The Internet Was Down Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

Over the years we have changed a lot.
Why do you call it a change?
Say, say loudly that we have transformed.
So there is no surprise in the aftermath of the internet having been down.
The mobile network was also down.
Suddenly you find everything down.
Everything came to a grinding halt.
You did not teach anyone what to do when all were so miserably down.
Twenty-first century and you are stuck.
You simply do not know how to move.
Twenty four hours without internet and mobile connection - and the result is - thousands are dead of shock, utter shock.
Even children could not absorb this absence.
For them, internet is much more real than the real.
We have brought them up through machine learning,
they are data-driven, google-directed, meta-stable entities,
yes, they are fragile malleable, ductile Lollypops -
why do you blame them?
They have never been to the balcony,
for them balcony is latitude and longitude,
they do not know left or right or centre as their sense of direction is digitally managed,
this is how their brain is wired,
most of them are not used to the green, I mean, ground,
they have learnt the colors digitally,
it is their process, don't say predicament,
for them relatives are concepts related to relativity,
it is relativistic.
Look, this generation is netted, precisely internetted,
they are not baboons behind the steel nets,
they are modern.
If the internet and mobile network are down,
tell me how they can survive.

Homo sapiens are bound to internet.
There is no free lunch any more.