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Ashok Hegde
For ages, man has pondered the question, is there life after death.
For ages, he has also pondered the question, is there life in outer
space.
For the past few days, I have been pondering the question, is there life
on
the Net.
While man is still grappling with the first two, I believe I have the
answer
to the last one:
There isn't. At least not life as I know it.
Infancy :
Life as I know it:
When I was born, my parents celebrated with a round
of
pedhas to everyone in sight. My mother was inundated with advice. From
granny, who threw the sheer weight of her experience around. From our
neighbour, a mother of three, pitching in with her two bits of dos and
don'ts. From the bai, who had nursed more babies than mom ever would.
Is this life?:
If I were born today, my parents would most likely
celebrate
by hosting a site in my name or, for a couple of thousand dollars, name
me
after a site. Imagine reading an article by Iuma.com.
Advice would come via the stray e-mail from grandma and any of over a
thousand sites, armed with a battery of counsellors, child
psychiatrists,
experts, paediatricians, even astrologers. These sites would help mom
set
reminders about my feeding times, vaccination dates and what have you;
choose the right bio-degradable nappies from an affiliated online mall;
and
redeem points from the purchase for a feeding bottle.
Childhood:
Life as I know it:
I remember much of my childhood vividly, especially
the
times when my parents had to leave me with the neighbour's brood to
fulfil
their social obligations.
We would fight over Ludo and, if we were
lucky,
ruin a new pack of cards. I also remember doing my Math homework on a
notebook full of squares. And getting a rap on my knuckles for playing
with
the globe on my father's study, under the pretext of understanding
geography.
Is this life?:
Today, I would be left with a Netnanny. Math homework
would
be interactive sessions on the net with a professor in Germany; and
geography, three-dimensional maps with streaming audio commentary. All
this
would be monitored long distance by my parents, thanks to their
WAP-enabled
mobile gizmos.
 Youth:
Life as I know it: It was fun to be young. College meant ‘the canteen’.
Recreation was trying to woo the neighbourhood heartthrob, or taking
sneak
peeks at dog-eared copies of Playboy, secreted behind the flush tank.
Sport
was gulli cricket, usually followed by furious scampering at the sound
of
splintering glass.
Is this life?: Today, college is a virtual university. Recreation is a
budding chat relationship in a popular singles hangout with a
14-year-old
blue-eyed blonde -- who may or may not be any of them, 14 years,
blue-eyed
or blonde -- in Oklahoma.
Or getting into a site that prohibits you from
entering, and then prompts you for a credit card number at the first
click
of the mouse. Sport is a multiplayer role playing game, usually followed
by
an exchange of cheat sheets and strategies.
 Adulthood:
Life as I know it:
When I passed out of college, one of the first things
I
did was write up my application letter (one whole page that submitted my
candidature for their esteemed perusal, promised performance to the best
of
my ability, with a postscript to please find enclosed a bio-data, which
was
a précis of my uneventful life in about five lines).
Then I posted it to
every situation vacant ad in the TOI classifieds. Which, I assume, ended
up
any of three ways: never reached, never read, read and trashed. Since no
one
ever bothered to reply.
Once you have crossed into adulthood by getting a job, you are faced
with
your second rite of passage: matrimony.
Marriages were certainly not
made in
heaven. They were made by resourceful aunts, leveraging their network
within
the community to find a suitable bride and, if you insisted, a suitable
price. Or, they were made by the dictates of the heart, which usually
ended
up in a touch of rebellion and a nervous wait outside a reluctant
registrar’
s rundown office.
Is this life?:
Today, one of the first things I would do, passing out of
college, is log onto the net for help in preparing my digital resume. I
wouldn't, for the life of me, read The Times of India or submit the said
resume for anybody's however-esteemed perusal. I would simply upload it
to
any of over a hundred sites, who in turn, would, use complex algorithms
and
text-matching techniques to find an employer for me and vice-versa.
At the end of the day, I would have a couple of job offers in my inbox, along
with unsolicited advice on career planning and sales pitches for maroon
blazers.
Marriages are still not made in heaven. Nor do resourceful aunts figure
in
the process. They are made by databases, which have perfected the art of
profile-matching. Period.
This is as far as I go. You may log in, some time in the future, from
your
wearable PCs, and read slices from the next two stages on your active
matrix
bifocals. Till then, I will leave you with a sobering thought for what I
consider the last stage of life as I know it, though a few of my more
optimistic friends disagree.
 Death:
When I die, I hope those close to me give me a decent farewell and not
some
megabytes of space in a Flash-animated virtual graveyard. And I also
fervently hope my epitaph does not read: Logged in on July 7, 1967.
Logged off...
Hell, as old hands on the Net say, "Get a life, maan!"
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