I was just a small boy when I first encountered a radio in the late ’70s, in a hilly village called Rampur in Okhaldhunga district of eastern Nepal. The world I knew was built not of wires and waves but of mud, wood, stone, and flowing water. The machines I had seen as a child were the halo (a wooden plough), dhiki and jato (manual wooden and stone grinders), and panighatta (a water-powered turbine used to grind grain). These tools were part of our daily life, blending into the rhythm of the land and the seasons.

Among these, one that mesmerized me the most was the ritual of making mohi, a thin buttermilk. It involved a theki (a tall wooden pot filled with curd) attached to a solid wooden pillar, a madani (a wooden churning stick), and neti (a rope) spun by hand. The madani would rotate back and forth with a soothing rhythm, producing a soft, hypnotic ghaarraghurra sound. I would sit and watch, fascinated by how curd transformed into buttermilk and nauni (fresh butter) through sheer patience and motion. It was a kind of magic-slow, tangible, and human-powered.

Life in the village was simple but rich in connections. People spent their days working in the fields, planting, harvesting, and tending livestock. But they also made time to celebrate festivals, carry out rituals, and honour traditions. Every special occasion involved careful planning, with neighbours dividing tasks and responsibilities.

Storytelling was woven into daily life. People gathered under the stars to share what they had seen or heard, tales that often blended real-life events with folklore, myths, or teachings from holy texts. The elders would recall sayings of saints or characters from the Ramayana or Mahabharata, relating and anchoring even the mundane in something sacred.

Trust was abundant, and money was rarely the measure of value. When someone needed help in their fields-planting rice, dehulling millet, or building a house—others would come without hesitation. The system of parma was our way of life: labour exchanged for labour, without a single rupee changing hands. One season, I might work in my neighbour’s field, and the next, he would help in ours. It was all understood, unspoken yet deeply honoured.

Then came the day when magic took a new form. A Lahure, a Gurkha soldier returning from service abroad, came home to our village. He brought back tales of foreign lands, sweets wrapped in shiny plastic, and, most wondrous of all, a small, boxy object that sang and spoke a radio.

His belongings were carried in a doko, a bamboo basket strapped to a porter’s back, but the radio he held carefully in his own hands. At first, I heard it faintly as he approached: distant voices and crackling music drifting through the air. With the green hills, silver rivers, and snowy mountains around me, the sound felt otherworldly. As he drew closer, the voice became clearer. Music, news, a language not spoken by anyone around me. I was transfixed. Where was this sound coming from? Was it alive?

Years passed, and in the early ’80s, I moved to Kathmandu. There, the next marvel awaited me: television. It was still a rarity, and when a neighbour switched it on, the whole community would gather in front of a single box. I watched, spellbound—not just sound now, but moving pictures. News, events, even movies unfolded in front of my eyes.

We had only one national channel, Nepal Television, and sometimes we could catch signals from India’s Doordarshan. I remember climbing to the rooftop with my friends or cousins, rotating a metal pipe attached to the TV antenna to catch the best signal. One person would stand near the TV inside and shout, “Aayo aayo!” “It’s coming!”-while the other twisted the pipe slowly, hands frozen in the cold wind. We’d watch Chitrahaar, Ramayan, or even just the evening news with a sense of ceremony, wonder, and joy.

Kathmandu buzzed with more than just screens; it echoed with the rhythmic tapping of typewriters. Typing institutes were everywhere, and people would enrol in them to improve their typing skills, hoping to get jobs. As a matter of pride, people would frame and display their typing certificates in their living rooms. The clatter of keys, the smell of the ink ribbons, the speed with which people typed-it all fascinated me.

In our school, question papers were printed on Letho paper, a kind of duplicating sheet. I was amazed by how turning a simple handle could create so many copies of a single page. It was another kind of magic-mechanical, precise, and endlessly repeatable.

Then came a turning point in the early ’90s. During the break after my School Leaving Certificate exam, I touched my first computer. It was big, beige, and humming with potential. I learnt to navigate DOS, Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and dBase. The idea that I could store data on a small, square floppy disk and access it later left me speechless. Typing institutes began to disappear, replaced by computer training centres. A new era had begun.

In the mid-’90s, I went to India to pursue an engineering degree, where I learnt programming languages, including assembly language. I was now commanding computers-machines that had once seemed so foreign to me—to solve equations and perform calculations. It was thrilling to see logic turn into action.

When I returned to Kathmandu, the internet had begun its quiet revolution with the start of the new millennium. Cyber cafes sprouted everywhere. I spent hours surfing the web, chatting with strangers, and discovering a universe far beyond the hills where I was born.

One day, in a Nepalnews chatroom, I met someone-just a username at first. We added each other on MSN Messenger and chatted for six months before meeting in person. Nine months later, I proposed to her. Fifteen months after that first chat, we were married.

We had no common friends or relatives, no shared schools or cities, just a digital spark. And now, more than twenty-two years later, we are still happily together. Technology didn’t just change my world; it gave me love.

Mobile phones came next. They made life easier but cost us something too. In the ’80s and ’90s, I could remember dozens of phone numbers. Now, I rely entirely on my device. It remembers for me-people, places, dates. Everything.

Today, I live in Sydney with my family. The city is a coastal jewel, with spectacular beaches, harbors, and an effortless blend of nature and technology. Everything is a tap away-food, transport, information, even friendships.

But the world has changed in deeper ways. We no longer sit together to watch television. We scroll. We don’t chat much; we post. We listen less and rush to comment. We react fast without much understanding. Life has become fast, curated, and filtered.

News is not just about facts anymore; it’s about breaking the news first or making it viral. It leaves people overwhelmed, stressed, and often misinformed. And now, with artificial intelligence, I find help with everything, from solving technical problems to understanding global trends. It’s fascinating, but also a bit unsettling.

The next frontier is said to be brain-computer interfaces-a time when people may not need to speak or type; they may simply think, and others will know. But in that, I wonder: will we lose honesty, empathy, and the joy of discovering one another slowly? Will human emotion become diluted, with feelings imitated rather than felt?

Looking back, I realize my life has been a long, winding journey through waves of wonder. From the madani churning curd in a wooden pot to AI understanding my questions, I have been awed at every step.

And I hope my children, too, will one day tell stories not just of tools and apps, but of love, curiosity, community, and being human in a world of machines.

May their journey be not just advanced, but beautiful.

X @cool_MrD https://x.com/cool_MrD