by Parth Pandya
[box]Parth Pandya pens little vignettes that give us glimpses of what the internet can be and do in our lives.[/box]The lazy sun was stretching its rays at an angle that made Nate squint his eyes. The color of the sea was beautiful and the horizon was well lit, but with his daughters waving back at him against the direction of the light, a good picture wasn’t looking likely. Just as well, he thought. Maybe it is time to stop focusing on taking photographs and actually concentrate on the pure joy of watching them play. 13 and 11 – ages where they were still willing to be Daddy’s carefree girls. While he watched them frolic about in their swimsuits this day in the water, his mind drifted to the time they would cry their lungs out when he took them to the swimming pool. Their smiles today would forever be ingrained in him. Their pictures, taken in the resort pool earlier in the day, would however be part of the family picture collection on Facebook. He sat in his hotel room later that night, sifted through hundreds and finally posted thirty pictures to an album titled ‘Cancun vacation 2012’
Jim Malloy retired to the pleasant comforts of his rambler in Houston at 6 pm. The day was stifling, the commute frustrating, and the people annoying. His antagonism towards the world was cooled down each evening with a cold bottle of beer. He sat down on his chair, stationed food around him and meticulously placed the bottle on a coaster. The day, or at least the part that mattered to him, had finally begun. He opened up the browser and feasted on the naiveté in people. A few taps of the keyboard and he found something that perked his interest. Pictures of a family vacationing in a corner of Mexico. These people must believe their lives are an open book, he thought. No inhibitions and no safeguards. He ignored the pictures of the happy family, the content father, the beautiful mother and the pristine beaches. He found what he wanted – pictures of two girls frolicking in the water, posing naughtily in their swimsuits, with no consciousness of what or who they were. Jim Malloy took a deep breath, smiled a feeble smile and proceeded to confiscate their privacy and their innocence. The World Wide Web is a snarky place, he thought, and I am a vicious spider.
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Jyoti ben had been the smartest cookie in her village in Kutch. If there was any doubt to the street smarts and the resilience of that woman, the success of her son (who’d made it big in America), whom she brought up single-handedly, was proof enough. Arun, her son, had made his way to the green shores of America. He settled there with Anila, and together, they bore a daughter and a son, blessed with an American passport and an accent to boot. Jyoti ben had toiled through the last decade, making trips to Chicago to help raise the kids. Age was asked to stay on hold as the young ones still held her hands and worked their way up the initial years. But as the years passed by, Jyoti ben’s utility was greatly diminished. Arun was not able to figure out how to relate to her, the grandchildren were done with their need for grandmotherly protection, and the travel was soon becoming a burden.
Jyoti ben was now part of a growing tribe of grandmothers with no life to call their own and no one to either care for or to take care of them. The ten-minute phone calls were worse. With no face to match, with no hands to touch, with accents hard to decipher, she was losing touch.
But Jyoti ben wasn’t the smartest cookie in the whole village for nothing. When Arun next came to India, he bought her a computer. With the same childlike enthusiasm with which she had learnt how to ride the bicycle, she delved into the world of bits and bytes, learning the world of the modem and the browser, instant messaging and e-mail. Her grandkids were a joy to see, even if they occasionally ran away from the webcam. She had a conversation with her son that exceeded a dozen sentences. Heaven hath no comfort like a grandma satisfied, even if she clicked on a lot of popups in the browser that she should not have.
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“If you are reading this, you are perhaps just as surprised as I am as I write it. People have little hope in experiments like these. But, as I stare at the screen, I think to myself, why not? Sanjay, you are naïve and silly today, and the optimism reflected in persisting with this letter will hold you in good stead. Hang on to it. The future maybe uncertain – you don’t know where you will find work, you don’t know who you will end up with in life, you don’t know if you’ll own that BMW you always dreamed up as a prized possession. I can’t predict the future, I can only hope for it to come to fruition. But if all else is lost, remember this. If you can look into the mirror and still see me, you haven’t lost one bit over the years.”
Sanjay looked up from the screen with tears in his eyes. His world had crashed around him with no one to give solace. Help came from the most unexpected quarters: himself. An e-mail service had offered a time capsule ten years ago – with a promise that ten years hence, the e-mail he wrote will be delivered to him. Sanjay looked in the mirror and thanked himself. All was not lost yet.
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Every day was a news day. Every day was a day someone expressed their opinion on the World Wide Web. Every day a celebrity would tweet a grand thought from their hare-brained intellects and every day passed with the world inching forward with bits and bytes. He called it the grand social experiment of our times. It was as if the entire human race had built a parallel universe that was tangible in the web pages that came through wires into their homes and offices and cell phones.
Today was every day and every day was an opportunity for Nagesh Subramanian. Rediff? Times Of India? How about some international flavor? Guardian maybe? New York Times? In the swirling mass of words that came out in the day was an opportunity for Nagesh to exploit the frailty of the human race. A small spark to ignite a fire. Deny the holocaust, suggest that North Indians are racist, cuss Sachin Tendulkar, praise Pakistan – the list was endless. Nagesh knew that pressing the right buttons triggered the worst behavior in people who lived a life out of character on the web. His anonymity was his armor and their anonymity was their weakness. He was a troll ruling the web, and he would not be weeded out anytime soon.
Parth Pandya is a passionate Tendulkar fan, diligent minion of the ‘evil empire’, persistent writer at http://parthp.blogspot.com, self-confessed Hindi movie geek, avid quizzer, awesome husband (for lack of a humbler adjective) and a thrilled father of two. He grew up in Mumbai and spent the last eleven years really growing up in the U.S. and is always looking to brighten up his day through good coffee and great puns.
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