Have I ever told you that most of my problems arise because of the missus? Well, they do!
You see, I had a moustache. One that I had fondly kept since last year. Nothing spectacular. Not like Salvador Dali or Hercule Poirot. Not even like Terry-Thomas. It was an unambitious and unremarkable moustache—lying on my upper lip like a fat, contented caterpillar. For some obscure reason, the little woman got it into her head last month that I did not look dashing enough with that moustache.
“At my age I don’t want to look dashing,” I said in my defence.
“Okay,” she said, “By all means, don’t look dashing. But at least try not to look stupid! And that thing on your face makes you look terribly stupid. So just shave it off!”
She kept badgering me until I finally shaved it off last Sunday.
I felt quite naked without my moustache. Nevertheless, I would have been satisfied with the Nunc et situ, provided the missus was satisfied for Nunc et semper. But she was not!
“I think you look more stupid without the moustache,” she said offhandedly at bedtime.
The matter would have ended there, and, in due course, I would have grown my caterpillar again. But life is seldom as simple as we naively think it is, because Monday morning brought with it its share of surprises. The milkman saw me and burst out laughing. The maid came and for the two or three hours that she pretends to do the chores, she kept giggling silently.
Illustration: Job P.K.
The worst was still to come. When I decided to work on my magnum opus that afternoon, my laptop refused to recognise me!
I tried my left profile, then my right. Then again, my full face. But the disloyal wretch steadfastly refused to recognise its owner and master!
I had no option but to summon my computer emergency response team—Kim, my granddaughter! She is the finest cert & tech support in the world and resolves all the gizmo related crises that I bungle into, be they related to my computer, cell phone, Wi-Fi router or our smartass television.
“Why are you freaking out, nana?” Kim asked. “Just draw a moustache on your face and try again.”
Grandchildren certainly have a solution for everything! So, I raided my wife’s stock of cosmetics for an eyebrow pencil and drew a moustache on my upper lip. But the computer was not amused. Nor was my wife. Kim quickly ducked under the bed, thereby escaping being suspected of being the baddie in the Case of the Purloined Eyebrow Pencil.
She emerged from under the bed only after the missus had blown over. “Let’s get back to work,” she announced. “Nana, besides facial recognition, you must have set some password for the laptop?”
I admitted that I had, but for the life of me I could never remember passwords, whether they were dates, or numbers or names.
“Why don’t you jot down the passwords somewhere?”
“Because everyone warns against writing them down, duh?” I countered.
“As if you have state secrets to protect!” she mocked. “Chalo! Let’s try birthdays first.”
We tried all the birthdays, but none of them were right. It was the same story with the anniversaries, with the date on which my daughter acquired Leo, the dog, and with the date on which I retired.
We then tried names of all family members, but the computer did not budge.
“Nana, you might have used the name of some favourite person or character as your password.” So, on my prompting, Kim then tried several names of people that I admire.
“Richard Feynman? Alfred E. Neuman? J. Alfred Prufrock? Who are these people? The names are so random, nana!”
All the names failed. But I did learn that the word ‘random’ is the current favourite of the young generation.
Kim then set about resetting my computer login password. I don’t know how she did it but there was certainly a lot of sorcery involved. I sheepishly admitted that I was also locked out of my Facebook account because I had forgotten the password.
“Come clean, nana. Tell me if there are other passwords you have forgotten.” Encouraged, I confessed that I had no inkling about the passwords of my email account and DigiLocker. And for logging into my income tax account, the pension portal and Digi Yatra. I also admitted that I have Instagram, ChatGPT and X accounts that I have never used because I could never sign in.
Kim sighed heavily and buckled down for more sorcery. After about an hour, she proudly informed me that now the passwords for all my accounts were as easy to remember as 1-2-3.
“That’s it. The password for all your accounts is Onetwothree! with a capital O and an exclamation mark at the end. Remember that, and don’t you ever dare do any net banking!”
Now, since Tuesday, I have been on my laptop; happily working on my book, playing solitaire, using ChatGPT, uploading stuff on Instagram and emailing my friends. Just now, Facebook asked me “What’s on your mind?”
And I responded—‘I think granddaughters are the nicest gifts of God!’
K.C. Verma is former chief of R&AW. kcverma345@gmail.com