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3 February 2006
Sell-out
Time was when the Internet was a new-fangled notion nobody paid much credence to in India. Dial-up was for kids with rich parents and the lone five-star restaurant that accepted Diner's Club and Mastercard. Local calls were Rs. 1.20 for a pulse of three minutes and long distance needed your father to draw down half his pension. Before Reliance, VSNL, Tata Indicomm, BSNL and electronic bill payments there were manual switch-operators and unvarnished, urinated rugged-iron roadside boxes with the ITI seal that were the exclusives of linemen who collected weekly protection sums to maintain live connections. My formative years were spent in this crest of socialism and equal discomfiture for all. This was how I imagined the rest of the world to be, no different from mine -- with children in the United States and Europe contracting the pox with promiscuous regularity and squatting on ridged-steps smelling their own faece as it slid down the hole, fathers riding Lamberettas with helmets made from material that was only marginally stronger than styrofoam and mothers staying at home and watching what little entertainment the state saw fit to throw their way in the form of Afternoon Transmissions on Doordarshan that featured sewing tips, birth control and puppet shows.We were a proud and young nation fashioned by great men and women like the Mahatma, Nehru, Ambedkar, Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi amongst others. Nehru's Five-Year Plans, his focus on dams (that were the Temples of Modern India), his visions of non-alignment laid the foundations of our secular, socialist, sovereign state. Gandhi's asceticism seeped through our collective entity and we rejected money and capitalism as materialistic. In our textbooks, we learned of the excellent schooling systems in Russia and looked at the ever-cheering faces of children trudging down to single-storeyed buildings in winter. Through Misha, our awe of the Cyrillic alphabet was enhanced and we were dazed by how that part of the world, in a fit of individual exercise, permuted the Roman alphabet many times over until each letter sounded and looked the exact opposite of its English counterpart. We won every single battle we fought, and we fought every single battle because of an aggressor country. China stabbed India in the back after children lining the streets of Delhi proclaimed 'Hindi, Cheeni, bhai, bhai!' and Nehru drew up the 'Panchsheel' treaty. Pakistan attempted to invade Kashmir after Kashmir of its own volition decided to become part of the Indian union. The Asiad in '82 in Delhi marked our country's finest sporting moment for which we built thousands and thousands of apartment blocks in the Asiad Village. Shammi Narang and Salma Sultan graced our television screens at 9pm with the news in Hindi following a pastel of shaded white that enveloped a filled circle to a squeaky violin rendering 'Saare Jahan Se Accha'.
And now, after all these years, hinduonnet.com looks more and more like all its peer newspaper outlets selling classified adspace to match-makers, jewellers and retirement homes and springing pop-unders stealthily on unsuspecting, staid, old-school nostalgics like me. Decommissioned.
