The Cybergypsies

by Indra Sinha

  Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

  We spent two months in Bombay puzzling over Vatsyayana’s text with a tiny Sanskrit professor who limped and had a passion for English horse-racing. One day we took a boat to Elephanta Island where we were adopted by a guide with the startling pale eyes you sometimes see in Maharashtra. Mindful of efficient work practices, he led us round the caves at breakneck speed.

  ‘Can you tell us something about this one?’ Eve asked, stopping briefly before a huge figure carved in the rock.

  ‘Madam, it is a god.’

  Eve moved to the next figure. ‘And this?’

  ‘Madam, this is also a god.’

  ‘Yes, but what are their names?’

  ‘How is it mattering, madam. Ultimately all gods are one.’

  I took her to see Ravi Shankar play. As the music heated up, afficionados in the audience uttered appreciative cries of ‘wah wah’ and clicked their tongues in delight – precisely the same sound an English mother makes to scold a misbehaving child.

  Eve turned and glared at the enraptured gentlemen behind us. ‘If they don’t like it,’ she whispered, ‘why did they come?’

  We went to meet the folks at a hashish den hidden in a maze of back lanes in the city’s bazaars, a place where some years earlier I had spent a lot of time. On the way back in a taxi, we were stopped by a girl selling jasmine garlands and bought her entire stock. It cost about £1 and Eve was hidden by the flowers, wreathed like a maharani on her wedding day. (Have I remembered to say we were just married? The trip to India doubled as our honeymoon.) We were in love and liked, as much as wandering the real world, roaming the territories of each other’s minds.

  My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

  And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

  Where can we find two better hemispheres,

  Without sharp north, without declining west?

  Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally;

  If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

  Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

  Our Kama Sutra was published by Hamlyn and, sadly, is still in print. Predictably the pirates on wiretap.spies stole only the section on the sexual positions. What they missed, apart from the point, was one of the most extraordinary uses of language in the book and unquestionably the sweetest experience.

  The language of birds

  The ecstatic utterance of birds as recorded by Vatsyayana in Kama Sutra:

  The best translation is Meg Ryan’s in When Harry met Sally.

  Sogonr appieanr

  The electronic post arrives bringing a letter (yes, a genuine ee-by-gum-mail) from Jarly, who is a Yorkshireman and writes:

  >Bear darling, if tha fancies mekkin a few changes to yer bank balance, here are’t codes for NatWest:

  Telephone number: 061 833 0091

  Baud rate: 1200/1200 7N1

  TTY Xmodem

  4 x ” followed by

 

  D1

  4 x ” followed by NNATDEM287UCC

  3 x ”

  A21280011164

  5 x ” followed by 9900

  2 x ” ACCESS

  2 x ” followed by OPER01

  2 x ” followed by TESTOP

  >If it’s nation’s pockets tha want to pick drop in on’t Bank of England on 01 583 3000

  CALL 79

  ID BOE001

  Please, don’t even think about it. Hacking banks is not a sound idea unless you’re an expert, besides which the dialling codes and modem speeds show this stuff to be years out of date. What the Bank of England data – password deleted, reason fear of treason, for which you can still be executed in the Tower of London – does reveal is that the B of E belonged to System 79 of an antediluvian network called Telecom Gold, the same system to which Apricot’s magic bull-to-bear software connected me late in 1984. There were in those days three British Telecom nets much used by the UK cybergypsies: Gold, Prestel, and Micronet. Someone hacked Prince Philip’s Prestel mailbox about the time I joined Gold.

  Jarly is my first friend on the net. He says he’s twenty-two. I am a dozen years older, but if it makes no difference to him it makes none to me.

  ‘So Bear, how long have you been using?’

  ‘Using what?’

  ‘Onlining. It’s like mainlining, only more addictive.’

  ‘I’m not addicted,’ I say.

  ‘You will be,’ says Jarly.

  Jarly claims to be a part-time postman and a roadie for a heavy metal band. Neither can be true since, as he frequently tells me, he’s a Gloriaria Estefanfan – hard to believe but I have seen her picture on his wall. He lives in a bare north London attic that smells of pickle and leaks. (No, no, Eve, not smells like leeks, the room leaks, but that story is for later.) A permanent state of war exists between Jarly and his landlord, who lives in the flat below. Jarly is usually months behind with the rent and large folk with bent noses are forever knocking on the landlord’s door wanting cash.

