The cab hailing app says Harinder will be there in three minutes. And he is. He taps his phone smartly and asks if we shall proceed. I nod. 바카라Go onn sttrait for ttwo killometers,바카라 the lady in his phone twangs. Harinder is chatty. 바카라Arre wah, sirji, what is this gol building?바카라 he asks. It바카라s the Parliament. 바카라Ah, even bigger, what바카라s this?바카라 he Âwonders. Rashtrapati Bhawan. Is he new to Delhi, I ask? 바카라Yes, sirji, came the day before yesterday from Hoshiarpur. My brother asked me if I want to drive a taxi. I said why not.바카라
I would always be filled with envy whenever I saw the sequence in a Hollywood film noir when on a rain-drenched night the hardboiled gumshoe dodging the hoodlums would hail a taxi, give a chit of paper to the driver and ask him to hurry. In India, it is unthinkable. First, there will be no taxi. If you found one, he would refuse. If all went well, chances are the cab driver would ask the chasing hoodlums for directions when you gave him the chit with the Âaddress. But Google Maps takes the cabbie바카라s ignorance streets ahead. Harinder, for instance, could be driving in Boston or Bosnia.
바카라Arre, her professor looks like that American actor,바카라 says a friend looking at a photo her daughter has sent from the University of Chicago. 바카라You know, that big blonde guy who used to boast of dating all the leading ladies; the one couldn바카라t act much, but had great screen Âpresence?바카라 We look askance. 바카라The one who was there in the movie about the comic character, it was partly animation?바카라 she implores us. 바카라There was Madonna as Breathless Mahoney?바카라 The actors바카라 name is on the tip of all our tongues, but nobody can Âremember. A Google search would have told us she is thinking of Warren Beatty and the film she is referring to is Dick Tracy. But if we don바카라t Google, like we did not that balmy evening as it was a 바카라phone-off바카라 dinner, the Âconversation takes us to other places, to films made of graphic novels, to Alan Moore바카라s From Hell, was the identity of Jack the Ripper ever proven, is it okay to cheer Lector Hannibal to Âescape from prison바카라Š
Google kills any conversation that begins with who was that who wrote, or sang, acted, painted, performed, invented, created, won or lost. The search engine is Jeeves to the power of infinity and makes a woolly-headed Bertie Wooster of all of us. It takes the juice out of any discussion where the mind wanders; it바카라s like this abominable cousin who used to be called a 바카라walking Âencyclopaedia바카라바카라it piles on fact over fact to bury Âimagination. It nullifies the experience of age; it dulls the exuberance of youth. Google is post-debate, post-curiosity, post-ponder.
An unexamined life if not worth living, Socrates had quipped long ago. Google is the nemesis of Socrates, it makes examining too lazy.
