The Return of the Naive - II

Three weeks have passed since I landed in Trivandrum and I'm still in the process of settling down. The BSNL saga continues, more of which later. The first few days have been eventful for the lack of any meaningful events. Not that I didn't try. The small renovation and cleaning of my Bhoot Bungalow is looking more like the execution of a hydel dam project by the Government. Never ending. Never leaving the starting blocks, for that matter. The electrician comes around, dirties my walls and spends a few days burning my pocket. Mercifully, the rest of the guys don't turn up that often and I have saved some money.

The first night I was lying awake in bed (partly due to the time difference) when the muezzin from the nearby mosque summoned the faithful for prayers at 5 in the morning. This was something that never bothered me before as I used to be up before that. Now, however, with my six-month old son sleeping next to me, I was a bit worried. Ever since his birth I had put a lid on my noise generating activities such as uncontrolled sneezing and raucous gaseous releases caused by the intake of lentils etc., for fear of waking up my child. While my kid was, luckily, not disturbed by the muezzin's call, it triggered a new idea in my mind.

The idea was to put to use technology to assist such activities. With broadband and Internet becoming ubiquitous, it'd be a good idea to utilize VoIP, narrowcasting or some such technology for this. For one, bringing in high tech, would help remove the West's notion that Islam is a religion rooted in the medieval ages. And secondly, it won't give unsolicited wakeup calls to the non-faithful. In fact, this technology could be incorporated by other religions also. Like, for instance, to route the techno-beat from temple utsavams to the houses of the faithful. It'd also help people circumvent the Supreme Court order banning loudspeakers.

Talking about loudspeakers, I'm witnessing an election after many years. This is for the Trivandrum parliament seat and the various parties are already cranking up the loudspeakers. A new party called the Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran), or DIC(K) is aligned with the Left this time. The DIC(K) head, Mr. Karunakaran was explaining how he'll use the sickle to cut down to size his former protege who is representing his former party. Promises to be an interesting fight.

The BSNL saga. I got the Internet connection from BSNL in two weeks and though it did delay certain activities (like updating thekkuvadakku.com), I was not inconvenienced much. Then I started asking them for the e-mail details that come with the broadband connection and things started turning ugly. At first, the number routine - "Call this telephone number" - was enacted, which went on for a few days. At times, I was treated like a war criminal in a Baghdad kangaroo court. Then after a week they told me it'll take many more days. No reason was given. I told myself "Patience is a virtue", in an accent used by Kishore Kumar when impersonating a Tamil Brahmin.

Later on, I found out that there was some kind of strike going on inside BSNL and somebody had screwed up the mail server. They could've told me that in the first place and I'd have immediately supported their cause. I love anarchy. The BSNL dudes (and dudettes), however, turned out to be sissies. Is this the way to organize a protest? Screwing up a mail server and probably inconveniencing one person (me) in the process. They should have brought the whole shebang down. No phones, no Internet, no smut surfing. That would have got people to notice their suffering. These guys obviously needed a lesson in protesting and as if on cue, the Marxist Party's Politbureau exhorted IT guys to unionise. "IT workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your stupid logins".

P.S. While I do support the BSNL employees in their rightful fight for rights, I have to cross the picket line (known as Karingali behaviour in Malayalam, a word that is sometimes prefixed to Mr. Karunakaran, the DIC(K) head) as I have to work for a living. I'm currently on the lookout for a new provider.

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