  ‘Your problem,’ I tell him, ‘is you spend too much time on Shades killing people.’

  ‘Be reasonable, Bear, I can’t give that up. It’s my life.’

  ‘Couldn’t you cut down?’

  ‘Doesn’t fuckin’ work. Ask any sixty-a-day bloke. Ask a junkie.’

  ‘You’re on too much Jarly. Every time I log in, there you are. Or if you’re not already there, you sogonr appieanr.’

  Sogonr appieanr? Oh, soGonR appIeaNr.

  This happens when he starts typing back to me while I am still in the middle of typing to him.

  I have to admit he’s right.

  ‘Aye,’ says he, ‘tha’s not so green as tha’s cabbage lookin.’

  Jarly spends a minimum of eight hours a day on Shades, which is, depending on your outlook, a game, a world, or a way of life. Shades is offered by all three BT services and Jarly has an account with each. I know that his last telephone bill was well into four figures, with time charges for Gold and Prestel/Micronet probably adding the same again. How he pays them I don’t know, given that he hasn’t time to work. Actually I do know. Jarly’s habit, when one account begins to stagger under the burden of debt, is to abandon it and open a new one in a variant of his name, Jarly, Charlie, Sharlene, Sherry, Jerry: a sort of slash and bum existence, entirely appropriate to a cybernomad.

  He also makes a small living selling immortality. (Eve, this will not make sense if I try to explain it now.)

  There’s a note from Jarly at the end of the hacking stuff. ‘Someone’s gotta be daft enough to try it and, Bear lad, your need is greater than mine.’

  Rain rain go away

  I connect for the first time on a drab December day, water running down the newly glazed window panes of my study. Outside is the joyful dripping wilderness. Inside the walls are neatly papered, books sorted on shelves that still smell of sawdust and pine resin. Eve and I did this together. We tackled the study first because I have so much work to get through. I’ve promised that as soon as I have time, I’ll build her a kitchen to replace the woodlouse-ridden units we pulled out and burned on the first day. I turn on the machine, click Apricot’s magic software into its slot. Out in the rain I can see Eve, fair hair tucked under a sou’wester, booted feet wide apart in what had once been a flowerbed, stubbornly forking at the Sussex clay. The machine emits a high pitched whistle, followed by the kookaburra cackle of a modem exchanging electronic greetings. Then there’s text rolling up the screen, welcoming me to something called Telecom Gold.

  One of the first things I discover is that Apricot’s vision of instant intelligence is seriously flawed. The databases of share prices and company information are hard to negotiate, slow, and cost several quid a minute – ridiculously expensive. Apart from chucking money away on these, there isn’t very much else to do on Telecom Gold. I go to something called the Noticeboard. It proves to be an electronic
pinboard where users leave notes for one another. The messages are listed in date order: the most recent first, then back through yesterday, last week, last month. They are not very interesting. People spend a lot of time posting variations of ‘Hi. I’m here. Are you there?’ Their names intrigue me. Molesworth and Pooh hobnob with Neuromancer; Bond007 with the inexpressible horror of Great Cthulhu (given to posting h’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn which, as any fule kno, means ‘In his house in R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming’); Country Girl, Bouncy, Zimmerman, Branwell (Brontë), Chesh the Cheshire Cat, Shadow – each talking to the rest several times a day from offices all over Britain, a couple in Ireland, many in Europe. Despite the banality of their chitchat, it is soon apparent that these geographically scattered folk share a curious intimacy. They are a community. Gradually, over the next few weeks I learn some of the stories behind the names. Branwell is deaf. Country Girl is blind. Bouncy is in love. It’s like being part of a soap opera. I’m soon logging in at all hours, in eager to catch the latest gossip. Dracula wasn’t on last night, but has checked in at 8.30 this morning full of bonhomie. What can this mean, except that his date with Little Miss Muffet has ended with breakfast?

