Chewing Gum!

Published in Maharashtra Herald ‘Centre View’ on 21 Dec 07

It was our maiden trip abroad. Joining the hoards of Indians thronging SE Asia, we too signed up for a package tour to visit Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. We had a great tour and kept high levels of self-discipline especially where shopping was concerned. Being a ‘mall addict’ and having visited all shopping avenues in my city, I considered myself to be an ‘aware’ and ‘alert’ consumer. These self-declarations do not match my actions on the tour…

After completing the first leg of our journey we were on Bangkok airport awaiting departure to KL. Now my husband (and very rightly too) insisted on reaching our designated departure gate without delay. I was dazzled by the duty free shops and naturally wanted to linger there. However I had to hurry there because it is a huge airport and hence had to miss out on checking out the goodies these stores had to offer.

So here we were, waiting for our flight to be announced and already through security check. It was too tedious to go out and do the procedures again so I whiled away time at the couple of stalls there. We had some unspent Thai Baht, which I wanted to spend instead of carrying them ahead. Forty Bahts was a very small sum and most of the stuff in the stores was priced much higher than that. I was not keen on any further currency exchanges. However sugar free chewing gum was all that would fit my meager budget. Now none of us are fans of this product. It does horrible things to your teeth and one ends up looking like a cow chewing cud all day. Yet something possessed me and I ended up buying the packet. Why not? We were on a holiday and should be doing things we do not always do. My daughter and husband were most surprised at this purchase, preferring to keep a diplomatic silence.

So for the next couple of days I religiously ate the gum. As we were preparing for departure to Singapore, you can imagine my horror when the guide told us; “finish all chewing gum that you may have because the authorities do not allow it to be carried into the country”. Finish it? Why I had about 10 pieces left and only a couple of hours to finish them in. Our tour leader told us of how some people were delayed for a long time at Singapore immigration the previous day since they had the stuff in their bags.

So I had to eat the (expletive deleted) things, two at a time and even made my family eat some. I cursed the moment I purchased the packet. I should have followed my normal practice and stayed away. Whatever possessed me? There was no way out now and I accepted full blame. What if our entire group was held up because of me? I threw away the last few pieces at the last halt in Malaysia.

Feeling a great load off my mind, I went through immigration with a spring in my step! I had none of the prohibited stuff with me; no liquor, no cigarettes and no chewing gum! Once in Singapore we thoroughly enjoyed our stay there. My daughter picked up many of the pamphlets available in the hotel reception with plenty of tourist information. We carried them back with us because we had not managed to see all the places nor read about the city’s history.

We read those brochures after we had settled down to our usual routine at home. By now I had been licking my wounds regarding the purchase of the gum and had almost recovered. But one particular line in that brochure sent my daughter into peals of laughter. Unable to stop giggling, she gave it to me to read. Now, I quote from page 50 of the “official guide and map of Singapore” section called Fast Facts….
“The ban on chewing gum has been lifted but it has to be sugar free and sold only at pharmacies.”

I could have cried again then and spent many moments in agony. Questions like why we were not informed etc were merely academic now. My wounds reopened and I could not look at the local stuff with out being reminded of my deeds! What hurt most was the crack to my market savvy self-image. My impressions of a beautiful stay in Singapore have only one sticky patch namely “the chewing gum”.

Time, the great healer, did his bit but I am wiser today….

I repeat my warning again: Do not give in to impetuous purchases. Follow your usual standards for selection and purchase of items irrespective of where you are!

“Miles to go before I sleep…”

The alarm tinkled but he shut the mobile up. He had an hour before his day began. He would steal five minutes from that. He had made so many compromises so far, how did an extra 5 minutes of sleep matter?

This was the only period in Vijay’s control. The moment he got out off bed some unseen force took charge of his life. He had his big car now yet he longed for the train journey to work. He would have to wait for another year or his next job for a driver.

His boss was a tyrant. Targets, deadlines, office jealousies… Unpretentious Ravi always seemed to please the boss. And Anita took full advantage of her sex to avoid any additional tasks. The earlier boss had moved up acting the Pied Piper for his old team! Vijay had again lost out to Hussein in that race.

Vicky their son, had to be dropped to school everyday on his way out. Asking his wife Sonya to do so meant inviting another round of arguments. Cosmo women fought tooth and nail to share every duty. Vijay wondered if village women were half as vocal or their voice ever heard.

Sonya’s job paid for the EMI on this swanky flat. His pay packet took care of the car, plasma TV and European holiday installments. His fat salary shriveled to peanuts even before it reached the bank.

