So used to talking with people of my own age, or younger, I never realised how much I miss talking to "grown-ups." I guess what I enjoy most about meeting 'grown-ups'/people older than my circle of friends and I is the anecdotes from days before I was born.
So Mamu who's visiting London, mentioned yesterday how he first saw a microwave oven at a Bengali restaurant in the last 70s while enquiring about a piping hot biryani he had just had on a wintry night. We talked about how microwaves which were so welcomed in Britain then and millions of urban homes in the rest of the world soon, are now looked down upon. True almost every urban home still has one, but the general consensus seems to be that it is not good for your health. (Almost as bad as smoking, some would argue).
Microwave were very much a part of the modern living. Part of a set of gadgets that define"development" and "progress." Its no more trendy to use microwaves. Microwaves are out making two meals a day is in. What's interesting is that there hasn't really been a more technologically advanced replacement for microwaves (unlike for other gadgets that were trendy in the 80's and were later abandoned - the DVD replacing the VCR and the CD-player replacing the beloved audio cassette player). It is one example where we have given precedence to good sense over unbridled pursuit of technology. Could other gadgets/devices/artefacts/machines we are so very dependent on today, be "microwaved" in the future? Cars? The television? Computers? The refrigerator?
