My grandpa doesn't hate BSNL. He just doesn't seem to love it anymore. Afterall, it's the only trustworthy telecommunications service provider, he says!  

Sometime in the recent past, my grandpa happened to demonstrate his computer accumen to my entire family; my parents, in-laws, cousins, and other tiny tots. The family had gathered to see my son's photo digest. Well, it was a weekly ritual. One of my cousins was playing a slideshow of my son's photos on Picasa. Though Picasa has an option to prolong the time delay between the slide transitions, even one second would translate to ten seconds, on a BSNL narrow-band. There was a particular photo-slide of my son that froze on screen for more than ten seconds. In his pose, my son wasn't facing the camera. He had slightly turned his head towards his right. 

My grandpa, who had been silently watching this spectacle, suddenly yelled, 

Kozhandai oda thalaiya konjam thiruppi vida sollunga. Romba nerama orey pakkama paathundu irukkan. Kazhuttu valikka pogudhu, paavam.

[Translation: Let the baby face the camera. His neck might hurt, as he's been looking elsewhere since a very long time.]

For a moment, nobody got the message.  

Then, one of the tiny tots voiced timidly, Aiyo thatha! Idhu unga webcam illay. Idhu, still photo!

[Translation: Oy grandpa! We aren't watching him via a webcam. We're only seeing his photos!]

Though everyone was laughing hysterically at that impromptu remark, my grandpa was quick on his feet with a fitting reply - with a 256KBPS high-speed internet, I believe he's used to seeing only still images, even on a Logitech webcamera!

One cannot blame my grandpa. Maybe I'll gift him an iPhone4, sometime soon.