Saturday, July 17, 2010

Communication and the internet in India



Year 985AD,
King Raja Raja Chola Puri of Madurai wakes up after his deep sleep. Still yawning, he slowly walks up to his balcony with the twig in his mouth and a glass of Pakistani Inzamambazham fresh mango juice. Sipping juice he checks his balcony rim for new p-mails. There were 2 pigeons holding a chit each in their claws. He opens them one by one. One of them was from TamilPolygamy.com which offered a marriage refferal to add to his collection of wives. The other one referred Queen Shakeelam Devi from Kerala through MohanlalMatrimony.com. Meanwhile 4 different crows appeared on the rim of his balcony with their own chits. He opened them to find out that they were from random foreigners who sold Rolex watches or Performance enhancement herbs. "Maanamketta Spammergal(Shameless spammers)", he abused in pure Sangha Tamil,thereby venting his frustration ,shooing away the crows.



Postal Communication
A few centuries later, particularly in 1900s, people started using the postal means of communication. Letters were written throughout India with bad grammar and language . Auspicious letter had turmeric at the sides. Indians joined the party sending letters like"Send this letter to 5 people or one of your 20 kids will get lost in the Kumbh Mela". The most popular letter format was the inland letter, famously called "England letter" in TamilNadu. Emergency communication was all cryptic and telegrammed to people. A sample death notification telegram went like this, "Grandpa and Anacin expired. Bring Anacin and Ambulance".Because telegrams were charged on the number of words, people tried to squeeze in maximum content like this, "Happy married life,diwali,pongal,thiruvalluvar day.congrats its a boy. Or a girl.".

Vocal Communication
The invention of telephone changed everything. Indians had a telephone operator who used to plug wires and connect to people. STD rates were too high for the average aam aadmi, and Indians had to rattle off the words quickly and loudly to pass information via an STD call. A sample telephone STD call at a telephone booth went like this "Hi, How are you?Are you fine?I am fine?Regards to your family.How is Kasturi and her 7 sisters?Bunty stop pulling my Pyjama. Ok. Bye."(slaps Bunty,then buys him a Melody chocolate).


1990's and the internet
The early and mid 90s saw a lot of technological change in the US and hence it reflected in the late 90s in India. Indians started becoming engineers and landed themselves in US. The first internet connections appeared in India. Internet spreads like mildfire. Everybody got a dialup connection with a modem that produced Vuvuzela like cacophony . People start reading news on the internet and gossiping with others on the internet. Things started changing and even Palkaarans(milkmen) started accepting paypal payments .

Indians displayed their creative prowess in email with some fantastical email ids called coolganesh95@aol.com, jollyprasad@hotmail.com, situl_coolblitzer_terminator@hotmail.com. The patriotic dudes took ids like ramesh1947_india@hotmail.com and sardarpatelfan@rediffmail.com. Now in the current day,most of the email address are already taken and you need to insert a combination of names of your ancestors for 14 generations,your mobile number and some Indus valley civilization characters to get yourself an email id.

Messenger
The growth of the internet paved way to usage of Yahoo messenger for IM. People started using the new internet lingo of shortening words and talking to each other. All the guys disguised as girls with feminine email ids and would ping girls asking their A/S/L. Hence it became a giant cycle of guys in chatrooms talking to other guys ,each one presuming the other one is a girl.

Matrimony
Match making started happening on the internet and facilitated people to apply caste bias in the virtual world. Seperate sites were created for TamilMatrimony, KannadaMatrimony, OriyaMatrimony, SaravanaBhavanHighclassvegmatrimony, MuniyandiVilasMatrimony etc. Later portals were dedicated to modern sub castes like TCSMatrimony, WiproMatrimony and InfyMatrimony. The Khap panchayats started the SameGothraMatrimonyandhounourkilling.com.


The social networking era-Orkut and the Orkutiya
The post 2005 was an exciting surge for the Indian internet user. Broadband connections came into picture in India. 2005 also saw the introduction of Orkut in India. Orkut was a trend in itself with every Indian creating an orkut account. All the stalkers of India joined Orkut and they were quite popularly known as the Orkutiyas. The Orkutiya spoke in bad English,stalked girls and vigorously searched Orkut for fraands. The orkutiya had some profound status messages.


Then he sent girls "fraandship requests" and scrapped them.
He misunderstood what the word testimonials meant.

And he joined some thought provoking communities.

And he succeeded in stalking girls thereby making friends with girls who have pictures of a teddy bear, Koala bear or a picture of a baby.


Facebook
The more intellectual and the Yo Yo guys were on facebook and they shared some really important status updates .

I have a lot more to write about facebook. More about that in my future post called "Deshbook".

Twitter
Like there were'nt enough avenues to waste time on the internet, somebody invented twitter and it has been spreading shallowness all across the internet. Twitter is a micro blogging sites where celebrities talk to themselves, give updates on their gym schedule and give flying kisses saying "Muaaah ma tweeps".

Twitter also has space for retarded child celebrities.


And twitter always had space for bile.



*The End*

P.S: I will finish aloo-tikkipedia and also start writing a series of such informative and wisdom imparting essays. Thanks as always.



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21 comments:

dineshg said...

Another Hilarious Post... Facts look funnier when people like you post the facts through blog...

Naveen Mani said...

Simma, U actually found those Orkut and facebook Updates? Awesome.. Hilarious! Was laughing out Loud for many sentences.. Keep Writing like these simma...

S said...

@Dinesh
Thanks. Honoured my friend.

@Naveen
Thanks Naveen. No,status updates were exaggerated it as always. :)

guru said...

awesome buddy.. keep rocking

மதி said...

good one .. cheeky !

Kowshik said...

Super post ! :D :D

'Everybody got a dialup connection with a modem that produced Vuvuzela like cacophony .'

ROFL

Parameshwar Ramanan said...

Good Post! :)

Liked Spams of Chola period, orkut and Twitter parts!!

S said...

@guru,@GS,@Kowshik,@Paramesh
Thanks guys. Thanks a ton

Premnath Thirumalaisamy said...

How come no PG contents in this post ? Given the fact you are writing about Internet esp. India.. :P

Vijay said...

little nostalgia..telegrams..posts...std calls...creative humor again. coool..

Anand said...

Ha.. Ha.. Nice one... That crow -spammer was awesome piece of imagination..!! :)

S said...

@Premnath
MAcha, Agreed the post would be good if it had references on how the Indians use the internet . However did not want PG content again and again in my blog. Enough erotica.

@Vijay
Thank the Vijay.


@Anand
Thanks brother.

Sakina Adeeb said...

very well written,,this was one of the topics on my mind for a long time but you just beat me with your very innovative and witty writing :)
Keep entertaining us !

S said...

@Sakina
Thanks a ton. Would love to see ur version too.

Unknown said...

too gooos man..!!!!! i appreciate d creativity..!!!!

S said...

@Kruthi
Thanks :):)

Vee said...

hilarious stuff man! keep it going :D

தக்குடு said...

:)) good post!

Srinivas said...

WoW!!!Excellent posting!

saravanamurthy said...

gud work !!! keep rocking:-)

C R Srinivasan said...

why stopped with this. Now smartphone has come shortly to improve with video conferencing . I saw a smart ad. Imagine the situation. The husband comes out from the bathroom covering with hands asking for the dress. Wife sitting in front of the mirror. Just at that time mother in law enters with a big smile " How nice to see you " ( referring her daughter). All their face is reflected in the mirror.
Think of the situation and have a fun.
Infuture one more web site may come as OPEN BOOK" where everything can be seen if one is not smart.
srinivasan

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