A Month-Ful of SNOTRA!!

On a day of Mow-gleeing around in the Delhi-hot month of April, Mowgli was lured by Daisey and Balloo with the promise of a cup of tea, a bushel of bananas and a mirror (Admittedly, Mowgli’s best friend lives in the mirror and has fabulous biceps. Mowgli could spend hours just looking at his best friend)!!
But Mowgli was in for a surprise!  He was given all that he hoped to get, but was then confronted … With what was an Idea!
Balloo and Daisey had been planning it out for days. There was also a hidden hand in their plot. That of Dexter, the narcissistic genius.
They interrupted him in his leering at the bananas, and he had to comply in the presence of the more civil toons. “Look at this”, said Daisey, pointing at an idiot box, which real people call “a computer”, her big eyes gleaming with anticipation. Balloo stood behind Mowgli with a toothy grin, a tummy-apart, and peering over Mowgli’s head at the screen.
Mowgli was transfixed now, thoughts of a past life started rolling in his mind’s eyes like a celluloid reel. Days spent in a land far far away, at a time back back in the space-time continuum.  Those were days when he wore formals, wrote long e-mails, developed codes and did lots of things. Things which he then thought of as harbingers of a crappy life were now coming back to him as romantic thoughts.
The intoxicating smell of bananas was not alluring anymore. The friend in the mirror turned out to be a mere reflection.  On the screen was a demo webpage, one of a planned website called PCS India Portal. A code-let in Mowli’s head executed, it said:
window.open(“<http://www.back2humanways.com>”).
In the hours that passed, a flourish of imaginations and possibilities kept the three friends occupied. 27^th May, the day they were to be done with their own UPSC prelims was decided as the day of action. 9^th June, the day of the Chhattisgarh PSC prelims was to be the D-day. PCS India portal was to be up and running by 5^thJune.
After a rush of imaginations, Mowgli was back to civil ways, and Balloo ever so jolly, were standing outside, in the balcony, sipping tea and discussing cricket and MS Dhoni for a change, when a Honda Civic went past on the road below. Mowgli looked at the Civic blankly and thought out aloud, “I’ll buy a black BMW M3 convertible”. As he turned around, he found a tummy shaking wildly as Balloo, the toon that belonged to the tummy laughed uncontrollably.

27^th May, The day of Action: Daisey had left for Duck-a-bad, her home town, for a couple of days but Dexter the narcissistic genius was now here. The mission was in the “Go” mode. Pages after pages were designed and readied. Online news-papers from as far back as Jan 2012 were scanned and articles collected to be uploaded on to the website.
Everyday Balloo and Mowgli would spend a couple of hours imagining what was to come, while Dexter would be hooked on his first love, the computer and never let go. Dexter would occasionally interrupt Balloo’s and Mowgli’s flight of imagination with, “Tumlog dunno ekdum bekaar admi log hai! Khaali sapna dekhte rehta hai, kuchh kaam nai karta hai.”
Daisey was back after a week even though she had left for a “couple of days”, as is the rule of Duck-a-baad. “Trips are never planned, they just happen.” She got back all excited and chubbied up, having fed on mumma’s love served through delicacies (Indian moms…!!)
Then the fun began!!
Dexter would be stuck to the computer screen, adoring her, downloading softwares, learning how to use the softwares, working with softwares, getting frustrated when the software did not do what he wanted them to do, so searching for new softwares, downloadin softwares…. And the process continued till the miracle of technology, the computer, known for speed, would challenge snails for sucking at speed, which is when he would say, “Ab hum gussa gaye hain!” and un-install the softwares. And then… the cycle was started afresh.
Every couple of hours Dexter would turn around and say, “Is site ko hum itna gajab bana denge ki tumlog paglaa jaayega!”. Balloo and Mowgli, nearing the end of a string of imaginations would then be re-injected with thoughts and re-entered a cycle of imaginations.
Balloo had earlier applied for a registration of the company and Daisey had suggested the name “Snotra Technologies”. Snotra was the name of the Goddess of Wisdom in the Norse mythology. Everybody immediately liked the name and Balloo applied for a registration. Daisey would hereafter spend hours talking to friends on FB, sending e-mails to people near and far informing them about the new venture, and chuckling happily whenever someone congratulated her.
Mowgli would suddenly shout at her, “Tum khaali FB karti hai na, koi kaam nai karti.” A startled and hurt Daisey would turn around and say, “Ye important kaam hai, isse publicity hoti hai… Aur tum ek number ka chor hai!!” A heated fight ensued. This happened every other day. Still happens… regularly. So much so, that the Daisey-Mowgli fights are almost a ritual now.
Balloo and Daisey would download raw dumps of reports, studies etc to be uploaded as study materials on the website. Mowgli would do some backend coding, while Balloo handled the logistics. Occasionally Balloo would find a ball of paper, wind a rubber-band around it, find a hanger, a stick or anything that resembled a bat and have a game of cricket with Mowgli. Dexter and Daisey shouted at them at the top of their voices, as the paper-ball flew past their bodies or computer screens. The games are still on, but Balloo and Mowgli have graduated from paper balls to a yellow stress-ball with a smiley and from broken hangers to a broken mop-handle!!

