Vidya Shankar presents her poem

EQ

Your laptop is dead. I am unable to retrieve the data. 
I hope you have a backup.
 
Data? Backup?
He, a simple PC repair technician
with thoughts, day after day, of
monitors and keyboards, CPUs and RAMs
He who speaks of my priceless pieces of writing
as data
What will he know 
of emotion?
of poetry?
 
I touch my laptop with a finger.
“Show some sign of life, please!”
 
It doesn’t. But I do. I cry.
He sees me cry, gives me some water. 
I cry more. 
This simple PC repair technician
with thoughts, day after day, of
monitors and keyboards, CPUs and RAMs
He understands 
emotion                
He would, maybe, understand
poetry?
 
He takes away the ‘dead’ laptop 
and with it the data — my poems — now lost to me
and to the world
and I think 
of the times I had sat at the laptop
translating my emotions into words
that would touch something deep within
and through it all
the laptop — just a laptop.

Vidya Shankar finds meaning to life through yoga and mandalas which invigorate her to write poems that win accolades and find their way into internationally acclaimed anthologies and e-zines. Featured in a unique coffee table book, ‘50 Inspiring Women boys and girls should read about, Chennai Edition’, Vidya Shankar, a writer, editor, teacher, and a “book” in the Human Library, is the author of The Flautist of Brindaranyam (in collaboration with her photographer husband, Shankar Ramakrishnan), and The Rise of Yogamaya (an effort to sensitise her readers about mental health).