Some months ago NIIT announced a free computer-learning programme for local housewives. It included surfing the Internet and sending e-mail. Within an hour after the appointed registration time, the seats were booked with enough people waiting for a second batch. Many had to turn away disappointed.

Why this overwhelming desire among women (most of them in their forties) to be a part of the wired world? What made these happy-to-cook-for-my-family-and-run-the-home women think it was absolutely necessary to step out of their comfortable routines to take a walk in the information super highway? Why this itch to explore the virtual reality that had nothing to do with packing lunch boxes and pressing school uniforms?

How could a computer become a housewife's helpmate? Would she order groceries online? No sir, I don't buy grocery that I can't touch and break the ends of. Was it because of the lure of the online bookstores? NO siree, we don't own credit cards. Was it to download music or dabble in learning Japanese? What? We enjoy getting dressed and going out to music concerts. And Japanese? I know ikebana and bonsai and that's all the Japanese I need to know.

Then why turn siesta time into surfing time? An overwhelming reason is that they have children living abroad and e-mail is the cheapest way to 'talk' to them. One homemaker felt that sons and daughters going abroad to study were ushering in a silent revolution in computer literacy among adults in India. True. There are women who use the PC only for e-mail. E-mail is fast and cheap and regular. It avoids the agony of letters not reaching the far shores where the children live and study. And expensive telephone calls often end in a beep.

Several women said that they just had to learn the use of computers because that was the only way they could carry on a meaningful conversation with their teenage children. "Computers today are the major reason for widening the gulf between generations," complained a mother of two teenage children. "But when I use IT terms in my conversation, my daughter suddenly finds the time to listen to me".

Many mothers are mortally scared of the way the Internet has managed to distance them from their children. "My son is talking about starting a dot-com company. I have no clue as to what it is. It bothers me that in a few years I won't be able to tell what my son does for a living."

From the Internet, kids are bringing in a culture that we know nothing about. Which is much worse than being confronted by a culture that is difficult to identify with.

Not all of the women who enrolled for the course owned computers. But they would buy one as soon as they could. And if mothers don't want to get bumped off the demographic map, they better master the computer.

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