The TimePass of India

"Tu orkut pe hai?" asked Rahul Bhat or Bhatti as he was known. Puberty had hit him late and in his 2nd year of engineering this genius of the class was asking me if I was on Orkut.

I kid you not, I thought it was some sort of software, something related to mechanical design or analysis or something. The year was 2005 and I wasnt too much into anything those years so you could forgive me for not knowing what had already started to become a phenomena in India back then. I called it the #1 thing that changed India in the last 10 years. You can read that blog post here.

But this is not a nostalgic post highlighting the good old days of Orkut and superior privacy and how they didnt conduct experiments on its users. This is a post about how Orkut empowered guys like me. How it made us more confident among other things.

I was a shy guy. I would never be able to walk up to anyone and say hi. It always had to be the other guy. If it was a girl I had a crush on, she would never know till many years later by which she would have already changed two boyfriend and the newest one would have a CBZ (its a bike, kinda big deal back then)

There's this song by Boyzone, dont remember all the lyrics, but it goes - It's only words, and words is all I have to take your heart away. -- Those words could be spoken words, or thanks to Orkut, these words could now be written. Much simpler for guys like me, we could write things down, without having the fear of shot down or laughed at. You like a girl in your class? Or Computer Science class? (if you are an Mech Engineering student) Send her a friend request. If she accepts it could mean only 3 things -

1. She likes you back
2. She has no idea who the hell you are but shes nice so doesnt want to seem smug
3. She just wants to increase the number of friends.

It was usually the 3rd one. But that was okay. Boys like us were one inch closer to girls. Maybe the girls will say hi the next time they meet in the hallway. How could they not, we were "Orkut friends" after all. Even if they didnt, it was okay. We could always send them a scrap - You looked very nice at the freshers' party. 3 other boys would paste the exact same thing below. Demand supply mein problem hai actually...

I found myself on Orkut. Though a late adopter, I was hooked immediately. It was so much fun. You could form communities, troll your friends, scrap each other and the best part - Write testimonials. There were 3 types of testimonial writers -

1. Who write testis only for friends out of genuine respect for friendship
2.Who write testis expecting a testi in return
3. Who write testis only for girls, praising them, hoping they would notice them and talk to them, heck even go out with them.

Mostly 3rd type.

I am thankful to Orkut. It made me the cool guy that you see today and wonder how he can be so awesome. But seriously, I got my long time girlfriend and now wife on Orkut. No, no, I didnt send her a frandship request or anything. We were friends in school and then she moved to the United States. Somehow she found me on orkut and added me.

She was always out of my league. Today, for as awesome as I am, I still think I am striving to be better everyday so that I can deserve her. If I feel that when I am so full of myself today, had I met her in person back then, it would have been impossible for me to woo her. Orkut and the distance between us made sure we didnt meet face to face too much and I got my written words to do the talking for me.

Orkut gave me the confidence guys like me deserve. There are so many of us out there, ladies, its sad most of you would never manage to meet us, had it not been for Orkut. I feel the we live in a much better world now where most of us have a level playing field. And this is not just for romantic relationships.

Now that they are shutting it down, I feel sad. It seems like yesterday Bhatti had animatedly asked me to come on Orkut. I want to thank him for the idea. I havent logged on to the site in ages. But I didnt think they would turn it off. For me, it was something I would show my kids to -- this is where it all started. Maybe they would read this post one day and marvel at the times gone by.

But for this moment, all I wanna do is, save and read my testimonials again and again and again...

-Arshat Chaudhary

As a kid I used to love New Year eve... It was one of those days when you could spend all night being awake - all night meaning 12.30 am. There would be these comedy programs on DD-1, some of them were really good. Good times those were - we were young, fireworks were limited to Diwali and even DD-1 had good programming.

Things change in every decade. Especially in a country like India.

The 1990s saw reforms being brought in. IT companies sprang up. Graduates out of Engineering colleges lapped up jobs like never before... at salaries that made grown men cry. Shahrukh Khan became a sensation. It became acceptable that a young girl in India could have SRK's poster in her bedroom. Days of hiding Rajesh Khanna or Rishi Kapoor's photos in thick Chemistry journals were over. Owning a Computer was a big deal. Most of us hadnt seen a laptop. A generation used to cars like Fiat and Ambassador was warming up to Hyundai Santro. The Indian cricket team was same old same old... Match fixing allegations, losing matches abroad on a regular basis, giving up on the match 10 overs before the last ball was bowled - typical.

I know 15 year olds are reading this and wondering what the hell I am talking about!

I was 15 back in 2000. Things were changing. Not just in the world but also with me. I was loosing interest in WWF sports cards and gaining interest in girls. I was almost six feet then and facial hair was there to stay.

