(1999 – some small town in Karnataka/Maharashtra/UP/Bihar/Jharkhand)
Those were the dark days of Internet. Those were the times when it took at least ten calls to the ominous VSNL servers (yes it was Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited then) to connect to the Internet for a maximum of half an hour and at a speed of 32 KBPS. Internet at homes was a luxury (that’s an understatement). Internet at cyber cafes would cost Rs. 100 per hour and they also charged you for connection downtime. If a cyber café was able to clock one hour without any disconnections and a download speed of 12 KBPS, it proudly declared at its doorsteps in big bold letters “HIGH SPEED INTERNET AVAILABLE”, the only thing that was missing in those declaration was a statutory warning in font size eight:
“Please be careful or you might get hit by another speeding cyber café on the information superhighway”.
So as the nation was progressing on the information highway and would soon be taking on the world as an IT superpower, there was this kid studying Information Technology / BCA / Computer Engineering, dreaming about Silicon Valley where he would soon be headed to start his own multi-million dollar portal. But our guy had no idea that he would soon change the history of mankind forever.
So our guy who had just learnt about web browsers and HTML and left clicks and right clicks visited one of these “High Speed Cyber Café”, to do some research on AltaVista (yes Google wasn’t God then). After the initial hoopla of the modem and the phones the VSNL server finally gives way and gets connected. The other two computers were occupied by people who were sending e-mails to their kids in USA. The cyber café guy charged Rs. 50 for each email and Rs. 10 extra for typing. So our cool guy shrugged at the people who couldn’t even type and took a computer. Confidently he pointed the mouse on the Netscape icon on Window’s 98 desktop (yes he believed that open source will be THE thing in the future) and the hour glass on the mouse starts rotating. After some 500 rotations Netscape browser finally opens. Carefully he clicked on the dropdown button on the address bar and selected AltaVista from the options and hits “Enter”. The hour glass started rotating once again.
After some five hundred rotations he takes a look at the status bar (yes he remembers all the jargons and parts of the browser) it says “2 of 579 items downloaded”. He looks around him. Everyone is busy surfing the high speed internet. He looked at the rotating hourglass, he lost count. The rotating hourglass casts a spell on him, it hypnotizes him. His eyes turn bleary, the eyelids feel as if they have lead blocks hanging from them and slowly he goes into deep slumber. The hourglass continued to do its work.
(Picture source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Altavista-1999.png.)
Suddenly he was shaken wide awake. He opened his eyes to see the cyber café guy standing next to him, “Bhai saab aapka vyavsaay khul gaya”. “’Vyavsaay’, what the fuck is that?” he thought and took a look at the computer screen. “Oh ok the website”, he thought with a wry smile. He punched the air in triumph as he saw the oldies still struggled with their email typing. Then something hit him. “What was I here to search for”, he thought. He thought hard. He thought harder. AltaVista stared at him. “Fuck! What was I supposed to search for”, he thought again. Desperately he checked his watch. He checked with the cyber café guy, “Bhaiya kitna time hua?” “Adhaa ghanta ho gaya aapka”, the cyber café guy said looking up his register.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! How could I forget? Why the fuck did I sleep? Fuck!”
And then the light of dawn descended upon him. His eyes brightened up and he clicked on the search box of AltaVista. Rubbing his fingers he carefully pressed four keys on the keyboard. F U C K and hit enter. The hourglass started doing its job again. In a few minutes the browser became blank and then in another couple of minutes there were thousands of links on the page telling him about “Girls in bikinis”, “Hot Celebrities Nude”, “Lesbian Girls” and what not. He was taken to the new heights of pleasure as he read the names of the websites. His fingers started to sweat and he eyed the browser with lust. Rubbing his fingers again he pointed the mouse at the first link and clicked. Instantly the hourglass appeared and got down to its business of rotating, putting a spell around him, a spell which would satiate his lust. His eyes became heavy and once again he nodded off.
He dreamt that he was boasting about his virtual sexcapades to his friends, who on hearing his stories writhed in jealousy. He told them about seeing nude shots of Jenifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez and even Madhuri Dixit making love. Suddenly he was jolted again out of the slumber land. The cyber café guy was yelling at him “Boss ye kya khol diya, ye family cyber café hai. Isko abhi band karo.” He rubbed his eyes and saw naked girls with larger than life breasts and men with larger than life penis on his browser. “Band karo usko”, the cyber café guy shouted again. The oldies strained their necks to take a look at the booty on our guy’s screen. He hit the close button. The hourglass rotated a few times and the Windows 98 desktop appeared. Dejected as if his newlywed wife has just denied sex with him, he rose from his seat and went to the counter to pay. With a heavy heart he fished out a hundred rupee note from his wallet as the two oldies came and stood behind him.
“Lagta hai computer seekhna padega”, said one of the oldies. “Haan main bhi soch raha hoon. Kal se hi typing classes join kar lete hain”, said the other.
The next day, after having remembered what he had to search for, our guy visited the same cyber café. He was amazed to see that each of the cubicles had a curtain which hid the computers from view. “Aapke liye special lagwaya hai”, said the cyber café guy with a toothy grin.