With both of them working, Vijay’s elderly parents looked after Vicky. Sonya argued they too would benefit from Vijay’s success. Any way it was better than living alone in the village and looking after the fields.

Weekdays zoomed past, each day undistinguishable from the other. Weekends meant putting in that extra bit at work, the new boss expected it. Sonya would never understand. Lazy Sunday mornings were his only luxury before getting down to more work.

Behind closed eyes, strains of a Kishore Kumar melody stirred his mind. He rarely played the harmonium these days. Where was it anyway? Sonya must have junked it somewhere. Vijay had been an avid mountaineer in college often leading expeditions. Now he had difficulty in figuring out the easiest route around vehicles on the road. Amma faithfully dusted his books and read out stories to his son. Vijay remembered playing carom and cards with Dad but he had forgotten when he last played cricket with Vicky. Did his parents deserve to care for a child at sixty plus?

Suddenly he was gripped with the futility of it all. Where was he running? What for? Vijay was pushing forty and Vicky’s childhood would not last forever. He had to be a part of it. His parents needed to retire.

Through swirls of mist he saw yet another EMI for Sonya’s diamond necklace and a corner office beckoning him. Vijay felt himself being sucked into a vortex of his creation. The snoozing alarm tinkled again urging him on in the rat race. He shrugged away his blues and dragged himself out of bed remembering Robert Frost’s lines “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep”.

This was my very first attempt at fiction but is obviously heavily inspired by urban life in India today. I was confident enough to submit it in a contest, the entry went nowhere but I now have taken heart to try my hand at fiction!

As we get ready to welcome another year, let us assess where we stand, what are our goals and how far are we from achieving them. Let quality of life not be the first victim in this race.

Seasons Greetings and Best wishes for 2008!

Archana

Hospitality Volvo Ishtyle!

Published in Maharashtra Herald ‘Centre View’ on 08 Dec 07
My only perception of Volvo buses was as space occupying behemoths on Pune roads that discharged passengers loaded with baggage at particularly narrow points. Many are the occasions that I have argued with bus staff for their indiscriminate parking. However I have changed my opinion to some extent after travelling to Goa in this vehicle.

I eagerly entered the bus at one such stop located in the heart of the city to be welcomed by comfortingly cool interiors. The bus was very clean and had both semi sleeper and normal seats. Contrary to my expectations there were several pre-departure procedures to be carried out – almost like for air travel. What were lacking were stringent security checks!

After what seemed like a long delay but was only 15 minutes it was wheels rolling! Immediately the TV sprang to life with some mindless movie at top volume. The attendant moved down the aisle distributing blankets to everyone. Next came a bottle of mineral water for each of us. His next offering surprisingly was ‘puke bags’! The blankets were clean and did not have any creepy crawlies residing in them. I hoped the blaring TV would not disturb our sleep but as it turned out later, there was another culprit for it.

As the bus gobbled up kilometres towards Goa we hardly felt the speed inside the cabin. All vertical movements over the bumpy bits treated our bones and joints with respect. Thankfully the attendant switched off the movie at 11 PM and every one nodded off to sleep. I was awakened several times with severe neck pain as my head explored its relationship with gravity, unfettered by conscious control of being held high! I tried lying on my side, which made some difference. Now I know the use of the air filled U shaped contraption available in luggage stores. Worn around the neck it acts like a barrier to this unwanted painful nodding off. Anyway the anticipation of reaching Goa soon served as a balm on my painful muscles.

As the sun rose we reached India’s premier tourist destination. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Goa and were lucky to enjoy some of the IFFI road shows. The return journey was less of a pain in the neck. Maybe my body was somewhat accustomed to it now. Now, I am less vocal with my protests when a Volvo obstructs my path as I too had enjoyed the convenience such halts afforded to city travellers. However I still strongly oppose their plying on city roads at daytime.

A word here about our attendant. He did not have the benefit of any training at any fancy hospitality center nor a flashy uniform. He did his job efficiently with no plastic smile or supercilious expressions. He spoke very little to the passengers yet conveyed all the necessary information. He doubled up as the loader for luggage at bus halts, a cleaner, as guide and marshal to the driver on tricky stretches of the road, helped in refueling and generally did everything. I am sure he also had a brief on how to deal with any emergencies though thankfully I did not need to check his capabilities in that department! All attention was on the driver, the speed he maintained, how he negotiated the super smooth expressway, the potholed road and steep climbing turns. Some passengers’ spoke rudely, argued about window seats yet the attendant handled them calmly. I did not even ask his name or care to thank him at the end of the journey.

