– Suresh Subrahmanyan is a Bengaluru-based former advertising professional

My expertise with my desktop computer can best be described as passable. The same goes for my mobile phone. The latter contains a wealth of goodies I loftily ignore. A spot of messaging, checking out what the stock markets are doing, ongoing cricket or tennis scores and occasionally, if I am in a car or waiting at the airport, scanning for anything interesting on YouTube. That would be the sum and substance of my mobile phone indulgence.

Nowadays, I avoid scrolling through the mind-boggling variety of news items that some celebrated search engines offer. The head honcho of India’s leading IT giant or Bollywood heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan or former cricketing hero Sachin Tendulkar, inevitably appear on screen advising me to park Rs.5,000 in some ponzi scheme that very morning, guaranteeing the while that I shall be richer to the tune of Rs. 1.75 lakh by the same evening! For variety, I am also informed that Clint Eastwood has just passed away (he is in his 90s), Eric Clapton and Dustin Hoffman are in critical care (hospital photos provided) and that Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Sting will be doing a 31-city tour of the world with A.R. Rahman joining them in Mumbai and Bengaluru. All fakes.

On the other hand, I do spend a great deal time on my desktop. As a retired professional, sitting at the desktop provides me with the luxury of sitting back and writing blogs and crafting mails to friends — an almost impossible task on a mobile phone, where one is literally all thumbs. Having said that, it is not a bed of roses with my desktop either.

The thing is my desktop computer, nice wide screen notwithstanding, is umbilically connected to my printing device. To employ au courant computer-speak, they ‘talk to each other.’ So, when I fish out a document from one of my many digital files and wish to print the same, I issue a print command. The printer then proceeds to make a variety of strange sounds from the innards of its bowels, all manner of little lights flashing the while, and when all the fuss is over, a sheet of paper finally starts to slowly slide out of the printer. However, things don’t always go to plan.

Once in a proverbial blue moon, I call up one of these IT nerds who, for a not-so-modest fee, will moonlight to come and help poor sods like me when we get irretrievably stuck in some technical glitch. To give them credit, they solve the problem, more often than not. While the nerd is at work, I watch him in sheer amazement and wonder. He operates at the speed of lightning. Every now and then, he will stop to take a call on his ear-plugged mobile and utter some unintelligible gobbledegook to a fellow nerd in a lingo only the two of them can comprehend. Meanwhile, all kinds of images, graphs, numbers, sounds and colours flash on the screen. Does my desktop contain all this stuff, I ask him? He does not respond to any of my asinine queries and continues to work at feverish pace. Another ten minutes of tapping and scrolling, and the nerd’s work is done. ‘Rs.1,200 Sir. UPI Sir, if you don’t mind.’ Making digital payments, fortunately, is within my ambit of competence, so I pay up without demur, but I am not finished with him yet.

‘One question before you go, young man. Thank you very much for taking care of the problem but can you explain how you solved the issue? That way, I can take care of it myself if this problem crops up again.’ He replied patiently. ‘Sorry Sir, I have to rush for a meeting. If you face this problem again, which I doubt very much, just call me and I will be with you in a jiffy.’

And doubtless make another quick 1,200 chips while you are at it, I thought to myself. I guess I should be grateful and not quite so mordant. The chap knew his computer onions and I should not begrudge him making a quick buck on the side. Even if he had spent another hour explaining the workings of my machine and how to trouble-shoot, I would have been completely non-plussed. Having come to grips with reality, I get back to my desktop and proceed with my half-completed blog. Right then, let’s get this show on the road. What did the blighter say? Press Alt and Ctrl simultaneously, then press Shift and finally tap Enter. Or something that sounded vaguely like that. Bloody hell! I did all that and the whole page has been deleted. Every precious word. I should have written it all down, but the nerd was in such a tearing hurry.

At end of day, I could do a lot worse than follow the dictates of my favourite humourist, P.G. Wodehouse who said, when he was stuck for an idea or when the ribbon on his Remington ran out of ink, ‘I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.’