Internet, my first <3
Hello there,
Hope you guys are finding ways to stay sane and happy. I can’t keep myself motivated anymore, I feel listless, bored and very sad and you may find that in this newsletter. This has been in my drafts for long and I am just going to send it across, so I don’t have another unfinished thing I am worrying about.
I wanted to write about having viral fever during the pandemic and the disgusting Covid test (it felt like someone was gaging me) and being tensed and having a bad stomach, having zero energy to answer questions and being irritable AF. I also wanted to write about being paid well for an assignment and feeling inadequate and wanting to offer my kidney in return. I tweeted about it and some really good advice came my way:
"They are paying you so much because you are the expert and if you were not the expert, they wouldn’t come to you.”
”But what we must remember is that in order for us to finish that work so quick, and so well, it took us years of effort to the level of expertise. So they are paying not just for output, but for expertise and experience. And that is why ——— is worth it. Because it is a measure your entire evolution as a professional, which was expressed through your work and content.”
You can follow the rest here. And this bit about imposter syndrome.
But then I came across this tweet below on August 15 and wanted to write about being on the internet for almost 25 years.
The Internet is easily the most expensive, the best gift my father gave me. I am not sure if I was 15 or 16 but we were the 19th family in Mumbai to get a TCP/IP connection. We had a Pentium 2 computer, a colour scanner and a colour printer. We lived in a 360 sq ft house (our home till I turned 20) in Navi Mumbai and I will be forever grateful that my father spent the exorbitant amount to get us an internet connection because it changed my life. It gave me a voice, a place to park my work, find love, friends, connections and it allowed me to be an artist, something my father said was only for very rich people. People who had contacts. It has been that powerful person that spoke about me and allowed me entry into spaces I never dreamed of occupying.
I was 16 when Rediff, India’s first portal came to interview me and tell me of their services. I was a Yahoo fan and wouldn’t try any Indian mail service then.
In my 11th and 12th grade, I would take the train to go junior college and often I would meet guys who came to engineering colleges that laced Navi Mumbai. We talked to a bunch of them. Once two of them were talking about getting a shell a/c (a student a/c with no pictures, I think it costed Rs 500) and I butted in and said, “we have internet at home.” And these boys said,”We aren’t talking about fishnet.”
Back then, you needed a landline to connect to the internet, so every time you were connected your phone line would be busy which meant big phone bills. Also, there were times you tried connecting for hours and got connected for a few minutes. Rain usually meant no internet. If you got a big bill meant no internet. When we went to Kerala, my mother would give us money to go to the cybercafes. Most places didn’t have cybercafes and if they did it was full of young men watching porn.
When the internet was not a 24*7 thing, we left offline messages for our crushes on Yahoo Messenger and hoped they would be online when we were online. I still remember the chime of Yahoo messenger and the excitement when someone you liked came online. When I think back, almost all of my relationships have had to do something with the internet. It was easier then and is easier now for me navigate spaces where chances of me being dumped for who I am, how I look is high, easier to build these relationships through thoughts and words from the comfort of your home. Those days, I’d go a year and sometimes more talking and forming relationships and not meeting these people. These were also relationships one couldn’t talk about because no one thought relationships formed on the internet were real.
Life has come a full circle, I am building one such relationship now, one where we have been talking to for the past 5 months but haven’t met. It is different because there’s WhatsApp and video calls, it is also different because as an older person, I want to meet before investing further but talking and connecting without meeting is a strangely familiar feeling.
I am going to leave you with Kawal Oberoi’s moving and beautiful Trunk di Chaabi .
Love,
Indu
Hi Indu, This is Indu here, your namesake, I cannot even begin to tell you how much I adore your visual work, its the one reason I go to Instagram on which I am otherwise a Fail. I am keen to commission something if that is at all a possibility. Is there an email ID I could write you on? Thank you and love.