This is a sharp contrast from an air journey where the cabin crew makes more of an impact and passengers too behave differently towards them. We hardly even remember names of the pilots who actually ferry the aircraft.

The bus attendant’s job profile was almost similar to that of the aircraft cabin crew but completely devoid of glamour and less paid too. I believe some bus companies have improved in this regard. Air or road should not make a difference in our behaviour, but to be honest – it does! I made a mental note to rectify my oversight in any of my future bus journey. Think about it next time you travel by bus….

Words of Wisdom

The following was forwarded to me. It is an extremely inspiring speech one that all of us can benefit from. I could not attribute the source as I dont have it. If any of you knows it do tell us….
Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting tothe Class of 2006 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore defining success. July 2nd 2004
I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of Five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa.
It was and remains as back of Beyond as you can imagine. There was noelectricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled.
My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fitinto the back of a jeep – so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then EastBengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.
My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.
As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by thegovernment. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in ourhouse. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us thatthe jeep is an expensive resource given by the government – he reiteratedtous that it was not ‘his jeep’ but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep -wecould sit in it only when it was stationary.
That was our early childhood lesson in governance – a lesson that corporate Managers learn the hard way, some never do.
The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other memberofmy Father’s office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by hisname. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name ofRaju was appointed – I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, ‘Raju Uncle’ very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as ‘my driver’. When I hear thatterm from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.
To me, the lesson was significant – you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect yoursubordinates than your superiors.
Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha -an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. Themorning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition -delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual wasmeant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading thenewspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly.
Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”.
That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business beginsand ends with that simple precept.
Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios – we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement ofPhilips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one.
Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios – alluding to his five sons. We also did not have ahouse Of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, “We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did notgladden our hearts in that instant.
Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.
Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigsand built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. Shewouldtake her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white antsdestroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed.
At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told mymother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers infull bloom.
She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place,I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”.
That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create foryourself it is what you leave behind that defines success.
My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at theUniversity in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, Isaw electricity in Homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know theOriya script.
So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper – end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. Whilereading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe.
In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure mysuccessin terms of that sense of larger connectedness.
Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, JaiKishan” and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than readingout the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land upnear the University’s water tank, which served the community. I would spendhours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poisonthe water and I had to watch for them. I would day dream about catching oneand how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.
Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can createit,if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essenceof success.
Over the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me shecreateda larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, Isense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember,when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for thefirst time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date.
Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcerand,overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about herfate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked heronce if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, shedid her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her ownclothes.
To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.
Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industryand began to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in agovernment office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life’s calling with the IT industry whenfourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places – Iworked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the, world.
In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living aretired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burninjuryand was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flewback to attend to him – he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from necktotoe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroac infested, dirty, inhuman place.The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst.
One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the bloodbottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked thetending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finallywhen she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her,”Why have you not gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned athis stoic self.
There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be foranother human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create.
My father died the next day.
He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality,his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me thatsuccess is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above yourimmediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts -the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. Hissuccess was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his idealsthat grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized governmentservant’s world.
My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to governthe country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. MyMother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him.She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in usingdaggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the OldMan and the Old Lady had differing opinions.
In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and theessence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about theunfoldingof thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.
Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic strokeand was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks withher in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and agarbled voice, she said, “Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, nomore educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity – was telling me to go and kiss the world!
Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectednesstoa larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.
Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss theworld.

Ready to Learn

This has been a difficult week for me. Reason? I was finding it really difficult to procure a particular soap bar. Elementary, you may as well say like the legendary Sherlock Holmes. But there was a huge barrier.

Seeing the deteriorating state of my kadahis my maid recommended a particular brand to get them to sparkle. “None of this fancy stuff you bring is any good,” she said. She however did not know its name. Seeing my confusion she helpfully described the stuff to me.

So I set off to the local shop confident of making a purchase. What happened was totally surprising. The shopkeeper was completely foxed by what I was asking for. Any fancy description seemed to draw a blank.

Finally I began with the description I had of the soap. I wanted a bar with a picture of a lemon on it! It had to have a particular fragrance. It was specifically meant for aluminium vessels. This brought strange looks from everyone on both sides of the store counter. I seemed like an educated lady, had come out of a car and here I was describing a brand like an illiterate person! I went from shop to shop with this detail but no one could provide me the right stuff. I did not even know what right was anymore. Did we really have such a large range of cleaning products? Then why could I not find one for my kadahi?

