So, we're all technologically almost-there people, right? How close has it really brought us all? Or has it actually taken us further away from each other?

Let me cite a case in point. I came back home from work today to find the fragrance - yes, i say fragrance - of saag wafting in my whole house, not just in the kitchen. And I was instantly back to one day in my childhood, when I came back from the colony's sole square of grass, which we happily called a park. I got back home just in time to see my mother holding a cooker with both her hands, as strongly as she could - no one can call my mother fragile, so it was quite some strength - while my father had a strange looking wooden ladle kind of thing in his hand and he was churning away at something rather suspiciously green.

Curious child that I am, I stood on a tip-toe and looked over my father's shoulder and into the gooey green stuff, i'm sure imagining some clawed monsters jumping out of it. My parents were clearly sharing a joke, they were laughing, but that was all background noise to the terrible fight that the green monsters and my favorite pet dragon were having over me. And I'm digressing.

The point being that there they were churning away at the saag, hoping it would become a smooth, non-lumpy pasty kind of consistency. Cut to circa 2006. Today. I immediately called out to my father, surprised that he would be back home so early on a Tuesday evening. Turns out he was still at work. So I asked my mother if my pa had gone late to work after helping her with the saag.

She pertly tossed her hair - THAT'S where my niece gets it from! - and said "food processor ka kamaal hai!" Not that we didn't have mixer-grinders back then. We had this cute thing (I now remember it as cute. When I was younger, I was terribly miffed by the sound) from Moulinex or Moulimex something. But somehow, today, when I realised that mum had done this all alone, I felt sad.

Advanced technology has robbed my parents of a free chance to share a good laugh over churning some good-old wholesome saag.