Ever successive generation would have things given to them on a platter, things that the previous generation struggled for, never got and in many cases never imagined. My grandfather cycled his way from one village to another to get schooled and he came all the way to Mumbai to get his doctors degree. I am sure he faced far more hardships getting to an education compared to what Jispa is facing. Seeing her schooling I feel she is sleeping on a bad of roses. We had 52-55 kids in a class, compared to her 32. That’s just the starting point.
One of the biggest ones I keep telling young kids is the brilliance of the internet. I got through school, college and horror of horrors, B school, without the fun of the internet. How on earth we did our research? How did we submit all those reports? Did we type all them? Actually type them? The biggest achievement was getting through B school without CCP… cut copy paste. We did projects the good old way. Once the projects were announced we would run to the library and try and get in line to get the books issued. There were a limited set of books there and only the fastest five to hit the library would get their hands on them. Then you read them, makes notes on another paper, write down the page numbers separately, Xerox the correct pages and distribute them among your team. Then we start making the report. Two of us would book the computer room time and one would dictate and the other would type. We barely knew how the QWERTY keyboard and we slowly managed to finish the project. Then at the end make a presentation. That too was done on over head transparency projector (OHP). What is that? It’s as below. You write on a thin clear sheet of plastic (called acetates) with OHP markers. Then you cover the points that you want hidden by a piece of a paper and slowly display them one at a time. Oh those were the days! :)
But the nostalgia trip was sparked out by an interesting happening. Jispa was down with typhoid till last week. As a part of her inoculations she had got her typhoid shots when she was much younger. Hence the typhoid she got was much milder than normal. This is similar to the chicken pox she had. A much milder outbreak. At first I couldn’t believe its typhoid. Just a not so high fever and headache. I was sure its flu and so was the doctor. Only when the fever relapsed on reducing medication did we go for the medical test which showed a minor hit of typhoid. The anti biotic course kicked in and she was fever free instantly. But she had to be at home for a week to rest. She started school this Monday.
At the end of it I was like – that’s it? that’s all she got for typhoid? Just fever! I remember vomiting my guts out when I got it. Very high fever, couldn’t eat anything, nothing stayed in the stomach too long. I remember Sleeping with a bucket next to me so that I could instantly throw up and not dirty everything on the way to the bathroom. Eesh. My stomach would hurt, my head would hurt, and the fever would give me horrible horrible dreams. Oh it was one long night mare. My blood test had come out a little complicated and we had to call in a specialist who in those days came in wearing a blazer. Hah! Twenty years ago he charged 500 bucks to come home and diagnose it and he put me on an antibiotic which was relatively new – Cifran 500. Yes, I remember the name very clearly. The medicine was something like ciprofloxacin, if I got that right. That was also expensive and my parents wondered if they should administer such a new tough and harsh antibiotic to me. Also I remember the thing that was scaring people – ‘dombivili fever’ which was similar to the typhoid thing. So I got administered the drug and I made a slow painful recovery.
I am glad that Jispa did not have to go through what I did. There has to be some benefit to progress. I am glad for her, and I am glad for us. Parents go through shit when child is unwell and more so when the child is younger. It’s impossible to do anything or understand much. Though Jispa normally has been much better and articulate about where its hurting, exactly what’s happening but still as a parent it feels so helpless to merely look on and wait for the medicine to kick in.
It is a growth process for all of us. We all come out stronger and smarter. I hope. Amen.
