Have broadband now...

… thanks to Airtel finally overcoming its shyness and extending service beyond the PVR complex. I thought this wondrous gift was supposed to empower the Internet user, but now I find that there’s a modem that requires a power supply – which means no electricity, no Internet. Wtf?! I called the Airtel engineer about this and explained that my colony sometimes has long power cuts and I often need to send an email or file something on short notice; whereupon, in the tone of a cunning prosecutor who has found a huge hole in the defendant’s case, he said:

“But sir, just tell me one thing. If the electricity goes, how will you operate the computer anyway?”

(He didn’t actually add “Huh? Huh? Tell me! Huh?” at the end of the question, but it was implied, and I could picture the villainous grin and the darting eyebrows.)

“I have a laptop,” I replied tersely.

“Ohhh, a laptop,” the man sighed, like a deflated Kodak film salesman hearing about digital cameras for the first time. “But sir, others in the colony have desktops.”

Anyway, to cut a long and idiotic conversation short, he first suggested I buy a proper, respectable PC that would do the decent thing by switching off each time there was a power cut, then he made noises about inverters and UPSes. For now I’m keeping my Tata Indicom dial-up connection as a backup.

P.S. the broadband is working okay otherwise, but it’s a very strange feeling to just have the Net “on tap” and not have to perform any manual labour to get it going; I keep reflexively clicking on the Dial-up icon and then gazing at it wistfully. I also miss the beeping noise the Tata handset used to make each time a minute rolled over. Loss and yearning are life’s only constants.