The World Wide Web And I

By

Shailaja Mohan

CONTENTS:

Chapter 1. 3

Chapter 2. 5

Chapter 1

My affair with….. Why the heck are you looking at me with raised eyebrows?? I have only begun. Have I said something I shouldn’t have?? Anyway in these out-in-the-open modern times I don’t think there is cause to raise those beetle brows, or the plucked one for that matter, as soon as you hear the word ‘affair’! This is no sordid confession of a wanton woman, of her secret romance with someone unnamed. I have a name for you alright! And it’s called the World Wide Web. With the name out in the open, settle those eyebrows back in place! It’s time to get on with my tale.

My affair with the World Wide Web has been an area of interest to countless.
How? When? Why?
The questions have flown thick and fast at me from all directions. Bombarded with questions would be more like it. Women of my age and in my profession (yes, you heard it right the first time, my profession is just what I said!) spend most part of their time with the pots and the pans and in their free time watch the sob stories aired on TV that the n number of channels broadcast especially for the likes of us. Their association with the computer is when with duster in hand they set out for the morning’s cleaning job or when they have to pluck the offspring glued to it, and send him/her packing to do his/her homework. Then there are times when they look at it with resentful eyes, when the husband is unable to tear himself off the PC. But whoever heard of one of their kind sitting glued to the computer screen, and what did you say she was doing, blogging, did you say blogging? What’s that??!!??

Be that as it may!
I have some other questions to answer first!

So far, to those who have asked me, about 'mine romance,' I have replied,
“I’ll blog about it!”
So here I am.
I have decided to reveal all, holding back nary a thing, of how it all began.

Having familiarized myself with DOS, Wordstar, Lotus and such outdated stuff at the AWWA computer center,. ..and later Windows, Word and such too, I promptly put it all out of my mind. I had discovered card games and spent my free time playing those games that needed skill (no games of chance for me!); and the more difficult to win they were, the happier I was!

Later on I wanted to write songs to a disc and sought the help of my tech savvy sons. I would bring home a borrowed cd from some friend or other and ask that the songs be copied.

“Yes, Amma, as soon as I finish this work”
“I’ll have it ready for you in the morning!”

Several days later, the tactic has been modified to,
“Why don’t you do it yourself? You can use Nero Smart!”

Nero is smart? Hmmm…

Well I can always try using this smart Nero to copy some songs! Try I did, but Nero seemed too smart and a hard nut to crack (then), and I had whole lot of questions, which my children didn’t have the patience to answer! They would rush through the instructions and it was way too fast for an old brain to grasp! My patience was wearing thin too!

In the mean time, there had come this amazing thing called the World Wide Web right into our home via the Asianet cable. I took Son Senior’s advice, which he gave long back (“Use the computer yourself and find out Amma, its not going to bite you!”) and decided to explore the net.

What am I interested in? Music. So there I was doing the rounds of Hamaracd.com and raaga.com and such. There I came upon Realplayer, downloaded and installed it and, (here is the all important ‘and’) used it to copy some songs from one cd to another. I was ecstatic! I had done it!! The PC didn’t bite me and Nero the Smartie was not the only one around I found out. (By the way, Nero the Smart is putty in my hands now!!) My sons were of course amused by Amma’a thrill at her success, and probably were thankful that she was off their back.

It was the time of the summer holidays and my cousin Sushil, from Hongkong had come down to Kerala for his annual visit. We had not seen each other for a long time, what with me being out of Kerala whenever he was down on holidays. It was going to be a reunion after a long 24 years or so. After initial chitchat and remarks on how my crowning glory was still looking black ('Are you dyeing your hair?' ), he got down to our favourite topic of music. Kishore Kumar songs were playing.

“You seem to have all the old songs of Kishore!” he remarks.
“Yeah! I got them from Hamaracd.com”
“What? When you can download it for free?”

I had seen my children use something called KaaZa. But I never thought even Hindi songs could be hunted down!!!
“Of course you can! You will get all songs,” he says.

I look reproachfully at my children.
“..and you never told your Amma this?! How could you not tell her this?” Cruel cruel children....and when they know music is Amma’s life!!
What’s the big deal was the sort of look they returned.

Thus was opened before me the world of music by my cousin, to whom I am ever indebted. (Now I have been through the whole gamut of Kaaza, Shareaza, Limewire, Morpheus…)  My journey to the World Wide Web had begun in earnest.

