Tech terms roll off the tip of a teenager’s tongue like they were born knowing them. But when somebody asks a parent to “text” a number to them or when your little sister exclaims with love-struck eyes that “the cutest guy in class just scrapped me”, how much of it makes sense to your parents and grandparents? Do they fumble and reply: “Yes, I’ll ask my son to do that when I get home” or conjure visions of a brat discarding your sister like a worthless piece of “scrap”?

How can you explain it all? For tech illiterates — sometimes known as computards — life can be quite a challenge. With so many gadgets around, technologically-challenged individuals are hardly rare, or inexplicable. But sometimes even the most basic functions of the most common gadgets remain shrouded in mystery.

“My parents called me last week asking me questions about iPods. They wanted to buy one. My dad thought you needed an Apple computer to check the Apple website. I gave up,” smiles 24-year-old Abhishek Patel, sure that the acquisition of the music player will be another technological nightmare his parents will hound him with.

Indian housewives, who manage the washing machine and microwave with aplomb, are somehow still baffled by the fax machine. “My mother always used to think that when you send a fax, the original document vanishes. Every time I suggested she should fax my sister’s old mark-sheets to her in Delhi, she would say: ‘If the mark-sheet doesn’t reach her, it will get lost forever’,” recalls Ritu Banerjee, an investment banker. For others, the “reply” and “forward” tabs on the email make no sense. Then there are some who copy the email address on a piece of paper and compose a fresh email each time.

Perhaps the only tech tool that the older crowd has mastered (somewhat) is the cellphone. “I don’t know anything about computers except that the child I tutor plays video games on it and reads comics. But I would like to have my own cellphone,” says 81-year-old Eunice Pereira. “Every time I get an SMS, my mother starts yelling, ‘Your phone is ringing’. When I do get a call, she invariably disconnects it instead of answering it,” smiles Arunima Chakraborty, a media professional. “Once my dadima asked me to send an SMS to her sister’s landline number in Chandigarh. It took me 10 minutes to convince her that I wasn’t trying to save on a few rupees by refusing to do so,” laughs 19-year-old Karuna Oberoi.

But is all this wisdom making the connected crowd any happier? That is another question altogether, which we shall leave for another time.

TECH BLOOPERS

We didn’t make these up! A few GenX tech-induced laughs…
• Overheard: “I can’t go to this website, I don’t have its email address”
• One parent described the Orkut scrapbook as “a book with a collection of your hobbies and pictures of animals”
• Overheard: “Are you blocking (blogging) again?”
• Calling an SMS an email and vice-versa
• Getting confused between recharge (pre-paid cards) and charging (battery)
• Parents often keep a tab on how long their cellphones are being charged. They think it is like baking or cooking
• A question one parent asked: “Do you ever get sexy emails?” Spam mails about organ enhancement brought on this one
• Overheard: “Switch on to my site” instead of “log on to my user”
• Overheard: “The DVD rewinds movies very fast”

Are you tech illiterate? Tell t2@abpmail.com