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A savvy nonagenarian’s experience with a tech device that tries some hand-holding I turned ninety a few days ago, and my grandchildren sent me a birthday gift. The package arrived late at night on my birthday; in fact, the courier staff brought it in at 10.30. I had received an OTP number as a text message and had to quote it to the courier guy before he would give it to me. Of course, I did not know what was inside; my loving grandchildren like their surprises. It took me a while to open the package, and it turned out to be an electronic watch. The very latest edition of a well-known brand. The price tag said Rs. 32,000. I was delighted and shot off a message to the children, thanking them for their very generous gift. It was too late in the night to admire all the astonishing things the watch was supposed to do. Of course I knew it could monitor my health parameters, record how much I walked, how often I rested, how many times I inhaled and exhaled in a minute, and so on. All in good time the next day, I told myself. I forgot to tell you, the watch does not show the time, as a normal watch would. To find out the time, you have to open the home screen by clicking one of the many buttons. Then you have a variety of choices; do you want a Mickey Mouse on the dial or do you want a digital face? Still, it is supposed to be stylish to possess one. I am a bit of an exercise freak. At my age, I have already run 1,15,000 km. Yes, that is right, one lakh fifteen thousand kilometres. I keep a running diary in which I record how much I ran every day, at what speed, my pulse at the end of the run, and so on. And I have retained my running logs over several decades. The Hindu had published on “Open Page” (May 18, 2008) an article by me headlined “89,000 km of running!”. That was then. Now, after another 10 years, the tally stands at 1,15,000 km. So it was that the next day I proudly wore my electronic wrist watch and did my usual two and a half hours of slow jogging. I was very excited to see what the watch would reveal after my jog, but was astonished to find a message, “Try to walk at least 15 minutes”! To add insult to injury, another message said, “If you can’t walk, try a few minutes of deep breathing.” I have a computer-savvy grandson staying with me. I’m staying with him and his mother, my eldest daughter. He quickly figured out my issue. “ Thatha ,” he said, “you need to press the start button on the running app before you start jogging.” No problem, I thought, there is a tomorrow. During the day the watch started sending me messages. “Guitar Lesson at 4.30 p.m.”, was the first. Now, I had wanted to learn the guitar when I was young but never got around to it. Maybe, I thought, the electronic marvel could divine my thought processes. I often like to keep a tab on my breathing rate. Ten respirations a minute is my norm while resting. So I tapped the watch and asked it to measure my respiratory rate. Prompt came the rude reply: “Wait till I am ready, I will tap you.” Chastened, I started reading the morning’s newspaper. Suddenly I got a severe pressure on my wrist, with a message, “Start breathing”! As if I was not breathing till then. Nursing my bruised wrist where the watch had ‘tapped’ me, I started breathing slowly. After ten seconds or so came the message, “You are not breathing at all.” I figured out the watch could in no way measure my respiratory rate, tied as it was to my wrist. But I was wrong. “Try again,” it said. This time I hyperventilated, just to teach the device a lesson. “Excellent,” it said after 10 seconds. “You are breathing, and the rate is 30 respirations a minute.”