Chapter 2

(Contd)......My journey to the World Wide Web had begun in earnest. Searching for all sorts of songs, from way back (“Mohe bhool gaye savariya”) to the latest of J Lo, songs in Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil....the list was endless!!! I was in seventh heaven. I bought blank cds by the boxfuls. I rushed to the PC each time to see if the song had downloaded fully (the connection is so slow) The PC being in the cellar room and me in the kitchen upstairs, this did keep me in shape!

There have been interesting chats with some on the other end asking me about some songs. And finding this 44 year old on the opposite end they were nonplussed,
“This your collection?”
Yeah buddy its mine!
“You listen to all these new songs as well?”
Yeah why not? Any problem?
“Err,,,none at all! Nice to meet you Aunty!”
Good! Nice to meet you too.

Then came the day when my son, listening to me for the umpteenth time, holding forth on some topic or other on which I had something to say!! said,
“Amma, you can join some group and voice your concerns, give opinions and interact with like-minded people,” he said.

That’s nice! But what do I do? Go and join music groups! Afterall that’s my area of interest. To my dismay I find many of them are being misused. Mere advertisements and useless junk mail is all I found. I wrote strongly worded messages asking if the owner/moderator was asleep? In return, I got mail from strangers wanting to know who I was (The name Shailaja Mohan might have sounded young to them! ..and the fools would never check my profile!). I made short change of all attempts at net-friendship.
“Just not interested buddy! I am here for the music! Wanna talk music? I am on. Or else get moving!” just about summed up my attitude.

Once I came upon a message in a music group where a ‘concerned brother’ wanted his dear sisters not to put their photos on the net as it was going to be misused. I wrote to the ‘concerned’ brother’ at the group, if it would not be easier if such ‘concerned brothers’ had more trust and did not believe such fake photos of their dear sisters? And moreover, perhaps if the concerned brothers did not go around looking for such pictures, they would not be seeing them in the first place? Or perhaps I was asking too much of them, the so called, ‘concerned brothers’ of the world?!!?? What the heck do they think they are doing in a music group?
And what happens? I get more mail!! As soon as I come online on Yahoo Messenger,
“Hello!”
Yes, who is this?
“There was a mail from you in my inbox!”
Oh yeah, the mail goes to everyone in the group who is subscribing to it! And he makes it sound as if I wrote to him personally!

Some are not deterred by the age factor. Most assumed I was on the net coz I am some bored housewife wanting to chat and have some fun! Some had the temerity to ask how many men I chatted with as if it was any of their business! I detested this mind-set and took to remaining invisible at all times. But I must say I did find some gentlemen too!

By now I was an active member in a Yahoo group for our extended family of cousins. Here is something my cousin Shyam from Italy had to say about me!!

“…….but seeing a (genius, but cockroachophobic ) "housewife" like ShailaJA talking about "Mozilla Firefox" (..I am a LINUX-ist) makes me fiery about the high levels of computerization reached in India!
I have shown this piece of mail to all my team..just to remind them where India is heading!”

I even went ahead and started a group of my own for those of us who were at St.Agnes College Hostel, Mangalore, between 1974-76. Well if any of you are around, you know whom to contact!

Literati came next. My brother-in-law thought that would interest me and wasn’t he right? All my free time was spent playing literati with people from all around the globe. Interesting conversations ensued.
“Your English is good for an Indian! Is this the norm or are you an exception??”
“You B**&%$*#!” (This from a grandma, coz, she found my scores moving higher!!)
“You are a Muslim! I am gonna find you and kill you!”
“Excuse me, may I please ask you what mohans hail means?” (On seeing my mail id, ‘mohanshail’)

I got to know of different countries, their people and their life styles and got a friend or two in the bargain. I reveled in regaling my family with my different experiences at the end of the day. There were smiles all around! Nothing but a child am I, thrilled to discover new horizons!

Around about this time I started to hear the word blog and blogging. I asked my son about it, and he pointed me to blogspot.com. This was more like it! Here I could write and be myself. This was just right!! But it never took off due to lack of time….

Then I started seeing the little green ‘+’ against all my Yahoo friends' names. What are these, I thought, (the ever curious me!) to myself. I clicked one to find out. The rest as they say, is history!

THE END