The Last Powerpoint

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague today. While licking away wisps of Avakkai (Andhra Pickle) from someone's plate, he commented that our generation is not working hard enough to preserve the talents of our past generations. The case in point being rare, non-re-creatable recipes, with the potential to cause foodgasms. And also some arts.

I agree.

Only that, I don't completely agree. I mean, yes, we have failed our ancestors miserably in keeping their traditions alive. I cannot imagine ever making a Sambhar like my Mom or home-made crackers, like my great-grandmom. However, I don't agree that we are talentless. We did not preserve their traditions because we were busy developing new talents.

Let's give ourselves some credit. *round of applause*

I know for a fact, that 100 years from today, my descendants will be discussing my talents too. I can imagine it.

*Start of Visualization*

A bunch of ugly teenagers (ugly because I am a 100% convinced that evolution will reverse itself a generation after us, given the amount of thoughtless spending we are doing in destroying the earth, little by little. Like dinosaurs who stamped around too much and got eliminated.), sitting at a table, drinking some liquid in a gaseous state and munching pills of different colors (because its blasphemy to write a futuristic post without mentioning how food will convert to pills and how people will travel in space capsules). 

They will be discussing how the Robot messed up their homework, when one genius will open his backpack and take out a simple, plastic box, claiming his mother had uncovered a rare recipe. Its the good old Daal.

While licking away wisps of the daal, with their pills, they will reminisce about all the talents which their great forefathers (and mothers) had.

"You know, I had a great-grandmom who made these amazing Presentations, with her own hands. Like typed out and all, on her own. They used to be accurately designed too. Imagine, making all those shapes and all. In fact, I heard her work never used SmartArt. She made it all from scratch. She was pretty cool, from what I hear."

"Wow. That IS pretty cool. My Uncle told me that his grandfather was a Pro at this thing called Excel. Like, he could fill up a whole sheet with numbers, on his own, writing formulas and stuff. There was something called Finance, which very few people could really get a grasp of. My family was good at it. They could look at graphs, and in one go, make out what they meant. Like in minutes. Amazing stuff."

"Yeah. Those guys were talented. I remember, seeing a snap of my ancestors. My great grandmom and great grandfather sitting on a sofa, almost falling off, and yet hanging in, eating something, watching TV, while doing something on their mobile phones and laptops at the same time. You should have seen the balance. Everything in PERFECT balance. Their sitting style, the division of attention, multitasking. I cannot imagine doing that."

"Apparently, my ancestors were amazingly active on this thing called Facebook. They would, diligently, update and maintain a record of their whole life online, for the sake of preservation, so that the next generation of historians could analyse their lives. Everything. Where they went, what they ate, what they were feeling. So thoughtful and considerate."

"I heard some of them could express themselves in 140 characters."

*Swoons all around*

"We should do something to preserve all these talents, you know. Otherwise, they will just disappear into oblivion."

*Nods all around*

**End of visualization**

My new aim in life: To create a Powerpoint, titled "The Last Powerpoint", which is good enough to get stored in a Museum, through the hallowed corridors of which, my descendants will walk through, awestruck and amazed.

We are talented. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Cheers,

Preeks

(Yes, I did get married. That's right. Sherlock and I are married. Wedding post is due. But, I thought its too mainstream to write about it. In other words, I tried many times, but couldn't put together *one* decent post. Hence, the imperceptible digression into some other topic.)