Meet the Teams and Zoom Ahead

On a covided planet, almost everyone is using a virtual platform to socialise, work from home, or ‘see’ a doctor

- Jyotika Sood

SHE nearly jumped out of her skin when her three-year-old son walked in on a meeting. Full Monty and crying at the top of his lungs: “Mama, pee-pee…Mama, pee-pee!” She dashed like a shot for a post-it note and pasted it on the computer camera—blocking the 24-people meeting from the full blast of a puny intruder in her ‘office’. Or, that’s what she thought. But before she could tow junior to the loo, he emptied his bladder on the floor. She sequestered him in his room, scrub-dried the tinkle pool and resumed ‘work’. “Sorry for the interruption.” She apologised. But why the hell are they laughing? “Change your pajamas,” a colleague quipped. Well, her sticky note cover was blown. It had fallen off. The little commotion, the jam-stained night pants paired with a smart office shirt were live-streaming all along for everyone. Red-faced, she wondered aloud why her tech-savvy plummets to toddler level in the event of a panic attack, or why it didn’t click that the computer has an on-off switch? The meeting ended on a lighter note—quite a reprieve in these anxious times when millions of homebound people are adjusting to the new realities of stay-home, work from home. And, of course, this life in a parallel reality has its pitfalls, and some epic fails, but without those ‘con-calls’ and video conferences the world would actually have come to a standstill.