S - Selflessness

She had woken up excited today. It was Sunday, her happiest day of the week. She hurriedly freshened herself up, had some nice tea, put on her glasses and settled down with her Ipad. But something seemed to be wrong that day.

'Page cannot be found'. 

She restarted the iPad and tried again. Nothing changed. She hustled to the bedroom where the wifi router was, turned off the switch and turned it on again. She waiting patiently for sometime to let the lights flicker back to life before retrying.

Nothing changed .

                                                                               ~~~

I overheard Sush giving someone directions on the phone. He had been on it for more than 30 minutes now.

"Turn over the router Maa. Do you see any numbers there? Like 142.191...  Its called the IP address."

"Okay, now open Google Chrome. Its on the desktop Maa. What? How to get to desktop ? Okay, let me tell you..."

"Now open the browser and type in the address. Google Chrome is nothing but the browser. Yaa, Chrome. Did you open it?"

"Enter userid and password now. Password is coming as all stars? Yes, that's how it will appear, so nobody can see it. Yeah, its for security, don't worry about it. Go on and type it."

"Do you see WiFi on any of the tabs? You see many? Okay, is there like a horizontal bar..with WiFi on it, that you can click ? You should see SSID when you click on it? Search Maa. Look around a bit please."

"Oh you must have pressed the wrong one. Go back now. Back maa, err..how do you go back..oh yeah! do you see any arrow turned backwards ? Or is it a pop up? Well, pop-up is a..never mind. Do you see a cross mark anywhere? A small 'x'. It is used to close whatever opened..."

                                                                            ~~~

She was having a hard time understanding the terminologies. She never had to use a phone or a gadget before, until the kids moved. On top of being technically challenged, the touch screen of the ipad was playing games with her and made it even harder to fix the problem. But she wanted to get to the bottom of it. She adjusted the glasses that were sliding off her nose, and went about following the instructions her son was giving her on the phone.

                                                                            ~~~

It was almost one and a half hours before the internet was restored. She immediately opened hangout, and dialed her daughter's id.  After a couple of rings, she could see two faces smiling at her. Her grand kids. Her face brightened up. She ran her fingers over the screen, as if trying to touch them but realized it wasn't the same. Her earnestness gave way to a tinge of sadness that they were so far away, but she didn't let it ruin her moment with them. She broke into a cheerful smile and was soon engrossed in an animated conversation.

                                                                            ~~~

Will we be ever capable of such love? How much will we be willing to take when it is our turn to let go?