Monday, Dec 27, 1999
The Times, They are A Changing.....II
Man From Matunga"Man from Matunga" lives in Mumbai, India and expresses his angst and pleasures through words |
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Two weeks ago, I went to the Retreat, a beach hotel on Madh Island, now a far-flung suburb of Mumbai. I carried my notebook with me to get some writing done - before you start calling me a workaholic, please remember that I am not a writer by profession - I find writing and reading a great way to relax and unwind on a holiday. I logged on early in the morning on Friday just before leaving home. We were going to be away till Sunday evening and I was hoping that the discussion lists that I subscribed to would not go overboard during these three days and flood my mailbox.
Friday went off peacefully. We caught up on all our accumulated hours of denied sleep and did nothing but lounge around in the room and next to the pool. But on Saturday morning, I felt a little itch for some kind of email access. The Retreat does not have a business centre or any kind of net access, so I decided to get inventive.
I traced the cord from the telephone instrument to the wall and found that the wall socket was a universal RJ-45, and would accept my modem jack. You can imagine my relief when I found this socket, considering that most Indian places still have two-pin and three-pin plugs and sockets and I wasn't carrying any adapters. The hotel also had a '0' dial access for calling the outside world - again something to be thankful for, especially when you compare this situation with my experience in Guwahati the week later, at the Ashoka Hotel, where all calls had to be routed through the local operator.
Anyway, I unplugged the telephone and inserted the jack from my PCMCIA modem into the wall socket. I added a '0,' before the VSNL access number and hit the 'enter' key. Boom! I was on my way. Even though I was able to connect only at 14.4kbps, I was able to download about 87 messages in eight minutes for a total cost of less than 15 rupees (30 cents), including the eight rupees surcharge that the hotel adds per call. I logged on a couple of times after that (Saturday night, Sunday morning) and was even able to send off my World Year entry.
This may not sound like a big thing for many people in the US and in Europe where hotels, airports, etc are wired extensively for net access. But for me, this was a big first, especially since the hotel did not even know about it.
Guwahati last week was a complete washout. I was stuck in the best hotel in Guwahati, the Brahmaputra Ashok, on the banks of the river Brahmaputra, but with no access. In any case I had forgotten to carry the local VSNL access numbers, though I could have obtained those from my friends if I had wanted to. I wasn't too worried about a crammed mailbox since I had temporarily unsubscribed from the 'Journal' mailing list.
Sunday was the return trip to Mumbai. A complete washout of a day. Starting at 9.00AM when we left the hotel, ending at 10.30PM, when we reached Mumbai. We landed at Calcutta airport at 12.30PM and our connection to Mumbai, which was scheduled to leave at 6.00PM, eventually left at 7.30PM. Luckily I had the notebook with me and was able to work on some of my articles and go through some email backlog. I became an expert at finding power sockets wherever I went; in the business lounge, in the bar, in the coffee-shop and finally even in the security lounge, where I quietly unplugged a transilluminated billboard and slipped my power cord plug into the socket - the only thing I feel bad about, is that I forgot to plug the billboard power cord back into the socket, before leaving for the aircraft. My colleague remarked that if I traveled enough, I would probably be able to write a book on how to find power sockets at Indian airports.
When I found that the flight was going to be delayed by an hour and a half, I decided to get some kind of email access. The business lounge offered an STD (long distance calling) facility, through a fax machine. The lady at the desk was actually nice enough to let me experiment (surprise....considering this was Calcutta). I found an empty socket for my modem jack, next to the socket for the handset jack on the fax machine. I had decided to call my VSNL access number in Mumbai long distance, considering the reduced calling rates on Sunday, hoping to download my mail as quickly as possible; this would have cost me about Rs 50 or so (1.2$).
The line had a pulse dial. It took me five minutes to figure out how to switch from tone to pulse dialing in the Dial-Up Network. I dialed the Mumbai VSNL access number, but couldn't get through - a sweet voice kept telling me that the number did not exist - apparently long-distance access to this number had been barred. I tried to figure out a way to get hold of local VSNL access numbers, thinking that I might somehow be able to log on as a guest and telnet to my account for the mail. I was talking aloud to myself when the kind girl in front of me, who was completely computer and net illiterate, perked up her ears and handed me her accounts ledger, the last page of which had the local VSNL access numbers written down. Apparently, someone had tried email access earlier and she remembered the word VSNL.
I called the local VSNL number, still skeptical about getting through. Apparently I had forgotten that the VSNL servers had been configured nationally to allow access from all local nodes - I was able to log on, first-shot. I downloaded all of about 50 messages, managed to send in my stuff to Nancy for next week's World Year entry and also downloaded the last few days' entries by my colleagues, for later reading - all this in about ten minutes and for Rs 15.
Who would have thought this possible, say just a few months ago?
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