Every day after completing my morning round of chores, I sit on my laptop to play video games. My husband shakes his head at this exhibition of child-like behaviour. Society would probably feel that a woman of 61 with two grown sons, both married, shouldn’t be playing video games. But many of them, people of my age, probably don’t even know how to use a computer.
Yes, I use computers, laptops, tablets, smart phones and I am on Facebook too. And I am proud of it. I have always been eager to try out anything new. So six years ago, while visiting my elder son in Doha, I saw him using his laptop quite frequently and I also got interested.
Seeing my interest, my son got me a tablet to use. I had never used a computer before, so he taught me how to use the touchscreen to browse and scroll, how to operate mail accounts, certain basic applications. With that, I was in business.
I got a Gmail account for myself, a Facebook account and logged in almost every day. I never went for any classes to get computer savvy. I just tried everything out myself. If I got stuck, I didn’t hesitate to ask for help, either from my sons, daughters-in-law or my nephews. Once I got over the initial hiccups, I quickly got the hang of it. Typing on a desktop also came easy to me because of my experience as a stenographer.
Now, I really began to see the benefits of accessing the Internet. With both my sons living abroad, earlier, I would wait for my sons’ calls to talk to them or fill them in on what is happening here. Today, I can message them, Whatsapp them, email and best of all, use video calling facilities like Skype and Google Hang Out. It makes it so much easier, because I can talk to both my sons and daughters-in-law simultaneously and it feels like they are sitting in the same room.
It’s changed my life and changed the way I spend time. I feel more connected to people now even if they live far away. These days, as mentioned earlier, I spend much time playing games and it’s fun. Bubbles IQ is my current favourite and for my last score, I even got crowned ‘Queen of Navi Mumbai’ in that game world.
Best of all was when I first met my daughter-in-law. We chatted online and she was suitably impressed; ‘tech-savvy mom,’ she called me!
A recent survey revealed that 49 per cent of Indian women see no reason to use the internet. Of the 110 million internet users in India, women make up only a paltry one-third of these numbers. Seeing this, a search engine giant has swung into action, enlisting youngsters’ help to get their moms online. Let’s get more women online today!
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