Office-Office: One day Balloo came and announced that he had booked a place for an office. Everybody was excited. Dexter was so excited that he “looked up”!!! He stopped doing what he was doing and looked up to ask, “Kitna bada hai?” Balloo replied with a “Bahut bada hai!!”
Daisey and Mowgli planned that they would pull their formals out of the closet and wear formals to the office every day. Balloo said he’d only wear suits!!
The next morning, Mowgli along with Balloo were mopping the floors of the office space, smeared with distemper after a fresh whitewash. Mowgli was wearing a white t-shirt and track pants, now turned black and brown and yellow with all the sweat and dust. It made a dirty pattern, appearing to complain to all on-lookers, “This man has violated me.” Balloo was wearing a ¾ with a torn pocket and a t-shirt with some holes. Colours indistinguishable!

Trapped in the NET:The web-pages were ready, the office was decked with new glossy furniture, new computers, everything nice and shiny!
Balloo, Dexter and Mowgli went to get a corporate internet connection. The service provider had offered a 16 Mbps connection at Rs 3500/- per month with a guaranteed zero downtime. The internet roared! Dexter downloaded 3 full movies in less than 15 minutes. Dexter had found Elysium!
The service providers called Balloo to their office to make the payments after the internet was activated. While Balloo was away, Mowgli, Daisey and Dexter were enjoying the fruits of a fast internet, downloading movies, watching movies live on Youtube, playing online games and doing everything deemed outrageous over the internet. But suddenly, the online movies started to buffer, the downloads showed “2 years 163 days” as the estimated time for completion. They were just about to shrug it off as a temporary glitch when Balloo entered and informed, “Abey yaar, 3500/- per Mbps per month thha. 50,000/- ka advance-payment maang raha thha. 2Mbps ka connection le liye. 7000/- de ke aa rahe hain.”
The D-Day:It was 9^th June. The D-day was here! The site was up. It was the most beautiful thing the quad had ever seen… so it seemed. They could’ve looked at it for hours at a stretch and yet not felt a hint of burn in their eyes. They were all mesmerized!
The Chhattisgarh PSC question papers had arrived. The answers were being worked out. The quad was raring to upload the answers and see the response. A lot of publicity had been done in and around Delhi and in Chhattisgarh. Students were informed that answer keys will be uploaded on the day of the exam. A counter was set on the PCS India Portal website to assess the traffic.
As promised to the aspirants, the answers were uploaded on the website by 7:00 pm, and then time stopped!
After what seemed to be a year, it was 7:30 pm and the counter read only 0000145. Mowgli wisely said, “Huh… So around a hundred visits. Not bad for starters.”The four sat and wrung their heads over how to increase traffic, where we were probably left wanting, how to publicize better etc. At around 8:00 pm, Daisey refreshed the home page and WOOW!!... The counter showed 0001337. She could not help a wide grin from breaking her corporate-composure. The grin turned to a chuckle when she refreshed it again after a minute. 0001478 it showed. 0001983… 0002213… 0004867…. The four were stuck to the screens for the next couple of hours,F5 seemed to be the only key of which they had any knowledge. The counter read more than 6000 by that night. Over the next three days, it crossed 16K hits!!

Snotra Now:A month has passed by. Days together have been spent upgrading PCS India Portal. Dexter has made the office his home. He even sleeps there! Balloo and Mowgli have done many night-outs in office while Daisey logs in from home.
The website is now four times as big in terms of the number of pages and features enabled, from when it came alive. And yet some of the most powerful features are being worked on and will be live in a few days.
The chubby-looking Daisey with big eyes is now “only eyes”. Balloo’s tummy is out of here and is replaced by a rather strange looking flat gift-of-fortune, which gives him an unfamiliar dude-ical look. Mowgli gets cramps if he tries to jump around, he’s lost some bulk and gained civility. Dexter’s hairs always seem to be standing on ends as if waving to others and saying, “Here I am!”
But for all of them, life was never more fun, labour never so satisfying and pain, never so sweet, as now, being in the company of friends, working with and for each other, creating something new!!
The joy of being together and the conviction of the quad in their ideas is intact and getting stronger. Snotra Technologies is here to stay, to grow, to prosper and to invite and accommodate many more into the friendship!!

