The Cloud and My Grandfather......

Last month while I was in office, I received a call from my dad stating that Grandfather is critical and If you wish to see him then come asap. My grandfather is 93 years old and he was already in ICU. I immediately rushed to my boss and seek his advice. Without thinking a second he said please fly to India asap. I informed my wife and we all left for India.

I landed at Vizag airport and took the next train to my place (Bilaspur). As soon as I reached home, I can see mixed emotions on my parent's face, on one side they were happy to see their son after 1 year and on the other side they were worried about my grandfather. I had my tea and rushed to hospital with my dad. I was completely flabbergasted to see my grandfather in such a horrible condition. He had stopped eating and was hating liquid too. He looked at me and said thanks for coming. Tears rolled down from my eyes as I have never seen my grandfather in that kind of situation. There was no muscle in his body and while touching I can sense only bone. Next day onwards I started staying in hospital for more than 10-12 hours. Day by day his condition was getting worse and he was talking on 1 hour in whole day. I can see that he was getting vexed in that room and he started showing frustration on everyone.

Magical day:- As I was siting next to him and I realized that he is getting bored. I asked him casually would you like to watch "Youtube". He asked me back what youtube? I replied "Youtube is an app". Then he asked what is an app? I thought this is not the right time to explain "application infrastructure which runs on Oracle's MySQL". instead I unlocked my mobile and showed him the app. I asked him what do you want to see. He said highlights of yesterday's cricket test match. I browsed it and showed him. After watching for seconds he asked me can you show me Muktinath (Lord vishnu temple in Nepal, which he visited with my grandmother in early 70's). I browsed and showed him that too. His voice decibel started increasing and asked can you show me a telugu (language) poem from 1940's. I told let me see whether it's uploaded or not. To my surprise it popped up in front of us. I said within me "Wow Cloud"!Here comes the fun part. He asked me to browse a telugu drama (on King Harishchandra) and as you anticipated correctly, it got opened. He started reiterating the dialogues out in loud voice and nurses who came on round were quite surprise to see my grandfather enjoying in this way. I asked my father why he is enjoying so much and to my surprise I got to know that my grandfather used to act in these dramas at his young age.

From that day onwards everyday his favorite thing was YouTube infact he started pronouncing it correctly. As soon as I come to hospital he will tell open YouTube and give your mobile. He was exhilarating while watching YouTube same like how my son enjoys animated poems. In next few days his health started improving and to everyone's' surprise he took juice. By god's grace his health is good now and got discharged from hospital. I don't say youtube was the main reason behind his health improvement but atleast it boosted his nostalgic level by bringing nostalgic moments of him right in front of his eyes.

During my visit to grandfather, I witnessed the power of Cloud technology and realized how it can impact our day to day life. Cloud is enabling us to play with time infact I would say it is equivalent to time machine. I am listing down how cloud is touching human lives:-

1. Storage:- Cloud can take you back in past through its huge size of data storage.
2. AI/ML:- Cloud empowers innovation for future ready by enabling Artificial Intelligence & Machine learning.
3. Disaster Recovery:- Cloud protects you from disaster through its recovery capability.
4. Scalability:- Cloud boosts productivity and encourages you to grow.
5. Security:- Cloud acts as custodians of your digital assets (data).

I am very confident that going forward even Blockchain & Chatbots too will impact common man's life. Do you agree?