“The tone is there the line is on!
But the speed was slow to do any con!
The phone is there to make a call
But use it now and all will fall!”
If you were of that time then you will definitely understand that poem and this sentence; “Keep the phone down! I am downloading a file!”
The landline was our internet!
Read on!
There may be hardly anyone without a smartphone now and if you find someone who does not use Whatsapp then, well it will be surprising that is all!
But it really is hard to imagine anyone without a Whatsapp or even an email!
Many shops now even ask you to download their own app for points and stuff which I try to refuse as much as I can!
The other day we were doing just this and the app was taking some time to download! The time was less than a minute! And all I was thinking was the time when it used to take ten minutes to just connect to the internet!
Of course many times it was simply better to just rush over to the ‘Internet cafe’! Those internet café’s were the best to…browse the net!
Those days the connection used to be with a CD! We used to head over to the head office catching a couple of buses to get a CD with 650 mb DATA! Used to hold it very carefully and load it up fervently hoping that our Modem works!
We had to also buy a cable to connect our modem to our phone line!
After loading the computer dialer used to come which at that time was really magical!
If you put the number wrong then no internet for you!
Then the dialer would dial and we would all get to hear that beep sound! Then a whole series of sound which was so familiar to people who had computer! The kee kee and finally the constant noise! If you reach the constant noise then you are saved by the bell! During the time you of course cannot talk to anyone else! So we used to make sure that this was done when my mother’s phone talking session was over!
650 mb was enough for most of the job like checking e-mails and browsing the net! But if you download video or media files then it would get over in a jiffy! Not to mention the fact that the speed would be so slow! If you are enjoying 1GB per second speeds sometimes now, we have seen less than 1b per second! The time to download estimate would then be some thousand years am sure!
Media file download would take all day or night! Imagine downloading a song of 4mb in 12-18 hours!
If that does not frustrate you then this I had read on the net; “Imagine using this phone line to book a ticket in tatkal in the railway website during those days!”
The biggest complication of course was the astronomical telephone bill at the end of the month!
Of course a bigger complication would be this! You were waiting for a file to get downloaded and after a long wait for several hours or even days, it reaches 99 percent and then suddenly the connection gets interrupted and you hold your breath…But the download restarts from 1! The level of patience at that time is what we have been trained in!
With all of these I taught my dear mother on how to open email and check messenger! It was a series of steps which my mother would write down and keep like a good student!
My dad of course took to tech like a duck takes on water! Talking to him everyday on facetime seems so normal now which would have been unimaginable some years back!
My sketch dedication to my dad! He was born on Vinayaka Chaturthy day so there is no way you can forget his birthday which changes every year unlike him who will always remain a disciplined army Colonel!
And of course a great dad!
Many happy returns of the day!
Happy Vinayaka Chaturthy once again!
Shubh Ratri!
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