( Mowgli, Daisey, Baloo and Dexter are real-life human entities and Snotra is a real company. PCS India Portal is a real portal and this is a real story)

AAP - To believe... Or not to believe??

The idea of a Revolution is as inviting as the idea of Love!

Love transcends all other emotions. There is the thrill of being swept off one's feet, the hope of finding 'The One', the promise of a new life and the desire of a life lived "Happily ever after"! Revolution gives one, the thrill and pride of standing for a cause, the promise of a new and better world and inspires dreams of a life lived "Happily ever after"!

From India's tryst with its revolution-of-sorts in the not-so-distant past, emerged Arvind Kejriwal, held by "the believers" as a harbinger of change, and the architect of India of their dreams. So deep is the faith in this hero that the believers dream of making him the PM of India ever since his party and he clinched the runners-up trophy in Delhi's electoral race. The story of the believers and the hero of the revolution is, in every way, classic romance, with the trust, the promise(s), the thrill, a hero, and many... many villains!!

Arvind Kejriwal (AK) was an enigma when he appeared on the scene, favoured by history through its absence. As the interest in the character grows, more and more facts are coming out. These facts would not paint a picture of piety to the lay, but the true believer will not be perturbed. Love finds a reason to grow where there is none!

Detractors charge AK with working for national interests, albeit of  nation(s) other than India. There is this blog-post with some documentary evidences which suggest that vested interests (Read CIA), have cradled AK through his career and are now seeking the fruits of his labour. Believers can completely overlook this accusation, because the "idea of love" makes one blind even to the obvious. Oversights are understandable, not to mention that a detailed investigation has not been done, as it will require state intervention and that has not come through yet. ( A PIL to this effect has been filed in the Delhi HC ) Apart from alleged CIA links via one Shimrit Lee, the calls for India's own "Tahrir Square" have not gone very well with thinking Indians. The fate of the Arab world caught up in the Jasmine Revolution and the interference of world powers attempting to make footholds and dictate internal affairs in each of these nations has added to speculations. To the love-lorn believers, however, the romance with a revolution is very much alive and AK, still a hero. 

The faith of many of those who saw promise in AAP and AK was further shattered with the now well-known issues with the funding of Manish Sisodia's NGO Kabir, of whose governing body, AK is a member. This case (if proved) establishes these founders of AAP not only as corrupt but also anti-national. There are other celebrated members of the party who have established reputations contrary to the "Crusaders for justice", "New age patriotic" and "Dry honest" image of itself that the party sought to project. Allegations of shady land deals on Anjali Damania and Mayank Gandhi are all too well known. The midnight raid by Somnath Bharti did not help the party's image. Somnath Bharti's murky past as a world-champion spammer, a pornography domain name vendor and his false statements have made him unpopular with netizens as well as Delhizens. Over the last few months AAP has added to its fold, terrorist sympathizers, naxal sympathizers, separatists and perceived anti-nationals of various hues and shades. While AAP becomes the parking lot for an increasing number of activists and intellectuals evoking national disgust, well-meaning Indians who had joined AAP believing it to be an act of patriotism, are leaving the party by the hundreds everyday. Though many believers stick on!! 

It would be fair to say that AAP has established that it can efficiently crusade for causes. They have the tactical wherewithal and ideas to bring up issues and create a traction on them. They have displayed their ability to manage the media efficiently and build useful connections. So much so, that many well known journalists are considering it as a viable career alternative. There have also been "krantikari" revelations about the intimacy some journalists share with AAP. Cases in point are, Ashutosh from IBN7 joining AAP as a full time politician and the infamous interview fixing with Punya Prasoon Bajpai. Also widely circulated on SM is a video where CNNIBN erases a small part which could have shown AK in poor light. There are many more speculations, not without good reason, of specific TV anchors / channels / editors favouring AAP. Obvious questions arise as to whether the favourable image of AAP in our minds was assiduously manufactured through sustained media sympathy, or maybe a strategy!! Belief is rife that it is a well thought strategy. This positions AAP as a vote-cutter, in favour of the ruling elites, the Congress, which has earned them the nickname of  the "Congress B-Team". Of course, to the believers, these are non-issues. The un-professionalism of journalists is a response to the call of "kranti", the favourable news is the truth and everything else is Ambani's / Adani's / Modi's conspiracy. Love finds no wrong with the darling and is readily at war with the wide world!