  Raga Rageshri

  Sudeep is in his pyjamas scouring his teeth. He sighs. Early shift tomorrow, but there’s something on the radio he’s loth to miss. The midnight concert is a performance of the rare raga Rageshri by sarod maestro Ustad Bahadur Khan. Sudeep is a music connoisseur, but a police inspector’s salary does not run to fancy equipment. He sets up his battery-powered cassette recorder and positions the microphone as near as he can get it to the radio. As the station’s eerie flute motif signals midnight, he presses the ‘record’ button, holding his breath, better to hear the first notes of the sarod steal out into the quiet night air.

  The way a classical raga works is that the instrumentalist, the sitar or sarod virtuoso, begins a slow exploration of the scale. This is like a meditation. It can last an hour, but for radio performances is generally much shortened. When the performer feels that he has wrung what emotion he can from the notes, he nods for the tabla, the hand drum, to join in. Rhythm now provides the focus, as both performers improvise within a strict cycle of beats, the soloist demonstrating his mastery of the various set pieces and ornaments demanded by tradition. After this the music can move to a faster gait, calling for a more instinctive performance; the instrumentalist will make shining runs, the beat quickens again, doubles, the tabla player’s fingers blurring over his drums, the sarodist’s fingers flying on the strings; the sound becomes a continuous singing tone, in the midst of which are little rushes and runs, like rivers of bright flame inside a fire; the raga reaches its climax when the two instruments blur and become one, and then it stops. But on Sudeep’s tape, the sound does not stop.

  Early in the recording, the music begins to be accompanied by unusual sounds. The sarod’s deep-throated tones – twenty-five strings ringing on a neck of polished steel – are interrupted by the thud of a door, muffled distant shouts. The tabla, coming in, cuts through the interference, but not for long. Within a minute, the tape is recording cries and yells. Doors banging. Footsteps pounding in the lane outside. Rageshri is a sombre raga, it should be heard in silence. But now, inside the house, there is a cough, then a startled cry. A woman calls out in alarm. A child screams. A man’s deeper voice, very close, tries to restore calm, disintegrates into retching. In a moment of respite, the sarod sobs under Bahadur Khan’s clever fingers. The child screams again and the woman shrieks something unintelligible. More coughing. An older child urgently speaking. The music is eclipsed by coughing very close to the microphone. Outside sounds too are louder. The woman begins to weep. The children are wailing, the music is completely drowned. The woman cries, ‘Oh mother, I’m dying.’ A dry scraping sound. Someone runs across the room. Vomiting. The door of Sudeep’s house opens and noise rushes in, a thunder of feet and hundreds of voices all at once. Hubbub inside too. Frantic feet, a crackle as the radio is knocked, and then the goose-hiss of white noise. Still the tape winds on slow spools. If it were videotape, it would see what comes creeping in, pressing foggy fingers on the window, beating through the open door in waves. It would see the light grow pearly and fade to white. But the machine in Sudeep’s abandoned house, its metal circuitry unaffected, records only the dismal groans and shrieks, gradually diminishing, and, in the end, silence . . .

  A wicked stepdaughter

  Bear, imagine that when you’re two your mother dies – you’re too young to realise – but your father remarries three months later cos he says you need a mother. So you see, it is for your benefit – the ungrateful, wicked, daughter – that he ignores the criticism of his family. ‘Bugger their lace-curtained souls.’ His family had asked him to wait. They wanted a decent period of mourning. No chance. When my brother was born, five months after the marriage, they had to say he was premature . . . Are you listening . . . ?

  Until I was eight I thought Angela was my mum. There was no reason not to – that’s the best way I can put it now. We were just a normal family. Dad, Mum, me and Tim. Until my aunt came to visit. My father’s sister, who’d been in Canada for years. She looked at me and said, ‘You look just like your mother.’

  I laughed and said, ‘I’m nothing like Mum.’

  I was dark you see, while Angela was sort of mouse, but got blonder every year.

  ‘Oh, I meant your real mother,’ said my aunt.

  I started laughing at the joke. My aunt looked at Dad. He was furious, I could see that. But he was controlling himself. He was a big man, with big hands, sort of gruff, like you’d imagine an engine driver. His fists were clenched tight.

  I got scared. I said, ‘Mum?’

  Angela looked wretched. Then I knew it was true. I felt sick. Horrified. Then Angela started crying. I wanted to shake her and say, ‘Mum, why won’t you say it’s not true?’

