My Dream 2050

Hello everyone!

The Diwali holidays are fast approaching, and Semester I here at SIBM, Pune, has just concluded!

With some baronial changes in my professional life, and a lot of personal growth, I can say that it has been a true roller coaster ride. The Semester concluded yesterday with a farewell to one of our most loved professors, and a one-on-one viva with one of our most respected professors. Term could not have ended in a better way!

As a throwback to this semester, I want to put up something that’s been a part and parcel of the journey.

One of our assignments in Global and Indian Mega trends was to write a page on “My Dream 2050”.

So here goes…

MY DREAM 2050

I’m walking the reader through my typical day in the year 2050.

“Good morning, Reign”, I instruct my voice control. He turns on the lights in my room and the window blinds draw open.

I step off my bed and reach for my daily morning glass of water. The edge of the glass lights up at my touch and I touch the calibration mark that says “100 ml”. The water filter, activated by Reign while turning my lights on, pours precisely 100 ml of water in the glass.

I walk to the bathroom and pick up my brush. I’ve got a big meeting today, so I click on the ‘Brush + Whitening’ setting on my brush and dip it in water to activate it. There’s a steady foam around my teeth as I run the brush across, and I can see my teeth visibly whiten as I’m done with each section.

‘Gone are the days of Whitening toothpastes with shade cards!’ I think to myself.

After my 5 minute long bath, I feel renewed. Something I do every day is think about how the technology today is helping us save water. Citizens everywhere today take steam baths. The steam is made of cleansing nano particles that clean the person up to down. All we have to do is stand in the bathing area, and click on the duration of the bath. Hair washes are easy too.

‘Gone are the days of spending 30 minutes washing your hair. Dry shampoos were the best innovation of 2015’, I think to myself.

I walk down the stairs and enter my kitchen. It’s a Thursday morning, and Reign knows its scrambled eggs day. A conveyor belt of sorts takes a fresh egg from the kitchen and brings it to the automated cooking assistant. It does the needful.

I could’ve opted to have a SMART-Breakfast, but I like the first meal of my day to be a real meal. SMART here stands for Simplified Meal & Analytical Revolutionary Table, and it’s a little pill that’s basically your entire meal.

Washing down my breakfast with a cup of hot tea, I proceed towards my closet.

I’ve decided my outfit for the meeting last night, and on a moving laundry line, Reign brings it out of my closet. It takes me under 10 minutes to get ready for the day. I proceed towards the elevator, while Reign preps up my car in the garage.

“Reign, to office please”, I say as I get into my car. It’s an automatically driven Lamborghini Aventador. In a matte black, she’s a real beauty.

The drive to work is smooth. Mumbai is now a Smart City, and 7 am to 9 am is designated for office goers. Everyone has an automatically driven car.

‘Gone are the days of being stuck in traffic for an hour. In fact, there’s no traffic at all!’ I think to myself.

I reach my work place at Bandra Kurla Complex in 15 minutes, and as the Aventador pulls into the parking area, Reign informs the people at work of my arrival. My daily routine leads me to believe they’ve prepped for the meeting, with my presentations automatically uploaded to the office cloud.

I enter the conference room and Monarch, the smart assist at my work place, takes over. He activates the hologram at the centre of the desk and pulls up my presentation.

“Thank you Reign, thank you Monarch”, I instruct them and they power off for the next thirty minutes.

I have a successful meeting with my co-workers and a few potential investors. They’re happy, and we’re going to receive twice the amount of funding we hoped for.

I go to my cabin next, where Reign has readied a mug of hot coffee for me.

“Coffee, Reign”, I say out loud, and the mug, placed under the coffee machine, is brought to my desk.

Looking outside my window, I observe the Mumbai City skyline.

I resume my work soon after, with assistance from Reign and Monarch.

It’s SMART-Lunch time soon.

“A bacon cheese sandwich, Reign, thank you”, I say out loud, and a pill pops up from a little niche built into my desk.

“Gone are the days of cooking your lunch at 7 am, and packing it to office”, I think to myself.

I chew it for a good 5 minutes, and my lunch is done. It tastes like bacon cheese sandwich, and is equally filling.

At 5 pm, Reign reminds me it’s time to go, and I ask him to wind up my files. The hologram bounces shut into one corner of the room and bids me Goodbye.

Reign has already revved up my car by the time I reach the parking lot, and again, I’m home within 15 minutes.

It’s SMART-Dinner time, and Reign has it ready on my kitchen table.

“Gone are the days of cooking dinner soon after work”, I think to myself.

As I eat, I ponder over how, at 56, I’m popping a SMART-Dinner pill, and how my mother at the same age would insist on cooking elaborate three-course meals for dinner.

I have another quick steam bath, and retire for the day.

As I climb into bed and pull the sheets over me, a sudden wave of nostalgia hits me.

“The brown box, please, Reign”, I instruct, and the storage space under my bed opens like a drawer. I pull out a book from the box, and run my hand over the cloth bound hard cover. It was gifted to me forty three years back.

‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, the cover reads.

And I end my day reading a real, physical book, with paper and words printed on it, after almost two decades.

Hope you enjoyed the read! All comments, critical and otherwise, are welcome!

Thank you for reading, and have a great Diwali!!