People are also disillusioned with the now apparent left leanings of the AAP in general and AK and his close coterie in particular. In an age when the world has realized that the left better be left alone, AAP's emergence is a promise for a future not very different from the not-so-favoured past. The moods, methods and rhetoric of this party are predominantly leftist. The opposition to everything, the efforts to infuse and diffuse the notion of victimhood, the positioning of business houses as true villains and covert kings, the call for "total revolution", and the idea of a magical world post revolution, are typical to AAP as they are to any flavour of leftist thought. Someone on SM phrased that the AAP's ideas "belong in a museum"! As is wont with adherents of any left ideologue, the believers are driven to such hopelessness and desperation that violence is the only visible alternative to them. This violence is manifest in the believers' conduct on SM, their propaganda, their proposed solutions and exceedingly in the mood of their protests as evident from the recent attack on the BJP HQ in Delhi and a general lack of remorse in them after the attack. The believers probably look on any non-adherents to their preference as villains and as in any romantic-action movie, the body count doesn't matter when the "pyar ke dushman" (enemies of love) are being eliminated!! 

The saga of AK's broken promises and U-turns is now in videos, on blogs and has been dealt with in detail on certain news channels, whom the believers now claim to be "Ambani's agents". A major casualty of these U-turns is a general decline in faith on activists and activism. AK has made the task of crusaders for causes of the present and future much more difficult by his conduct. Activism cannot succeed without people's participation and participation without trust is a dream in a dream! Of course the believers dream the dream in the dream and any of them reading this blog will vociferously attack this inference. 

A nation gearing up for a journey to the future needs vision, performance and achievements. Governance is the keyword! Unfortunately with AAP, the stated intent (details of which are yet not clear but broadly described as "nek irada" (good intentions)) notwithstanding, their idea and any experience in governance are non-existent. They jacked their one chance at developing and proving their prowess when they worked hard to dissolve their own government eyeing a larger pie. The average believer would drag me by the ear for having said this, for (s)he thinks ending corruption is all that is to governance and that everything else falls in place automatically. The fact though, is that corruption is a symptom of poor governance, but try explaining that to a believer!!

A symptomatic view of the nation's ailments has also made the believers ignore completely, the quality of leaders AAP is throwing up, as also the motivation of those joining AAP. The much touted candidate selection process has turned Chinese - good to look at but does not work! 

In the Delhi elections, AAP scurried to raise candidates to tap the mood of the state for a change of guard. The fact that hitherto unknown faces were propped up, were in line with AAP's rhetoric of giving power to the "Common man" and worked to its advantage. People soon realized that power best be given to the "capable man". "Commonality" is neither a necessary and far from sufficient qualification of a representative. The over-enthusiastic, inexperienced, elected AAP candidates did some monumental goof-ups with their new found power and privileges. Delhi's wounds turned sour when they were neither corrected nor held back. Rather their idiosyncrasies were promoted!!

The AAP put up a good show in Delhi in terms of winning seats. It now harboured LS ambitions too. In pursuit of its lofty dreams, it out-rightly refused to put time and efforts to identifying and bringing up good leaders. All these factors combined with a gross lack of options ensured that the next lot of leaders joining AAP are those who see an easy opportunity to "try a hand at politics". Then there are those disgruntled existing politicians, who did not find favours with their previous political parties. Quality of candidates is not something that AAP can boast of. Visibly, quality of candidates and governance records are non-issues for AAP. It is either being plain ignorant or too clever at that. However, it is a critical to the cause of governance! The believers, it seems are inspired to think that "governance" is another high-flying concept and that, with a Janlokpal and sans corruption, clerks and typists are all who are required to run a country. As (if) they, who are in love say, "Love is all we need... food is a luxury"!!

"Love is a beautiful feeling... it seeks no reason!", some say. It was some idiot who said it! 

Kill reason in the name of love and you shall live stupefied!! 

I can only hope and pray that the revolutionary, romantic, love-lorn, believers open their eyes to reason and distinguish what is, from what they see. I leave readers with words which might be of help:

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. 

-George Orwell