Domain Maximus

My heart aches. I am fighting back the tears of indignation that well up. Cannot cry during Diwali, I tell myself, as I sob in time with the roaring of the AC in the office so that no one notices.

How could you people do this to me? How could you let me carry on this blog with two copies of the exact same blogroll on the sidebar of this page for two whole weeks without as mush as a peep.

All you people care about are the blog posts and the content and the wisecracks and all that. I am just  a piece of meat, with some words thrown all over it, for you guys.

I feel used. I have removed the extra blogroll. But our relationship is never going to be the same again.

ROAR! Sob!

In other news the missus managed to destroy the tryanny of under-connectivity perpetrated upon us by the vile people at Wilson Cable here in Wadala East. She is terribly proud of it and I think it only right that I tell you all about her moment of inspiration which now helps me, literally, to run around anywhere in the house and browse porn interesting material on applied sciences and contemporary sociology.

The Wadala East area is heavily under the control of a cable-internet cartel managed by the people at Wilson Cable. They may sound like a nice, warm and friendly outfit in the english countryside as depicted by Blyton or Herriot.

"Hey it’s the man from Wilson! Hello Tommy! Top of the morning to you laddie. Good show with that Set Top Box. DVD quality indeed!".

To which the real Wilson Cable people from Antop Hill would respond: "Oh why don’t you pop over with me to this khopcha and I could, perhaps, feast you on some of my special and copious  kharcha pani."

You take panga with these people at your own risk. They have their own TV channel and stuff. These are bad asses I tell you. Ms. D’Costa from upstairs refused to pair her bill last year on account of poor picture quality. Then one day she went to the airport to catch a flight and was never heard from since. (Some say she migrated to Canada. But we are not believing that story.)

And yet the missus prevailed. Woo hoo!

The thing is this. We have a 256 kbps connection laid to our home by the people from Wilson. Now they may be tough nuts but they are reliable people to do business with. The connection works well and more than once, minutes away from a column deadline, they have repaired a down line so I can mail off things.

Two years ago, when we first got the connection, you could plug in the ethernet line into any PC’s lan port and dial up. All you needed was a PPPOE connection. (Look it up. Basically it is a way to put a dial up connection on the end of a broadband connection so that there is some security and control.)

Then suddenly one day we received a call from the Wilson Cable office. There was a moment of discomfort in the home when we saw the caller id flashing. What did…. gulp… they want… with us? Gulp. Shudder.

"Ab ek hi MAC address chalega… Nahi… Sorry… Bas ek. Aapko kuch problem hai to aap ek kaam keejiye, Antop Hill Wilson office mein aayiye… Oh Ramu! Woh peeche waalah ‘discussion’ room khulwake rakhna…"

Apparently some genius had signed up for one of their unlimited internet connections and then, through a router, set up an illegal internet cafe. So they decided that henceforth they would have two types of accounts: cheap single user accounts for poeple like us, and more expensive multi-user accounts subject to location checking and vetting.

We did not complain and continued to use several laptops on our connection, all using MAC address spoofing but, of course, only lappie at a time. And we always paid Wilson Ke-bill on time. Heh! (Phew. That one’s been inside me for months.)

Then last week, the tech geek that I am, I decided to have a wifi enabled home. This way I could work online not only in the bedroom, but also absolutely anywhere in the living room. Imagine!

Two days later a shiny, cute Netgear wifi router was shipped in by Ebay and I eagerly unpacked it with dreams of complete domestic mobile computing in my eyes.

Eight hours later I went to bed with the sheer ecstasy of someone who had just wasted eight hours of his life and 2000 bucks (inclusive of VAT) of his hard earned money.

I had forgotten one simple fact. Stupid me. Even if I had spoofed MAC ids all over the place on both lappie and router, the network would still not allow more than one device to access it. Therefore even if I was hooked up to the internet, and the lappie was hooked up to the router I could do nothing with the network.

"Connection ek, aur computer do! Bahut na insaafi hai!" the network would say unnecessarily falling back on a tired Sholay cliche yet again.

Therefore I was adamantly left offline. Completely unable to get on the net and do anything.

Except, of course, obsessively update the software on the Netgear router.

But after four hours of this, the initial exuberance dims somewhat. "Goddammit you fool! NO NEW FIRMWARE VERSION! F&@# I quit!" was the sort of message the router was beginning to spew.

I gave up and went to bed. A sad, broken man.

Next morning I gave the wonderful people at Wilson a call to find out what was wrong.

"Aapne ghar pe ROUTER lagwa diya!" he said with undue emphasis on that exclamation mark. Apparently I had broken some unmentioned rule of the Cable Omerta. After a few moments of pregnant silence he said that this would not work and I would HAVE to take a multi-user account. At a little more than double the rent I pay now. "Main aapko ek aisa offer doonga jisko aap mana nahi kar sakte!" he said. I hung up immediately and ran for protection to the honourable Don Bosco chapel nearby.

Later at home I walked over to the router, packed it back into it’s box, then into the Ebay envelope and then placed it on the coffee table in the living room to forever remind me of my folly.

That evening, back home from work, the wife suddenly had a brainwave. The sort of idea that only comes to those truly gifted with IT. A eureka moment sans compare.

"Use the router as a node. Don’t let it dialup. Then connect to the wifi network with lappie and dialup as usual. Should work…"

I had tears in my eyes. I ran to her and fell to my knees as I tripped over the internet wire. But no matter. I got up and did exactly as she wanted me to: did the dishes and put out the washing to dry.

Then I worked on the router.

Would you believe it? It was working perfectly. Now we have internet anywhere at home. Everywhere at home.

