by Anil Menon
Anand gestured a ‘go on’.
‘Where did the first movies get their stories from? From epics, novels, the theatre. The old medium becomes the content for the new medium. New mediums deliver old mediums. Take newspapers. It’s delivering what towncriers used to holler. Take TV. It’s delivering what newspapers and movies used to offer. Take the net. It’s offering what TV, newspapers and movies used to offer. You get the picture?’
‘Sounds very Hindu, this recycling of mediums. Are you telling me you have a new medium?’
‘Eggzatly. New for those who’ve never had it. Here, check this out.’
Anand took the slim book-sized object. He’d assumed it was a tablet, and so it was. Everything about it, including the screws, had that desi focus on function rather than form. Indigenous. All it lacked was a string of marigolds and dried mango leaves.
‘You see that panel showing the weather? That data is coming from my lab in Bannerghata. That’s about thirty kilometres away. You’re accessing a router that’s thirty kilometres away, Anand!’
Anand tried to appear impressed. What the hell was a router? He handed the tablet to his tablet, Ratnakar. ‘I’ve heard about these tablets. Didn’t Sibal do a song and dance about them some time back? Weren’t there all sorts of problems with the units? I remember seeing a New York Times article about it. They take great pleasure in our troubles.’
‘Anand, the tablet’s fixed its problems. They were teething troubles, that’s all. White men have said flattering things about the new Akaash tablet, check it out. But it’s more than the tablet. We’ve also solved the connectivity problem. You have wireless at home, right?
‘Yes.’
‘Then you must have experienced how the connection sometimes gets dropped when you go from one room to another?’
Come to think of it, Kannagi was always bitching and moaning about the net connection at the house. It had worked fine till she had begun to use it. Of course, no one had used it till then. He hadn’t even known he had wireless until she’d begun to bug Padma to bug Anand to bug Ratnakar to bug Costas for something called a WAP authentication key.
Confessing his tech-illiteracy could trigger a massive tutorial from Pillai. Or he could take away his passport and shove him into Bharat. Anand nodded. ‘That’s because Wi-Fi has a very limited range,’ Pillai continued. ‘It doesn’t handle walls or other obstacles very well. Its range is a few metres, maybe the length of an apartment complex, that’s really it. My wireless connection isn’t Wi-Fi. Its something called Super Wi-Fi.
‘Super Wi-Fi takes advantage of what’s called the white-space spectrum, the unused portions between TV broadcast signals. Super Wi-Fi operates in a much lower frequency range and therefore has a much higher wavelength. Which means we’re talking a range of about a hundred kilometres. Imagine firing a signal from Mumbai and picking it up on a laptop in Pune. You can imagine what that means for villages. One hub in a small town and boom! Every village within a hundred kilometres is in the digital age. My guys have already found ways to extend this range one-and-a-half times.
‘Even better, Super Wi-Fi is fast. Mind-blowingly fast. You can get fifteen, maybe sixteen Megabits per second. That’s three times faster than most Wi-Fi. You could download an entire 1.5 gigabyte movie in about twelve minutes. And we’re just getting started with Super Wi-Fi. So forget about giving Bharat access. Forget about dragging it into the digital age a few inches at a time. How about giving Bharat super-access? How about watching the rest of the world catch up to our villages? Of course you could wait for the Americans to do it and then sell it to us for ten times what it’s worth.’
‘That’s the last thing I’d buy,’ said Anand, stiffly.
‘Eggzatly! Aren’t you sick of letting them run the show? Let’s do this our way, with our technology, our people. Anand, believe me, our future’s so goddam bright we’ll need shades. It’s radically totally cool!’
Anand smiled. Had to admire the man’s passion. Why was it persuasive? Look at Ratnakar. Totally transfixed.
‘Cool is not the issue, Pillai. Okay, let’s suppose you can reach villages with your super-duper Wi-Fi or whatever. But the tablet—I’m not so sure. Can our villagers handle this hi-funda thing? I believe we’re as good as anybody else, but still. Look, to be perfectly frank, I struggle with this interweb technology. And there have been many proposals to give cheap computing to the poor. I haven’t seen anything that has worked.’
