Pallavi Sareen
The World went Digital in this Covid-19 pandemic and I understood that the physical material world is highly unreliable. Of course, the fact that my external drive which had my life’s work crashed right before lockdown played a part in that realization. If only, there were external drive repairmen that provided in-home services, I wouldn’t be searching through my emails and caches folder for one really important picture.
The day I connected my hard drive to my laptop and it showed ERROR, my world came crashing down. My finished and unfinished stories! The umbrage of pictures taken over the years from phone, camera, and shared through pen drives was all gone. Not permanently lost, but inaccessible and that is basically one and the same thing when I can’t access what I need immediately.
My University Professor had a similar tale to narrate. His spectacles broke right into the first month of lockdown. Unfortunately, unlike grocery shops and healthcare institutions, Opticians were not allowed to work. For a person who wears glasses, even smudged lenses cause headaches. So, imagine the pain of dealing with a 6-month long lockdown with no glasses.
When my phone’s charging cable started bailing on me, I really thought the lockdown was cursed. With no hard drive, and soon no smartphone as well, I would be rendered virtually useless. Even existing without my phone for a MONTH was an unbearable thought. Who keeps a spare phone handy anyway?
E-commerce giants were refusing non-essential deliveries and a new hard drive (to soothe my metaphorical wound), as well as a USB cable, were “luxuries” I’d have to learn to live without. I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t you borrow the charger from someone else? And why didn’t you try googling “How to repair your external drive?”
The irony of asking for an iPhone charger in a home full of Android users isn’t lost on me. I was already the butt of limitless jokes about the iPhone’s battery life since my eyes searched sockets each time I entered a room. Secondly, with previously failed attempts of data-recovery from a similarly crashed SD card, I had learned not to take an amateur risk when it came to electronics. My professor had his own struggles. He had forgotten his prescription and had to get an eye test done before buying new glasses. Something, he couldn’t do in the lockdown.
So it was a state of perpetual helplessness aggravated by the constant reinforcement of the message “Recognize your privilege” by my at-least-you-have-food-on-the-table thought process.
But I am thinking about this entire mess right now as I have a well-written story missing three perfect pictures. The same pictures that I had saved in my hard drive two years ago. The drive that cannot be accessed. My phone’s battery will die before my eyes and I will sit here, wondering, why I was so reluctant in trusting Cloud services.
And why, oh, why didn’t I just rely on the age-old-trusted tools of a writer – pen, paper, and ink? When all this is over, I’ll get an Instant camera to replace the DSLR. But like the phrase goes, count your blessings. At least MY glasses are fine.