Truly we are a tech advanced household.

If you want to see how it works you are welcome to drop in for a looksee. However we have hidden away the router behind the flush tank of the attached bathroom.

We don’t want them Wilson Cable people ever finding out. And don’t you be telling them a word. Silencio. Mucho secreto! Grazie.

Ciao.

Every once in a while, well every few years really, there used to be a small fire in or around the building we lived in Abu Dhabi. Nothing major. Nothing glamourous. Just a little short circuit in an apartment nearby or one of those old white and silver, heavy as hell, National brand irons with the striped cord abandoned on an old ironing board. Something unremarkable like that.

(One of the universal truths about residential buildings in Abu Dhabi, maybe all of the UAE, was that the freaking fire alarms were always broken when you moved in. I have NEVER seen a building in those parts which had that "Break glass in case of fire!" devices intact. My dad always thought those pesky arab kids did it.)

Touch wood, no drastic fire type things happened while I was there but we had a routine drilled into us by my dad for just the occasion: "Ditch everything, pick up the bag with the passports and RUN! Okay fine. Walk briskly!"

My dad, like most veteran NRI’s, is paranoid about passports. And it doesn’t even have to be his or his family’s passports. The moment he walked into an airport he’d spot somebody with their passport in their backpocket or some firang just leaving it out there on the duty free restaurant table or something like that. (This was a rather disconcerting habit with citizens of countries where replacement passports did not mean calling James (agent) in Worli who would talk to a ‘friend’ (Patil) in the passport office, who would then do his duty, as a Govt. servant, to take only Rs. 2000 (Assistance fee) and give you the contact of someone else (Khobragade) in the office who would come and collect all your papers and then within just three days, exactly as may be expected from the Tatkal service, disappear forever from your life taking with him the LAST attested copy of your leave and licence agreement.)

Dad, on spotting such lax passport maintenance, would then hyperventilate. He’d start mumbling to himself and telling  us how we must never leave our passports out like that and always inside a bag. If not somehow surgically within our bodies itself.

Dad kept our’s within an inside zipper pouch which itself was hidden inside the central compartment of a chunky Samsonite travel bag that was then secured to the body of my father by a stout leather strap, which was wound around at least three limbs and one neck (sometimes all his) at any given time.

The sad thing was a little bit of all this paranoia rubbed off on me as well.

So if you see a slightly perturbed looking portly man, handsome in a George Clooney sort of way, at the airport, palming his pockets frantically every fifteen minutes or so, you should walk up and say hi. It’s probably me. Or my dad.

So imagine my panic when, last month, I was impatiently waiting for someone from our party to turn up at the airport with my papers for the flight to Malaysia which would leave in two hours.

And by papers I mean everything. Tickets. Passports. Visa. Spending money. Hotel bookings. Tour plans. Contact numbers. Everything except my PAN Card. Which I had lost during the honeymoon in Rajasthan. (Don’t ask how or why.)

Inside, mentally, I was in utter disarray. My mind created various scenarios whereby I would forever be cleaved from my passport. Had the travel agency guy scooted off with it? What if the member of our tour party, who had everyone’s papers, got looted by a rogue taxi driver? Had he been bragging about the trip in public drawing unsavoury elements towards him?

Outside, in order to not alarm the missus, I appeared perfectly calm. Composed.

"Stop that sobbing and sniffing my man! The guy will be here soon enough!" the missus said handing me a paper napkin.

Thankfully, an hour or so just before the flight, MQ landed with the package. And for the first time the group congregated as one. We looked around and nodded. Eight intrepid travelers. So this was the merry bunch I would spend four days in Malaysia with.

It was pretty much the kind of company I was expecting. Except that it was completely not.

Three weeks before that tense night at the airport Rashmi passed on the email from the Tourism Malaysia people with a stern warning.

R: "These press junkets are loaded with old fogey freeloaders who are there only to enjoy the freebies, drink free booze and wind down away their twilight years as unpleasant gruff news hacks. You will loathe their company the moment you set eyes on them."

S: "Free booze you say?"

R: "You are missing the point Sidin. If you are on one of those package type tours made by those Raj Travels type people then you will have to spend all your time with these old men. And get none on your own…"

S: "Free booze you say?"

So when I was suddenly faced with an array of lively, bubbly youths fresh from the campuses of assorted Mumbai colleges I was taken aback.

Of course there was one other press person. The initially enigmatic but later lively PD who wielded her pen for the venerable Time Out Mumbai magazine. She was the first one I met at the airport. I shook hands with her in a lively fashion and then went on to crack a dozen or so lively jokes in order to break the ice. PD seemed to enjoy them if one interpreted, liberally, her cold stare and later aloofness.

Perhaps when I said youths I was not clear enough. The six youngsters had their parents all at the airport to drop them off. There was the usual last morsels of advice: "Zyaada non-veg mat khaana! Late night party sharty mat karo. Phone card se call karna. Hamesha saat rehna… Arrey! Is uncle bhi aapke saat hai kya?!!!"

I made a futile attempt to blend into airport scenery. The wife was nowhere to be seen.

I was told, firmly, to take care of all the kids and make sure they came back in one piece. (Each one of them individually I mean. Not all of them in one huge piece. Though any more uncle references and I could arrange that.) I nodded and quickly entered the airport after bidding the wife a hasty goodbye by sms.

Inside the terminal MQ quickly handed out our packets which contained return tickets, passports (phew!), photos and some tour schedules and information. It all came in a dull blue folder with the words "Raj Travels" emblazoned on it.

Hmm. This trip was getting interestinger and interestinger.

To be continued…