The Hindu and I.
I have not been reading actual, printed newspapers for some time now and have gotten used to getting my news, opinions, commentary, gossip, laughs, and entertainment over social media of different kinds. However, since shifting to the new house, I have once again (after perhaps 20 years or more) started a subscription to The Hindu because (1) there’s something to be said about the quality of thoughts that have been, for the lack of a better word, thought about, written, edited, cross-checked, printed, and distributed the hard way as opposed to, well, you know; and I remember it being the only newspaper worth reading, or so was the situation two decades ago, and (2) serendipity: the newspaper vendor showed up at the door asking if I wanted a newspaper, and what do you know, I did.
That said, I haven’t even been reading the one newspaper that lands up every day, and so, today, I decided it being Sunday, and me, having had a rather hearty meal, and in a more expansive mood than I normally am when I am without any urgent work (as an entrepreneur since the age of 18, I really am quite unaware of having time where I am not doing anything productive, profitable, or immediately relevant), I shall indulge myself with some printed news, perhaps an editorial or two, a crossword (there was a time I could solve The Economic Times’ puzzle; not any more, not by a long shot), some commentary on a topical issue, and suchlike before retiring for a short siesta.
And so, with a large glass of warm Ajwain-Saunf paani and the Sunday Hindu, I sat down in the breezy 5th-floor balcony on my favourite rocking chair and proceeded to peruse the newspaper from end to end.
Very quickly though, I realised that I have become so used to multi-casted, immersive, social media and collective, even social (but of course: it’s in the name, silly), consumption of content that I found the exercise a bit unsettling. For example, I read the quiz about libraries on World Book Day, which was yesterday, and managed to solve all but one (the first), and having finished it with a flourish, I looked around to see who else got how many right and what others had to say about how easy or tough the questions were (it was too easy, if you really must know). And guess what? I had no clue.
Because all I held in my hands was the lifeless newsprint with black ink marks on it, and not a living, breathing, talking, shouting, giggling, opining, chiding, trolling gaggle of friends and strangers on a publicly accessible and internationally available social media platform where I could tell everyone how I did, or quickly check the comments on the quiz, or share it and challenge others, or write instantaneously to the quiz-setters about what I really thought about their production (not much).
I felt so…alone. So disconnected. So left out. In fact, the entire experience felt insufficiently fulfilling to me. Ditto with the news about the Future Group-Reliance-Amazon fiasco, or the Venice Biennale or Gen Bajwa’s future challenges or the hot, blue, massive stars that are stragglers. I even tried (before removing my hand and furtively glancing around to check if anyone saw me) to enlarge a photo with my fingers. It felt as if a major piece was missing. Like a meal without a pre-meal drink or a post-meal dessert. Like clothes but no shoes. Like a pair of trousers without a belt. Like a watch without a second hand. Workable, for sure. But somehow, silly and incomplete. At least in 2022. It felt so, how do I put it, 20th century.
How much are we used to social media? I do not know about you, but I can speak for myself. I discovered the internet in 1990, indeed in the same year as the www was launched (I also turned 18 that year, in a way, coming of age with the Internet). Of course, I used it from a Unix prompt before 1995, when I finally saw what the internet was. But surprisingly (to no one), the net was always about social interactions. My first brush with it was the Bulletin Board Service (BBS) sometime in 1992 (or was it 1993?), where I wrote extensively on varied topics (rather like today, in 2022), exchanged emails and gossip, flirted with the system admin (who I later wooed, won, and married in 1998, only to lose her affections 13 years later, a fact I found out through social media by accident!). I found almost all my initial businesses through the web, making my first million off it (and my second, and third, and so on, until I went bankrupt in 2011, a slide that had started in 2008 due to the sub-prime crash, once again made possible due to technology and rippled across the world thanks to the connectedness of the economies due to the Internet). I met someone (once again online), wooed, and married a second time, and once again lost her affections, though I shall not speak of the circumstances under which we parted, though, for the purposes of this post, suffice to say that it did, once again, involve the Internet.
(As an aside: Remember my brother’s MiG-21 crash in 2001 and the subsequent cover-up by the then government, which we fought 7 years to right without much luck, only to strike gold at the end? Yes, that was possible due to something my father stumbled upon on the Internet! That’s a story by itself.)
Today, as I have a thought I wish to share and I write about something that happened this lazy Sunday afternoon, it is on the Internet I choose to share it first. And it happens almost without thought. As an instinct.
So, as you can see, despite turning 50 this year (and most Gen Y and Gen Z consider me an old fart), I am a child of the Internet, and as such, social, mobile, connected, and always on by constitution. That means that even though people have suspected that I may have sociopathic tendencies since I seem to shun interaction in real life, I have always been comfortable sharing and engaging online, much like some others of my age I know (and identify with). It wouldn’t be far from the truth to say I have made more friends online than offline. I have had equally meaningful relationships online and offline. I have learnt far more, far deeper, and far wider online than offline. I have helped others and have been aided. I have laughed and made others laugh. I have sparked thoughts and had them sparked. I have given. And I have received. A lot. From the Internet. From the day I was introduced to the then-nascent but worldwide network of computers in 1990 in my engineering college computer lab, it has been the single best discovery I have stumbled upon. And it has been a spectacular ride so far.
In no order: Thank you, Sir Tim. Thank you, Linus. Thank you, Steves (both of you). Thank you, Bill. Thank you, IBM. Thank you, Al Gore (and I say this most non-ironically). Thank you, Xerox. Thank you, Andreessen and Clark. Thank you, Nokia. Thank you, NASA, and ESA, and ISRO. Thank you, DoD, USG, and ARPANET. Thank you, ICANN. Thank you, VSNL and BSNL. Thank you, Stanford and UoC, Berkeley. Thank you, Nehru and IITs. Thank you, Ray. Thank you, Sabeer. Thank you, AOL and Yahoo! Thank you, Larry & Sergey. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Rajiv. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, all of you (even if I may have left someone out by oversight). Thank you, my friends online and on social media. I love you all!
