Never too late

When Meera's grandmother turned seventy, the family expected her to slow down. Instead, she enrolled in a computer class at the community centre. On the first day she could not tell a mouse from a keyboard shortcut, and a teenager at the next desk laughed out loud. She laughed with him, asked him to show her again, and wrote every step in a small notebook. Within three months she was sending emails to her relatives abroad, reading the news online and video-calling her sister in Pune every Sunday. What surprised Meera most was not that her grandmother had learned a new skill, but how much happier she seemed. 'I used to wait for people to remember me,' she said. 'Now I can reach them myself.' The teenager who had laughed became her most patient helper. He later told Meera that teaching her had taught him something too: that being a beginner is nothing to be ashamed of, at any age.