Making Friends with My Enemy

I hate technology

There I said it!

The laptop is my enemy,

The Apple should have stayed a fruit

He says; it’s smart She says it’s easy.

Even a three-year-old can figure how to befriend an emoji,

What’s that?

I say; Why do I need an enemy?

Emoji not enemy....  like kimchi,

Says my American grandson helpfully,

Kimchi?  Kemchu beta! Since when you speaking Gujarati???

Why aren’t you chatting asks my daughter

I want to, I reply,

I so want to hear your laughter

It’s just that What’s Ap

Is a trap,

Masquerading as a chat.

Pretending to bring us closer,

Impersonal as ever

A quick hey! How are you, I am good, love you forever,

Two seconds and you have done with your mother,

How awfully clever?

So now I have two kinds of tablets,

Some tiny white rounds in my medicine cabinet

that safeguards from death and doom,

The other is the square black device that helps me to Zoom.

Let’s Zoom, let’s party, bring your wine and say cheers!

But stay mute, swipe left, raise your hand to be heard.

Don’t worry if there are too many faces to see,

Keep swiping them from your memory.

 No need to dress up - just a beautiful scarf on a tee,

As long as you remember not to get up to pee.

I could go on ... I am not a friend of technology,

Gadgets I am afraid bring out the worst in me.

But here’s what I bet!

Someday we will return to a world without the net.

We will vanquish Corona and banish 5G,

The world will return to Hello and Haan Ji

Between the Sun and the Moon, the Wild and the Sea,

One day Mother Earth will throw us out to reclaim her Glory.

- Meera Patwardhan