HERE YESTERDAY, GONE TODAY..

My BFF, who's an avid gardener, ensures that the dependable Alexa manages the timings of switching on and switching off the beautiful garden lights of her chic garden. The smartphone alarm wakes up my kids every morning on time. The sleek bluetooth speaker blares out sombre numbers in the cosy evenings to set the mood for an intimate dinner when my newly-wed niece plans a surprise dinner for her husband. So our homes are probably filled with items that would have seemed incredibly futuristic a decade back. From robot mops which are giving the Shanta bais a run for their money to fans that can be turned on with our phone, the humble abode today  is bristling with technological wonders. While our preoccupation with ourselves might make it impossible for us to be consciously aware of the feverish pace of change today, it is  easy to look back on dozens of things that are now completely obsolete thanks to the march of scientific and technological progress. Remember the time when the Oxford English Dictionary was a staple in every household? The voluminous book was the ultimate solution to each word whose meaning needed to be found out. Not any more though; Google is our database of meaning now. The paper dictionary with dog-eared pages now lie in the forgotten corners of decaying bookshelves.  Video Home System, VHS, was the ultimate source of home entertainment when this forty something yours truly was in her teens. VCRs and VCPs enabled time-shifting, or recording a show to watch later, or watching a movie stealthily when the  parents  were away. Video rental stores raked in the moolah, especially by renting out 'bluefilms' to eager teenagers who had no access to forbidden knowledge,  barring an odd Debonair or Fantasy magazine, stealthily read in unfathomable hideouts. The VHS died a slow death, struggling for a decade or so to survive the onslaught of newer innovations. Netflix's maiden streaming plan in 2007 hammered the final nail to the coffin of  analog movie tapes in 2007. Funai, the last company on the blue planet making VCRs, stopped production in 2016, putting the end to an era where people gathered together in the living rooms of the fortunate VHS owners to enjoy a matinee show. Any commuter in any location in the world is more likely than not to have a pair of earbuds or headphones on as they walk, exercise, work or ride to their destination. Amazing yet true is the fact that personal portable music didn't exist, at least not in any mainstream fashion, when my generation was learning to walk - not until the Sony Walkman came along in 1979. The Walkman  sold 220 million units over the course of three decades. Finally, in 2010, Sony retired the classic cassette tape Walkman line, although mine still sits proud in the middle shelf of the showcase in the library.  There was a time when no Delhi road was free from the Blueline buses. And in those buses, the shrill-voiced vendors used every marketing tactic to sell maps of the national capital. The paper maps helped all, especially tourists and newbie Delhites, to reach their destinations. Tourists' paraphernalia in any place under the  sun was incomplete without a detailed  map of the area they were visiting. Predictably, GPS navigation has severely constrained road map sales, and the fact is that they are simply not essential anymore. Road maps started to lose their value over time, and eventually, cars started being designed with built-in GPS, and today, even that innovation is redundant, thanks to smartphones with GPS and map apps. The clickety-clack of the typewriter added gravity to the act of documentation. When my father was a young man ( he would have been in his mid 70s' now, had he been alive), the typewriter was a status symbol of professional achievement. It was among the few products that a service-class youngster aspired to buy someday, besides a scooter and a television set. In the early 2000s, across offices, computers began replacing electronic typewriters - which had replaced the traditional variants. In 2011, the world's last remaining manual typewriter manufacturer closed for good in Mumbai, and it marked the demise of an office and literary symbol. The arrival of word processors, followed closely behind by personal computers, put an end to the era of the typewriter. Today it has largely been relegated to the position of an ornament, doorstop, or collectible. There was a time, not so long ago, when  people had to stop if they wanted to make calls on the go. This was before  phones were pocket-sized supercomputers. The places where  they stopped to make those calls were called PCOs, and it didn't mean polycystic ovary. PCO, or public call office, had people cramming outside them as they waited for their turn. There also used to be one ‘lucky’ caller inside a tiny cabin, almost always lost in a deep conversation, with just a glass door separating his world from the rest. With mobile phones came the end of PCOs. Most of the PCO booths transformed into a small time shops selling mobile phones and prepaid data cards. The once thriving PCO is extremely nostalgic for people in my generation for sure. These material things will never reappear. Some days, I wish I could go back in life, not to change things but just to feel a few things twice.  "For sailors who love the wind, memory is a good port of departure."