Eshwar Pillai had the deflated look of a peacock whose one-hour Bharatanatyam performance has just been rejected by a peahen. But he recovered.
‘You’re right, cool is not enough. There have been lots of cool attempts to provide cheap computing. They’ve all failed.’ He tapped the tablet. ‘In a year, the markets will be flooded with similar knockoffs. They’ll all fail. I’ll tell you why. They all suck balls, that’s why. Ours will be different. In the US, they build computers for blind people to use, for deaf people, for handicapped people. So why can’t we build a system for illiterate people to use? My vagabonds and I spent four years building such an interface—’ Pillai again tapped the tablet— ‘that’s meant to be used by illiterates. Let the dinosaurs like Apple build products for post-literate minds, for people like us. Bharat is a different beast. It can’t use the oral-visual interfaces that works for India; the units of interaction are too abstract. But illiterates are used to cellphones. They know how to scroll through menus, select items. Here, let me give you a demo. Put your palm over the display.’
Anand did as instructed. The screen cleared, two hands appeared, folded in a namasthe.
‘Namaste, Dixit-ji,’ said the tablet, ‘Kahiye, aaj aapki kya seva karoon? Agar—’
It broke off as Pillai did something to the tablet. ‘Our interface marries the intelligence of Apple’s Siri with the simplicity of a fixed set of options. It is very, very consistent. The interface is annoying for you and me, that is, for a literate or post-literate user, but pre-literate users just love answering questions. Here’s your cheap computing that’ll work. It will point them to e-governance, available loans, relief programs, job postings, entertainment, and best of all, people just like themselves.’
‘I’m just not interested in rural development. There’s no money in it. Social Weather only observes, reports—’
‘Yes, yes, yes. As in yesterday. Your company has stopped reporting weather; it has begun to make it. Listen, I can invent soap, I can make soap, I can distribute soap to Bharat’s door, but I can’t convince the stinkin’ bastard to wash. Your ladies can. Many of your field agents in the rural areas have become respected advisors, contact points, message carriers, witnesses, integral parts of their community.’ He thumped the tablet. ‘You have the last-mile network I need to complete the connectivity. Your organization will be the human face to digital computing. When has extra connectivity hurt any survey organization? C’mon, Anand. What’s the worst? We’ll fail. You might lose your shoelaces. I’ll lose my shirt. Big fucking deal. Are you going to miss a couple of shoelaces on your deathbed?’
Anand ducked the question. ‘So you need lots of rich content.’
‘Eggzatly. To sneak this new medium in. I have the bandwidth to download movies, books, games. So I need movies, books, games. You own a huge chunk of Bollywood film rights. Your father’s acquisition of Eros Entertainment saw to that.’
Damn right, thought Anand. Father had seen the future as usual. He had spent a lot of money on two passions: whores and Bollywood film rights. The latter had turned out to be a cow that kept on giving. ‘Okay Pillai, so what exactly do you have in mind?’
‘I want to sell as many tablets as I can. I assume your eye is on the ad revenue. Right?’
‘Not necessarily. These units seem pretty robust. But are they repairable? You’ll have to provide tech support. How’s that going to factor into your costs?’
‘We’ll get to that in a minute. I’m going to index each unit to the cost of a bidi packet.’ He retrieved a to
bacco packet and threw it dramatically on the table. ‘That’s about four bucks. We charge them four bucks per day. The price of a bidi packet. That’s affordable for them; in fact, it will be irresistible. We’ll recoup costs in four years, three years. Five years max. Bharat likes long, enduring relationships. If they jailbreak, the tablet stops being useful; we control the Super Wi-Fi signal, remember?’
Anand lowered his eyes. Per-day. He liked the sound of per-day. But he didn’t let his face reveal his excitement. ‘Might work. I’ll need to see the numbers. What sort of margins do you estimate on each unit?
‘About eighty paise per day. And we have scale. Anand, let me make you a great deal. How about you take a percentage on every unit sold?’
