Change

I hate change! Oh! I know, you guys will all come around preaching sententiously that change is the only constant and I should not be such a stick-in-the-mud and all the huge collection of cliches that pass for wisdom in the world. But...I HATE CHANGE.
Maybe, just maybe, if the darned thing happened in small doses, I could have swallowed it with a grimace and moved on. But this goddamn deluge of it is really getting on my nerves. And, as for the way it insouciantly wipes out a whole lifetime of acquired wisdom and renders you as much an incompetent as you were in your teens...
First to go was my much vaunted vocabulary. Times were when someone who encountered an unknown word in a book used to turn to me asking me for the meaning. Now I sit eagerly by, running through all the difficult words in my mind to be ready for the quiz...and nothing happens. Have I been surpassed? Has everyone been memorizing the dictionary just to avoid giving me my few seconds of limelight? Not really...there is this dratted thing called Google, and some busybody fools who put up online dictionaries and all my hard-won knowledge rendered worthless...CHANGE! HELL!
I do not suffer alone, though. There is this relative of mine whose encyclopedic knowledge of the roads of his city was the envy even of the city planners. Every time you were in a car, driving from place X to place Y, he was the central figure. Imagine his plight when a newbie driver from another city picks him up, and he is all geared up to impress with his navigational skills and the insensitive chap switches on some gizmo which guides him step by step leaving all the accumulated knowhow of our man fizzing inside him without outlet. His only consolation was,"What that woman did to 'Mariamman Koil Street' I would not do to my worst enemy" with reference to the lady voice guiding that insensitive lout.
Then one day, in comes my nephew, first job, first bank account and I see my chance of making him respect me (for the first time in his lifetime) with my wise words on which counter to go to get the withdrawal form, which to present it in and get a token, and whither lies the cash counter where the moolah will get handed out when his turn comes and...
"Shove your advice where the daylight does not shine, Uncle mio! I just walk into an ATM, swipe a card, enter my PIN and..."
Eeeks! What is all that mumbo-jumbo? Change has thrown me right back to my usual posture of abysmal ignorance, placed me metaphorically at his feet seeking to learn how to withdraw money from my account all over again.
Aha! But NOW I am equipped for the rest of my nephews who are yet to come of age. NOW I shall teach them how to handle their finances...
"Chuck all that crap! What do I want cash for? All I have to do is tap a few keys on my mobile and presto..."
Ugh! It has not even been a couple of years, God! This is CHAOS.
NOW, apparently, all you have to do is fly out of the shop waving your mobile...
Alas! I am too old to learn to fly by flapping my mobile!