It was an early winter morning in Ahmedabad and with the
elections in the state of Gujarat, my mother being a government officer,
was entrusted the task of a polling officer. She had to make it to the
booth by 6:30 am
and I being the mummy's boy (😊😊😊) asked her to allow me to
drop her to the booth and in a way do my bit since my dad too had been
entrusted the duty of a presiding officer and had to stay overnight at a
different center. The destination was some school in a certain lane in a
certain locality which I had never earlier heard of or been to. My
mother had been to the place a day before to prepare and make
arrangements for the polling. We started at 6:15 am
and I being the technology savvy individual started the journey by
plugging in the destination into the Google Maps app. We drove and
it was all fine till we
reached a place where Google instructed to drive straight. But my
mother( she doesn't use a smart phone nor is tech savvy) asked me to
take a left. I told her, "But Mr. Google is instructing to go straight."
She insisted on taking left. I asked, "Are you sure?" She said,
"Yesterday I had made a note of this particular hotel on this road. Pls
take right." On taking right, Google almost showed no way to reach the
destination. Then my mother counted the society boards along the road
and asked to take right after the third society board. Taking right she
then asked to take right onto the second lane and surprisingly we were
at the government school where election polling was supposed to be done.
I was simply amazed. Not because it was something out of the world but
the beauty of sheer conventional wisdom that my mother had demonstrated.
It just brought a smile on my face. She had made a note of the
landmark, counted the number of blocks and the lanes and rightly so to
reach the destination. I was left wondering where Mr. Google would have
sent us had I blindly followed and if so would it have been that quick.
That also makes me think if we the younger generation with all the
gadgets and satellite run apps do and will ever use the conventional
wisdom that our elders demonstrate so effortlessly and beautifully. That
is also a worry because in this entire process we are also forgetting
imparting it to our children. It's the same when simple calculations
which we use calculators for are done mentally by our elders. I also
hope Mr. Google incorporates this age old beauty of conventional wisdom
into its apps. So the next time you are on a joy ride with your parents,
do not underestimate their advise.
P.S. Technology is a great savior and an enabler. Google is one of the greatest inventions of modern world.