Here I was a celebrated hostess, shopaholic, mall savvy and alert consumer who could not get one bar of soap. My ego thoroughly deflated I picked up the first one I was offered at the 10th shop and returned home. ‘This is not the one’ my maid pronounced.

I gave up and told her to get a wrapper from somewhere and then went off to buy the kadahi panacea. I realised I had been on the wrong track all along. The joy I felt that day was something I had not felt even when I had managed to pick up the rare kantha sari at the monsoon sale!

The struggle was worth it because my utensils are sparkling now! Lesson learnt: Keep an open mind and learn from everybody. There is no substitute for experience and recommendations from such a person will invariably make a positive change.

Age should not be a barrier but mental attitude can be. Overcome it and open your mind there is a wealth of learning waiting for us!

This was first put up at the following site on 16 Oct 2007
http://content.msn.co.in/Contribute/Lifestyle/UCStory4672.htm

What was that?

This is the view from the eye piece of a microscope of a slide prepared from the supernatant water of dosa batter. The picture on the right shows the bacteria that actually cause fermentation of cereals.

Dosa, idli or dhokla batter ferments due bacteria, yeast or fungi present in the air. They convert carbon elements in the batter to alcohol, lactic acid and carbon dioxide. This fermentation is healthy and does not cause poisoning when the product is consumed. The bacteria etc are killed when we cook the dosa, idli etc. Vitamins of the B group in the batter increase as a result of fermentation.

Fermented Indian cereals are a good source of easy to digest proteins are are low in calories. Hence ideal for weight conscious or those who may be sick and need to eat light food.

Jalebi, anarase, khaman dhokla, kurdaya, idli, bhatura dough, bread are all examples of fermented cereal products.

These microorganisms are present everywhere and begin their action when conditions are right (soaking, grinding, temperature etc).
The bacteria are usually of the lactobacillus variety.
Now u have a glimpse of what made your idlis soft and fluffy and tasty!

SMS wise!

Being of the 60s vintage I along with many others like me have the unique privilege of exposure to relatively uncomplicated simple communications methods and modern state of the art means. I am referring to ‘snail mail’ with blue inlands, telegrams, money orders and long distance phone calls made from post offices all courtesy good old Post and Telegraph department. Many today’s youth will probably not know what the last two even mean!

I was introduced to a unique feature ‘SMS’ with my first cell phone. It seemed rather like an instantaneous wireless letter. But I soon realized the catch. Every message had an upper limit on the number of characters (150 by my service provider). Exceed it and I was charged for 2 or 3 or more depending on how eloquent I was! Before I realized it I was paying exorbitant mobile bills without talking much.

That’s when I further explored this wonder world. With plenty of help from my younger friends, I soon got the hang of SMS lingo. By simply removing all vowels from my text, I could enter more words and send more information (that should be info)! One can also maximize characters by just removing spaces between words. English teachers must shudder at this language, which bears a pale resemblance to our British legacy. All unnecessary alphabets were simply done away with. Forget long words, even short ones were further shortened as in you became u and ok became k. Then there were these emoticons, which so beautifully conveyed all I felt.

Today my inbox is full of web links, ring tones, picture messages, jokes, news alerts, cricket score and stock updates, advertisements etc, some by choice but mostly unwanted. TV channels and newspaers often conduct polls and audience opinion through SMS. The tool is so powerful that it can have political and criminal implications.

I am told that the first ‘text message only’ book about a business executive who travels throughout Europe and India has been published by a Finnish author this year. My search revealed the existance of the world’s ‘first transl8it! dxNRE & glosRE’ (dictionary & glossary) , a comprehensive SMS and text lingo book. There is also a website dedicated to this new language!

This has spawned a specialised message writing career for those not wanting the well beaten track.. There are speed typing contests for SMS and but getting maximum info into 150 characters can also be a great challenge. Relevant organisers must think about this one!

Need I + NEtng? wot r u w8tng 4? git out yor fone & stA n tuch w yor fRnds & foes. snd DIS msg 2 10 prsnz 2 brng gud luk 2 U & me. 🙂 msgN.CU L8R.

Phew! And that’s less than 150 characters!

My essay on this new communication technique first appeared at :
http://content.msn.co.in/Contribute/Lifestyle/UCStory1735.htm

Ciao!

Net-Trapped

Our state was exactly like that of a fish out of water on the day we were cut off from the World Wide Web. Being married to a fighter pilot meant living in remote areas of India. Places where even a journey by air involved 2 or three flight changes, clear and instant STD connections were something to rejoice, newspapers delivered to us were anywhere between 1-3 days old (you see it depended on the arrival of the flights) and so on and so forth. However we happily accepted all these and even more difficulties without any cribs.

