Having heard many great endorsements about this company, which some said would even replace defective devices without much hassle, a small but strong greed was ballooning in my mind. There seemed to be a very real chance I could get a newer device, even if it was the same version. So, when the guy at the store also failed with his tap, my hopes of a replacement soared even higher.

But then, he took the tablet inside for a thorough check. After a few minutes, he returned, head held high, wearing a mischievous smile, and gave me a condescending look, as if he knew about my greedy little plan. Unfortunately for me, he had solved the issue. "Just tap with three fingers once, then after a small gap, tap with three fingers thrice," he said.

Praying fervently that this method would not work—so I could still walk out with a brand-new tablet—I followed his instructions. To my dismay, the tablet sprang to life, almost taking my life away along with it.

But that’s another story. On my next trip to the U.S., the battery did start posing some serious issues, and the store staff eventually replaced the tablet. Patience did pay off after all!

Coming back to the topic of touch screens: as I type away on the tablet, sometimes I scroll up or down to read what I’ve already written. Despite having voice feedback enabled, the cursor somehow ends up blinking in a completely different section of the text without my knowing. When I resume typing, the text snuggles itself into the wrong part of what’s already been written. When I read it back later—or ask my friend Siri to read it aloud—the text ends up making no sense at all. After many confusing episodes like this, I eventually figured out the problem. Yet, this still happens now and then.

This one-finger touch feature is proving to be more troublesome than ever. When I try to scroll and accidentally hold my finger down a nanosecond too long, a menu will pop up. "Copy, Paste, Format, Hyperlink," and other such options will appear in minuscule text, completely unnoticed by my over-taxed eyes. Without realizing it, I’ll accidentally initiate an action that I didn’t intend.

Recently, when I was trying to post a poem about my grandchildren and our trip to Kulu and Manali, this exact thing happened. To this day, I don’t know what I did or didn’t do, but the text had multiple repetitions of paragraphs. I tried erasing the duplicates and felt relieved...only to find yet another paragraph duplicated in some corner of the document! Perhaps I had committed the same mistake again, without learning from the past.

I am utterly, totally, and brutally honest when I say it took me nearly three hours to set things right on both occasions.

Once the full blog was typed, and I attempted to move it into a folder or change its name, I'd make the cardinal mistake of holding down the title just a moment too long. Another menu would pop up, with options similar to the endless lists on restaurant menus these days. Yet again, I'd accidentally touch the wrong option and be thrust into further chaos. Using this method of my own invention, I ended up creating so many duplicates of the blog file that I had to spend considerable time deleting the extras.

The pain doesn’t end there. While browsing, these accidental touches—however gentle—would open up unnecessary pages, forcing me to close them and hunt down what I wanted all over again. Half my time on the tablet is spent fixing the damages done by my overly enthusiastic index finger operating solo.

Touch screen—please, touch me not unnecessarily.

Continued in 211. See-Saw