Good Morning, Alexa!

 Our family time often consists of the three of us sitting in the living room in the thrall of cyber silence, bent over our smartphones. One can't help but wonder where this 'e-trend' is leading us to. A few months ago, the tragedy that  met a seven-year-old aspiring chess champion hit the headlines across the world, on account of his finger getting chopped by the robot he was playing against. "It has never happened before," the administrative body overseeing the tournament argued in futile self-defense. For, the murder of an employee by a robot-gone-rogue at a VW manufacturing plant in Germany had not yet been jettisoned out of the human psyche, even after a decade.

Yet, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay, as every individual's personal secretary. And it comes in the form of Alexa. Since several years now, the senior citizens in the western world have found in Alexa an affordable means to secure  loyal companionship  and dispel  loneliness. What's more, the busy parents everywhere are finding Alexa a compassionate substitute to read bedtime stories to their children and tuck them in. Recently, a friend proudly proclaimed, "Alexa pays our bills, orders our food...and she even flirts with my husband". There was a sense of genuine acquisition as she  exalted the many attributes of this e-genie, their own Aladdin lamp! And yet another acquaintance timidly confided that in the absence of the seniors in the house, they were left in the dark vis-a-vis knowing the lyrics and melodies of popular bhajans (devotional songs) to be sung on various religious occasions. So, they decided to abdicate those responsibilities and transfer them to Alexa, "Alexa finds the appropriate bhajans for the occasion, and streams them into our pooja room," she couldn't help but express her relief and admiration for this e-diva.

How deep has Alexa penetrated the subliminal substrata of human consciousness was brought home to me when my 79-year-old mother began getting visitations from this static-voiced robot in her dreams. There was Alexa in Hades, lending a helping hand to the relatives long departed... The entombed Egyptian Pharaohs, encumbered with kins and kith and a whole army of servants and generals to accompany them  into the nether world, must surely be turning in their graves, envious and dazed by this invention of the modern man. "How can just one entity represent a multitude and indulge in multiple tasking?" they must wonder. 

"Ah Alexa, from our own great city of Alexandria!" A mummy sighs with nostalgia, mildewed words echoing through the crumbling halls of a defunct library.