  The aunt sat there, taking it all in. She said, ‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d have told Clare by now.’

  I’ll never forget that evening. Everyone trying to act natural . . . Dad turning on the telly for the football . . . My aunt made an excuse and went upstairs. Dad took me aside and said, ‘Your mum’s upset. Forget what your aunt said. She’s out to cause trouble. One day I’ll explain. You’re a good little girl, Clare. Don’t let this bother you. Put it out of your mind. Forget it.’

  I caught my aunt next day. She was packing to leave. I said to her, ‘Tell me about my real mother.’

  She stopped in the middle of folding a jumper and asked, ‘Haven’t they said anything?’

  ‘Dad says we’re not to talk about it. In case it upsets me.’

  She sat me down and looked at me. ‘Queer little thing, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re just like her, you know . . .’

  Bear, does it make you nervous, me walking up and down like this? Say if the smoke’s bothering you . . .

  Things got back to normal, but they weren’t the same. Angela would hug and cuddle me, saying that she really was my mother, even if she wasn’t my real mother, if you see what I mean. But after that, I began noticing things. Trivial things, but clues. If there was a scrape of baked beans left in the pan, Angela would dollop it onto her son’s plate. If we were quarrelling it was always ‘Oh Clare let him have it stop bothering him Clare Clare, don’t make him cry.’ He always got the last biscuit and the first ride when we went to the seaside. Now I knew why. They said Tim was spoilt because he was the younger one. But I knew that wasn’t the real reason. It was because my brother was the real child.

  I was a step-child. I didn’t fit in my family. My brother had a real dad and a real mum. Angela had a real son and a real husband. Dad had a real wife and real children. They were a normal family – it was me who was out of step. When I thought back I realised that it had always been like this. I’d just never noticed. How the hell had I been so stupid? God, they must have thought I was really dumb.

  I used
to be awake in my bed at night – this was when I was older – Bear, are you really, truly comfortable, lying there? . . . I remember that room so well. The yellow sodium light outside the window turned the whole world grey, the street grey, curtains grey, my bedspread grey. The walls were thin and I used to hear the bed creaking next door, the cough, the groan of springs as she got up afterwards – never him, she had a light tread – the running of water in the bathroom. I thought, that’s where your power comes from. That’s how you took him from my mother. Your magic is in your . . . that word we don’t like to say. I would lie in my cold bed, touching myself for comfort. I used to feel guilty, but not about that. About not having the guts to say what my aunt had told me.

  Sometimes I’d talk to my real mother. I’d say, ‘Did you know what was going on with Dad and Angela? Is that why you died?’ I’d ask, ‘How did you do it? How could you pull that off?’ You see, Bear, she didn’t do anything obvious like a bottle of pills or slitting her wrists in the bath. Not her. She died of pneumonia caught while walking her dog in a snowstorm. I can’t even kid myself that she deliberately walked out into a blizzard, because it was June. Years later I looked up the report in the local newspaper. The weathermen were as amazed as everyone else at the freak weather over Leith Hill. Bear, I’ve no proof but I know my mother wanted to die. She’d willed that snow (which proves there’s magic in the world). There is magic, Bear, if you know how to find it – how are you feeling now? – a wounded heart can conjure a thunderstorm out of a clear sky and ice from midsummer.

  I wanted so much to know my mother. When I went away to university I tried everything – hypnosis, LSD, rebirthing – that might bring back a glimpse, a smell, a feeling. That’s also when I discovered men. The first time someone said they loved me, can you imagine what that was like? Men will say anything to get you into bed, and how badly I wanted to hear them say it. During my first year I ended up sleeping with a lot of people. Not for sex. I’d get sex out of the way, so I could get beyond it. Sex doesn’t matter, it isn’t as important as love. Bear, you understand why I’m telling you these things? I don’t want secrets between us. I want you to know everything about me. Everything, no matter how bad . . . Once I was in a bar and these two men began chatting me up. I went back to their hotel. They were salesmen, sharing a room. I got into bed with one while his friend lay in the other bed. When we’d finished, my one went to the bathroom and the other one climbed into bed with me. I let him. Just lay there while he did it. I was thinking about Angela and how the fairy tales are wrong. Because you see, the really wicked thing is, she probably did her best to love me.