I was also pissed off on a couple of my friends who told me that the world would end in 2000. I was pissed off at all those people at Aaj Tak (It was just a short news program on DD back then) who kept talking about the Y2K. I also have to kick the butt of all those guys at "Beyond 2000" a show on Discovery channel about how things would change in the new millennium - None of that happened... What a bummer!°

Anywhooo... Talking about the 10 things that changed us, changed India -

Yes, Orkut and not Facebook changed the way India made "Frands"... Finally here was a platform were even Engineers could make female friends. The best thing about Orkut was the privacy and the lack of it - You could be a real perv and check out the photos of that hot girl from school. You could keep a track of what your school friends have been accomplishing - Have they grown fat or Bald or have they joined a gym and have a semi-naked photo as their profile pic?

I am not too fond of anything new. So, when my friends had been lining up to click photos with the camera phone (the, and not 'a' camera phone, because there was only ONE cam phone in the class back then!) I was satisfied not being socially active.

But then I did become socially active and how! I have had my fair share of orkut addiction. I am thankful to Orkut for bring back some of the closest friends I had back in school. I have to thank them specially for one such friend, but then, that is a subject of a different post.

Orkut is dead now. Only people in Tier 3 cities like upcoming Indore and Vishakhapatnam use Orkut. The world has moved on to Facebook.

I have a 13 year old friend who is on Facebook or FB as they call ot. I asked him if he knew what Orkut was - and he gave me a blank look! I can now definitely say I was a part of the Orkut generation - when did you think we would have an name for our generation - not that our elder would give us, but what we would give ourselves!

India are the favourites to win this World Cup. It wasnt the case in 1999. The Indian team was in ruins. If you have watched our team surrender the match as soon as Sachin got out and now Watch a 100+ run partnership between Yusuf Pathan and No. 10 Zaheer Khan, you wouldnt believe it was the same team.

With all due respect to Dhoni and his men, it was Sourav and hi men who dreamt of a fearless Indian team.

I am biased here. I have been a staunch Ganguly fan for the last 10 years. I still am. In spite of all the humiliation that he had to go through from being dropped from the Indian team in 2005 to the last IPL auction. Sourav Ganguly is the hero that we needed in early 2000s. He did what he had to do and he did it with style. Even last year he was the amongst the highest run getters in IPL - this, when he was out of form!

If we win the World Cup this year, which I ll be surprised if we didnt, a lot of it because of Sourav's vision.

There are fewer companies that have impacted our lives more than Google. When internet companies like yahoo were busy drafting out revenue models, which essential means finding out ways to screw white people around the world (coz brown people are smart enough not to pay anything for anything digital), google was giving away stuff for free! - Like Gmail's promise of never having to delete a single email because of its unlimited space. Yahoo was charging it's customers 10$ for the same service.

There was a time when you would come home from college and open up - gmail, orkut and blogger in that order - all of them google offerings.

There are companies like Shell who have made a lot of money selling oil and stuff, but Google guys are the ones who have really changed the way we think, the way we work, the way we imagine!

Okay, go ahead and blast me. But if I cared what people thought, would Ganguly come up at #2?

Bhagat changed the way India reads. Back in 2000, only kids in South Mumbai who had parents and grandparents who had studied from the same school could boast of reading novels and eating in McDonalds.

But now thanks to Chetan Bhagat's Rs.99 novels and McDonald's Rs.25 menu, kids from all around India can now boast of doing both.

Bhagat unfairly has to bear the flak of critics who actually are criticizing any IIT-IIM Delhi guy writing stupid stories which revolve around sex. In 1999, Indians would laugh it off if someone said an Indian movie could be based on a novel, but 3 idiots was based on 5 point someone as much as Vidhu Chopra and Co would like to disagree.

Only Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie and other who had spent their student lives in the costliest of schools in India and then moved on to the US or the UK usually without scholarship with all expenses paid by father's textile business had the right to write "literature". Chetan changed all that - with just one book.

My novel obviously is above Bhagat and these other kids who start writing because their 6th std English teacher told them that they can write. My novel was about love, life and a fight. I wrote it because I wanted to convey an awesome story about an underdog. I like underdogs. I guess most of us are underdogs in a way.

For people who dont know what I am talking about and where you can buy my book - Please go here for awesomeness - www.arshatchaudhary.com (PR bhi important hai bhai!)

Land is the only asset that doesnt depreciate. (Something I learnt at MDI, Gurgaon) The reason, it's limited! So out went the textile mills of Mumbai and in came the Malls! Out went the dusty roads and Mustard fields of Gurgaon and in came the Malls! - I can do this with most other cities, but get the point!

