KIKI

This is for Kakoli and Mrinal Krishna Choudhury.

I am not geeky at all. I don't take to technology unless I feel challenged. Challenged by people who refused to make power point presentations for me after designing them on the first couple of requests. Because I kept nagging them to do things to the presentation which aren't actually possible. Like my 80 year old partially deaf father telling me to transfer money from his account to someone else's "through my computer" because he knows that all this can be done with "a computer." In the absence of an internet connection as well as a net banking account. And then giving the hurt look when I try to explain why the transfer wouldn't be possible. This is who I inherit my 'non geeky' genes from.

Challenged by children on facebook/studying/sleeping/playing computer games/and eventually even by those sitting next to me, doing absolutely nothing, who refuse to load the DVD of the movie I want so badly to watch into the player after having done it for me for the first 30-40 times.

I could go on and on with the examples but these should be enough for clarity on my issue with technology. When refused help, I make an effort to learn. Often enlisting help of people I consider experts on the subject. Usually younger people, who have as yet not known my methods of preying. I still remember calling up Pubali Borthakur, a smart HR executive in my hospital, fresh with a recently acquired MBA degree and therefore enthusiastic about her first job, at funny hours of the day; and night; to ask her things like how to save a file. I would be able to reach the 'save' window and then forget what to do. In those days one had to select the destination from the drop down menu bar. I didn't know what a 'drop down menu bar' meant back then. So she would direct me to look at the 'bar on top,' and look for the 'little arrow on the right of the bar' and once I located the arrow (I remember it took me quite some time), the rest would not be so difficult.

In my defense, Pubali was enthusiastic, not married back then and did not mind the phone calls. I hope.

I now have more knowledge about uses of the computer as compared to a lot of other people. Most of the knowledge has been stumbled upon accidently. People around me think I am very computer savvy because of the amount of time I spend on the computer. My work demanded it and now my not working demands it. I need to do something to spend time after all. But I realized today that I still have a long way to go when I stumbled upon the slides of Kiki's sketches.

Kakoli and her husband Mrinal are known to me for about 15 years. She is my husband's colleague so I get to see her occasionally and smile and say hi. She is also the younger sister of my senior, Monali, in medical college. Mrinal is my husband's friend. Their son studies in my son's school. She is a Facebook friend and Kakoli, let me admit to you now, you are a very encouraging even if silent friend though we have not had the opportunity to develop a conventional friendship. If you are wondering 'how so,' you have to figure that out yourself.

Kakoli posted an amazing piece of art, a sketch in black and white titled 'Breaking free,' by her son Kiki on Google plus several days back. She had 'shared' it from Mrinal's post. But it was only today, again accidentally and I still haven't understood how it happened, that the post with that amazing drawing revealed itself as a power point presentation with 14 sketches. They were amazing sketches and somehow I am not being able to think up a word other than 'amazing' to describe those sketches. They have all been signed by 'Kunal' and the sketches are not simply depicting human emotions, they are emoting the emotions by themselves. I am not an art expert or connoisseur, and yet I was not seeing artistic images on paper, but experiencing the emotions that one feels when watching a very powerful and well made movie.

At the end of the presentation, thumbnail icons of other albums appeared on the post. The albums have photographs of places people have seen dozens of times and yet they are completely different. They are pieces of art by someone who probably sees art where we ordinary people don't even notice anything. Shillong, Gangtok, birds, nature. These photos have been captured by Mrinal. They are beautiful and have a sense of complete harmony. I have sensed this harmony in Mrinal's and Kakoli's relationship, intuitively, a very long time back. Kakoli is also an artist, something I came to know when I asked her who Kiki got his genes from. She answered that they were acquired from both the parents. My intuition was right.

I am still trying to figure out how one identifies the person who +1s one's blogs.