TIME WRAP - INTERNET CONNECTION

Exactly a decade back I was one of the privileged few who had a personal computer at work with an internet connection. In those days to have an email account meant filling up a series of forms, with justification for the need to have an “expensive” mail account, when there were regular mode of communication like telephone, fax or the post. The forms needed to be submitted to the departmental head who in his own great managerial demeanor would sit on the file till you poked him about the same. Then came the monologue which by then was known to any person even remotely connected to our business unit. It came to be known as the “Great Indian Management” jargon.
Without even looking at you, scribbling on a notepad, the great manager would rue about the rising cost, the need for austerity, how receivables are increasing leading to lesser profitability, reduced sale due to lesser demand [attributed to either bad monsoon or severe health problems of anyone in Gandhi family] and self restraint in these trying times.
Then he would look up through his glasses which were just left hanging on the nose and say triumphantly that he is no bigot, he cares for his people and understands that technology is the only way for the future.
That ultimately meant that you will get your mail account in the future which can stretch from few weeks to few months.
Nowadays the same manager, when fed up from not getting the office-boy on the pantry phone for a cup of tea, sends him a text message for the same.

I had just come back from overseas training and the business unit had set a precondition that I should have a mail account and an internet connection for faster communication and updates.
The form for the internet connection needed to be signed by the director of the company, it was even beyond the jurisdiction of the “great” manager who is responsible for the profit loss account of the division. They said it is for greater good and the cost needs to be adjusted across the divisions. At one point the feeling was that an internet connection was more crucial than a couple of senior managers.
Getting the internet connection was after all not that difficult. After the form was approved it took few minutes for a person to hook up a connector into my computer and say,” Open Sesame”. There you are in front of the World Wide Web and hardly knowing what to do.

I still remember the most popular search site was AltaVista [do not know if it still exists] and the first thing everybody worth their salt and an internet connection did was to open a Hotmail account.
I was no different [I was not married then, people generally say life becomes different after marriage].
The best part of the net during those days was that most of the contents were free as most things in life in the beginning are. There was hardly any filter and the greatest demand for the internet was after office hours.
People who started packing their bags at four to catch the bus at five to get back to home suddenly felt the urge to devote more time for the good of the company.

We had the internet connection but the computer we had would have been now an archeologist’s delight.
We calculated that the time taken by the computer to start up was exactly the time for a person to finish a “Will Navy Cut” cigarette.
After hitting the “enter” key by the time a new page loaded you could very well say,” Jawaharlal Nehru liked the smell of Lady Mountbatten’s armpit and she never used a deodorant.”
Gross, but we were acting our age.
We all made these things up, thinking that some day we would tell these stories to the next generation.

We chatted after office hours, made up names, age and also gender in the chat rooms – it was fun and we did it all collectively, not in the solitude, in the remote corner of a room.
I still am in touch with a friend I met on one of the chat rooms.
Ten long years – sometimes you do not even remember how fast time catches up with you.