Malls in India have become a way of life. Every time you have to meet someone or go b'day shopping for your friend, then instead of going to the local market and haggling for 30 rupees, you chose to go to a swanky mall and buy something cheap from Big Bazaar if your friend was cheap or buy something from Lifestyle if your friend was, well, a girl! :P

Going by the swankiness of the malls in India, they arent behind anyone. There are the same brands that are there, in say, Europe. I think only Dubai has swankier malls, but then, who want to go to a mall to have a burkha clad woman in Dubai sell you CK perfumes! That would be a serious case of Brand mismanagement! (Something else I learnt at MDI, Gurgaon)

In the 1990s -

In the 2000s -

Teenager: Dad! Jisse koi nahi employ karta, usse BPO naukri hai! *Amitabh Bacchan ki movies wala music in the background*

BPOs changed us. It made acne ridden Tier 2 and Tier 1 cities kids feel more confident about their non-existent skills! These kids would call us US acting as one of their own, which really goes to say about their levels of low confidencery! I mean, who would want to be one of Michael instead of Mahesh? It's all screwed up. But then, at least it increased the sale of Jockey boxers in India.

In every path breaking movie in the last 10 years, Aamir has been an important part.

From Dil chahta hai to Taare Zameen Par (both of which I liked but wasnt particularly impressed by) to Lagaan, which should have won an Oscar, to Ghajini, an awesome marketing gimmick, to Rang De Basanti - every movie that aamir has been a part of has been path breaking in one way or the other.

No one would have given a chance to movies like Dhobi ghat or such in 1999. Back then Kaho na pyaar hai made people happy, not to say we have changed a lot in that respect - we still made sure Dabangg was the highest grossing movie in the history of Bollywood.

When Amitabh Bacchan hung his boots after his last movie Khuda Gawah, for our parents, it was the end of an era. But then ABCL, Amitabh's production company ran into losses and thus began AB's second innings. After disastrous movies like Mrityudata and Lal Badshah (can you believe I still remember the names of these movies?), people who loved him felt he should have stayed at home or entered into politics like his peers.

But then came Kaun Banega Crorepati, and with one master stroke and a white french beard, Big B was back right into our living rooms on Thu at 9. It didnt take him long to make way into our hearts. His "lock kiya jaaye?", "sure? confident?" and "ufsos!" became part of daily slang - in a way he became as big as he was during his peak - How was he different from Deewar's angry young man who would lock the gate behind him and say - "Tum mujhe dhoondh rahe ho aur main tumhara yahan intezaar kar raha hoon"

Then there was the added benefit of winning 1 crore rupees (taxes apply) along with meeting Big B. I remember how when people used - Phone a friend, the people on the other side of the phone went crazy and bantered about how they watched his movies bunking college and stuff... IT probably didnt make much sense to our generation, but one look at our parents in our living room and their smiles made it clear that they had done such a thing as well...

All of us spent hours getting through the phones lines of KBC and getting that one question answered. If you got the answer right, you waited for them to call you back. It was a simpler time. But we knew, TV would never be the same.

iPod for an Indian doesnt necessarily mean Apple iPod. Any device that can be carried and plays music can be referred to by this term.

For a country thats music crazy, movie crazy, dance crazy - iPod was a God sent. It took the world by storm. But obviously 90% of users of so called generic portable music players would have no idea about Apple. They use Chinese models which are actually made in Taiwan!

You wonder how people who belong to poorer sections of the society can afford these players. That is only till you see how cheap they cost. The only problem that I think is what they face must be updating their music. But if you look at their playlist, it would consists of the choicest Kumar Sanu songs from 1990s. They dont need to update their music. They are happier stuck in better times.

Okay, maybe iPod or the concept didnt change us in a big way. But when you see everyone from a rickshaw driver to a pav bhaji wala having his ears stuffed white earphones listening to the latest Himesh song, you cant help but feel that entertainment should be free for everyone.

There was a time when having a mobile was considered to be a status symbol That was 1998.

Then Reliance happened. I still remember the Rs.501 advert for a mobile. Sehwag and Sehwag ki maa, took India by storm. Everybody was talking about it. Everybody was wondering if Dhirubhai ka sapna might also have to be parting off with their hard earned money. Like always, the buiness class decided to take the risk of buying it while the working class thought of ways to avoid buying it till Dhirubhai's dream sequence became clearer.

There came a time when your carpenter, painter, vegetable seller, housemaid would give you miscals and you would have to call them back only for them to tell you that they were watching a movie in the nearest Multiplex and would not be able to come work that day.

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