Anand smiled. Take, not give. As if he’d won the round. ‘It’s not going to be that easy for you, Pillai. Let’s lay out all the options. How about you sell me the tech for one grand lump sum? I’ll take the headache, you take the freedom. Or how about you licence the tech to me? That’ll still give you plenty of wiggle room. How about we team up and approach OEMs and content builders? I bring credibility and you bring coolness. How about you keep your company, but sell me exclusive rights to the paper? You make it, I sell it. That makes me your sales department. Or how about we spin off a new media entity fine-tuned for the needs of this new medium? Think iTunes. Or I could be your VC for this new entity. Dixit Financial will be involved, but not the rest of me, not Social Weather—’
‘I need Social Weather!’ shouted Eshwar. ‘I need your ladies. I need your feet on the ground. They’re the resource I’m interested in, their networks, their influence. Not your frikkin’ capital.’
Anand smiled and readjusted his glass of water. ‘I get that. Thing is, I need to think about whether I want equity in your idea or just a simple cut off the top. The first will take commitment, the second is just adding a new distribution channel.’
‘Yaar, that’s exactly it. We are either friends or we are partners. That’s why I asked you my question. But you ducked the answer. So I’ll be blunt. Ideally, you would have hazaar time to weigh things out. But you don’t. Either the idea grabbed you or it didn’t. Your gut knows the answer. What does your gut say?’
Anand knit his eyebrows. His team would need at least two months to finish the due diligence, pin down a believable intrinsic value, find exit strategies. What would Father do? Father would do what Shivaji would do what Naval Godrej would do what Laxmanrao Kirloskar would do what courage would do. His gut said he had no need to do this.
‘Listen Pillai, I feel like you’re trying to open all my blouse buttons at once. But I’m interested. Let’s do a pilot project—’
‘So you’re in?’
‘I’m not out, let’s put it—’
‘Dammit man, are you in?’
Sidestep the question again, and he knew Pillai would simply walk. He was crazy. It wouldn’t matter how much Eshwar Pillai would lose. He’d simply walk. There were such people. He clenched his fist.
Thank God. At last a tiger.
Had Father felt this way when he started Social Weather? He hoped Father would be proud of him.
‘I am.’
‘Bombat!’ Eshwar Pillai’s shout froze diners in mid-spoon. He gestured to the waiter who had stopped earlier. ‘Yeh Sivaa, two Bellur ballbusters.’
Anand smiled. ‘Not for me. Look, I don’t believe in wasting time. So if you can clear your afternoon, so will I, and your people and my people can thrash out some of the details. I have to leave tomorrow morning, latest.’
‘Great, great. I hate waiting for anything myself. Where are you put up?’
‘The Leela.’
‘That’s where they tether scared white people. Nothing doing, da. You are staying at my place tonight. We’ll yak till the cows come home. You can meet my hatyacharis too. You’ll love them.’
Anand was curious to see what kind of people chose to work for someone like Pillai. ‘Very kind of you. But I do have to leave early in the morning.’
‘You will, you will. Man, Anand—this is huge. Collusion of the Titans. You see this device is a game changer, right? You really see what it’s going to do, right?’
Anand realized the man wanted some affirmation. Eshwar wanted to hear from another, from a peer, what his Will must have had to affirm over and over against the doubts. Eshwar Pillai’s Charioteer wanted to hear it had been right.
‘There’s no going back now.’
‘Yes!’ Eshwar leaned back, gratified. ‘That’s just the way I like it. You won’t regret it, Anand. The voiceless will be in the loop now. They own the means of communication. Did you see my TED talk on how digital tech is Marxism done right?’
#
Pillai’s place was only twenty-three kilometres from the city and the distance hardly justified the use of a helicopter but the natives all assured Anand, with varying degrees of amused resignation, that twenty-three kilometres by car translated into two-hundred and thirty kilometres in Bangalore.
There was no worry about missing the place, because the complex was lit up like a politician’s son’s wedding. It was as if Eshwar had left every light on, and that too at full wattage. The complex itself consisted of about nine large bungalows. As they settled on the helipad—Pillai of course had a helipad—and the pilot silenced the engines, shouts and screams and great splashes could be heard from not too far away. A couple of minions came running out.
