As a wintry blast sweeps across the Chicago skyline, I often reminisce those sultry Mumbai summers of my school days. From the perch of my third-floor apartment, I would watch maidservants trudging towards their afternoon shifts, and vendors hawking Himachal apples, creaking open the iron gates that led to our building courtyard.

Hard-working gentry it seems always had an unfettered access to our habitats. The stray dog or urchin would however face severe retribution from a surprise nemesis. Our watchman ever in a sleeping repose would start up from his charpoy brandishing a cudgel, hurling invectives at the wretched soul who turned tail. Much like the legendary spider, our sentry had that eerie sense of selective vigilance.

Forty years ago, the scourge of technology hadn’t invaded Motiram’s humble post. Today, security systems are getting commonplace with those large enclaves and multistory bubbles. Western countries have been recently crazed by the concept of smart homes.

Walk in to any home improvement store and you can see them – lights that come on when the main door is unlocked after a biometric scan. As if by magic, the master bathroom lights switch on, sending wafts of mineral aroma, setting the bathtub water gurgling to a desired temperature. Security cameras meanwhile sweep your backyard waiting for the hapless intruder to sneak past the fence.

Ever intrigued by watchmen, I have often made attempts at setting up a smart security system. I have a detector facing my yard that is triggered by motion, designed to scare away the harmful ones on two legs it seems to do an unfortunately good job at scaring away those backyard squirrels that my daughter has put out some food out for.

The front-door sensors chime shamelessly upon closing and opening and I don't really know how to disable the control keypad.

The other day I spotted this advertisement for an outdoor wireless security camera that could log in to my network and send an email to me upon suspicious movement detection. Setting up this system with gusto, I awaited patiently for that automated mail from my home camera hoping to have captured the image of a surprised squirrel.

Nothing ever happened – my email server was down for some weeks.