After settling down in Pune and we have voraciously accepted all that modern technology and economic progress has to offer. I am referring to malls, mobile phones, multiplexes, specialty food hotels and most of all, the Internet. Merely having a fast processor and a 80GB hard disk was not enough any more. We wanted always on, fast and cheap connections to the cyber world. This magical tool has a tremendous control on our lives.

We had made the transition from dial up to broadband connectivity and were satisfied with the new offering. Disaster struck on Thursday afternoon when my husband was unable to connect to the cyber world. Now this does happen once in a while and he dismissed it as such preferring to enjoy his restorative afternoon cuppa listening to music. Another attempt half an hour later gave similar results. There was some restlessness but we were in a generous mood and were hopeful of the problem sorting itself out. He caught up with his afternoon sleep, a time usually taken up with watching stock market closing, reading various news, message boards, and tracking various interests, all on the Internet of course. Sleep seemed such a waste of time when there was so much to learn.

By 5. 30 PM, we still remained cut off. Now I too had joined the worry group since it was my time on the computer. I usually checked my mail, browsed through health and sci-fi pages of my favourite news channel website and chatted with relatives abroad. We had yet to graduate to the web cam but it was high on our list of wants!! We had already made a couple of complaints to customer care. Just then it began to rain.

We rationalized by saying the water must have got into the cables somewhere. There was no reason for rain in November and we blamed just about every body for it- the polluted environment, global warming, the PMC even the chief minister!! To top it all, the lights went off. I was actually glad, since now we could not use the PC anyway. These made us even more restless since we could neither read or write now. (You see we have not installed an inverter in memory of our stay in Assam where we have lived without power for 3 days at a stretch.)

Instead we decided to go out for a drive. The traffic was more than usually undisciplined since the signals were not functioning! Just reemphasized my husband’s arguments for a SOHO (small office, home office). We returned by 10 PM. Luckily power supply was restored and we made a beeline for the PC. Still no luck.

Something was really wrong. My husband wrote down his blog posts and read up a book he had downloaded from the net on the comp. I used the time to read “The Google Story” by David Vise. Some more calls to customer care gave us the standard call center replies, which was very frustrating. We caught up with televisions soaps, which was staple viewing not too long ago. There Bahu had become the Saas, B&B (Bold and Beautiful) was more like H&H (haggard and hopeless) and Friends was still fun in its nth rerun! We called it a day with the hope that our life would be normal the next day.

As I made our morning tea there was still bad news. No Internet. There was so much to check up on- western markets had closed and those in the east were just opening. We caught up with all the days’ newspapers, reading each one from end to end after a really long time. Then it was the turn of magazines and catching up with other administrative jobs. It was surprising that I still found interesting things in the papers despite surfing so widely daily. The joy of reading printed words (generally referred to as ‘hard copy’) is great and cannot be compared to reading on the monitor. Not dependant on power and can be transported everywhere. Trivial things became major irritants as decibel levels rose at home. We tried to call the local official- very conveniently (for him) his phone was switched off. I guess he must have had several calls from people like us! We took heart that many others also remained cut off from the World Wide Web!

At the gym, my thoughts in between every set were of modems, overhead/underground cables, wireless connectivity and latest ‘mashup’ technology (which I read of the day before in the newspaper!). There, I got a call saying that the problem had been rectified. A call home indicated otherwise. We contemplated going to the local office with a dharna! It was close to noon and we still remained cut off. It was the last day to pay some of our bills, how were we to do it now? I had to finalize travel plans for our holiday. This was becoming intolerable. We made an attempt with our old dial up and took care of the urgent points. This was an expensive service so we needed our broadband. We got through the service provider and gave him quite an earful. He tried to pacify us and we had really no choice but to wait. The verbal outburst did help to relieve the stress though!

Afternoon turned towards evening and we had become fatalistic by now. I debated going to the local net café, to get my now overdue dose of virtual adrenalin! That’s when we were able to log on! Hurray!! We were on the information highway once again. It was only 24 hours but it seemed like so much more and each of us fought for time on the comp.

This made me realize how easily we had traded our recreational time for time on the Internet! I decided to go ahead with plans made the earlier day of getting out the carom board, squash rackets and Uno cards! Just like we must beware of smoking, alcohol, tobacco addiction, we must be alert for yet another potential culprit. Withdrawal symptoms set in very fast leading to anger, frustration, sleeplessness and depression.
Take time out; rediscover simple joys!

This experience of ours was first printed in The Statesman, Kolkata on 04 Mar 2007

Archana