‘I’ll take your bags to the room, sir,’ said one of them. ‘Pillai-sir is waiting for you.’
But Eshwar was already on his way out. ‘Anand! Sorry I had to take off a bit earlier. Long day, man, long day. How was it? Ready to party? Ratna my man, you look wiped. Come this way. Your rooms have this great view. Listen, take a shower, and then Raju here will show you to the pool. That’s where we all hang out. You can’t miss it. It’s epic. Do you know Michael Phelps was caught peeing in it once? Long story.’
The central bungalow, Anand learned, had been designed by R. L. Kumar, in his signature vernacular-architecture style: comfortable, elegant and utterly at home in its world. Then Eshwar had added to it, and added some more, and just to be thorough, had made addition an added feature. Now the complex resembled the product of a one-night stand between an Italian villa and a Kerala theravadu. Anand cringed at the interior. Bizarre art installations, creepy paintings with tube-shaped people, teak furniture, an abandoned rubber ducky, a panty hanging on a lampstand, ultra-thin laptops, giant cushions everywhere.
Anand regretted he hadn’t insisted on staying at the Leela. This place was a loony bin. Why was the music so loud? People were hollering as if they were possessed. This explained why Pillai had built his asylum far outside the city. It didn’t look like he’d get any rest at all tonight. Anand glanced at Ratnakar’s face. It was obvious the factotum felt exactly the same way.
‘We leave seven sharp tomorrow, Ratnakar.’
‘Yes, sir! Definitely.’
‘No need to get hysterical. Well, take a shower and let’s get this day over with.’
As a host, Eshwar was a considerate one. He had carefully thought everything though. Or more likely, hired someone to think it through.
The bedrooms were very luxurious, and Anand stared longingly at the bed with its mass of cushions. Oh well, a quick dinner, some chit-chat, a bit of bonding, and then to bed. One hour tops.
Ratnakar appeared a short while later, decked out in his uniform: a light gray safari suit. Anand had decided to go with a T-shirt and shorts. As they approached the swimming pool, the shouts and laughs got louder.
Eshwar was waiting. There was a small buffet laid out. Kababs. Lamb. Vegetarian. Bread. Egg fry. Salads. Mini pizzas. Beer. Wine. Cold drinks. Did he spend this much money on meals every day?
‘I’m so glad you decided to pile on, man.’
‘Me too.’ Anand ducked as a wave of pool water washed over the edge. Girls in thongs. Well-built guys in swim wear. Nerdy guys. Nerdy girls. Some females were stretched out
by the pool. One guy was giving a girl a massage. In full view of everybody. Touching her, slopping oil on her, while the shameless cow giggled and purred like a cat full of milk. A few clowns were gathered in front of a whiteboard. They seemed to be working. What were they trying to do? Impress the boss? ‘Who are all these people?’
‘My hatyacharis. Employees, college buds, friends of friends, chamchas, the whole ragda patties plate. Poondhax hard, play hard, right?’
‘Right, right.’
Eshwar shoved a plate in his hand. ‘Here, get something to eat. It’s all self-serve here.’
The food was greasy, over salted, and overall very reminiscent of college food. He tried to talk with Eshwar, but it was impossible. In the morning, the guy had seemed capable of writing a doctoral thesis. Here, he was braying and hooting and chasing and pulling bikini strings and in general being a complete jackass. It was hard to believe the fellow was over thirty.
‘You look tense,’ said Eshwar. ‘Everything fine?’
‘Too adharmic for me.’
‘Adharmic?’ Eshwar looked baffled. ‘What do you mean, adharmic?’
‘Never mind.’
A girl had just taken off her top. ‘Banganapalli!’ she shrieked and dived into the pool.
‘That’s Malini Mudaliar, my QA manager,’ said Eshwar with pride. ‘We call her Maddy. Total code Nazi. I’ll introduce you when she gets out.’ Introduce! Why, he had just gained as much knowledge of the woman as her future husband.
