Beware of Jealousy

Moore’s Law says that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, to which he should have added a corollary: dotcoms are like shooting stars. Roughly a decade ago, every hack was scrambling around trying to shake the dust of the print media off his sandals and sign up with a dotcom. Those who failed to make the cut (like yours truly) sat glumly on the sidelines muttering ominously about impending doom but the moaning and groaning carried the unmistakable whiff of sour grapes. Old Willy summed it up best in Othello with: ‘Oh beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green eye'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’

Many were called but few were chosen and who among the rejects didn't envy the lucky few who made it to the arcane IAS world of dotcomania? Of course it wasn't just the fabulous salaries; I'll have you know we journos have our self-respect and pride. Beyond the paychecks, it was the ESOP's, club class travel, Coke fountains and we wouldn’t even have to exchange the jeans and chappals dress code for a safari suit. Veteran journalists with twenty odd years of experience blithely skipped away without so much as a backward glance at the first siren call of the orthographically challenged:  Indya, Go4i, Y4U, B4me, blackisblue, all4me. No prizes for imagination here, besides being practically indistinguishable in their sheer puerility.

Of course the scenario has changed radically since the heady days of dotcomania and no angel investor now wants to make eye contact (or bargepole contact) with one. These days the mere mention of portals is the cybernetic equivalent of being Ebola positive. If I had a tenner for every infotech firm that deep-sixed the .com from their corporate profile I'd be in a position to lend Buffett some spending cash. Of course hindsight is 20:20 and it is unseemly to crow, but perhaps an anecdote would be in order.

My call from the dotcomworld came one sunny April morning in 20… and never mind. The caller identified herself as Richa from XYZ.com, gave me a heartwarming spiel about how delighted they were with my deathless prose and invited me to drop in and have a java with them. There I was at the appointed hour, with my wardrobe scrutinised and approved by my neighbour's geeky daughter for the requisite level of scruffiness. She also kindly explained what Java meant. (Yes, I know this dates me, but I swear I thought they meant the motorcycle. What can I say in my defence except that I've had a sheltered upbringing? Integral calculus was hard enough without adding some gibberish computer language dreamt up by Sun Microsystems, who by the by, have been ingested by Oracle.

I sat there for hours in a stuffy anteroom with my portfolio clutched in my hot little hand. Adjoining my chamber of horrors was an open space of some 10 by 20 with a massive TV, a couple of pinball machines and a dispirited wench of some fifty summers dispensing stale sandwiches, oily bhujias and instant coffee with a surly expression. Sprawled in an armchair, a ponytailed, bearded adolescent with the obligatory three earrings watched MTV with the unblinking stare of a lizard. I waited for a good two hours watching the Spice Girls with the hairy one but there's a limit to the intellectual load a mere hack can handle, so I crept silently away. I wanted to stay fresh for my interview, you see.

That, I am ashamed to admit, didn't take place for another week, but I remained, like Uriah Heep, in 'umble mode. Ultimately, the moment of truth arrived and I was summoned imperiously by the HRD person, a doughty woman who bore more than a passing resemblance to Bessie Bunter. ‘Show me your stuff,’ she peremptorily commanded. Hopefully no pun was intended but all my silver-tongued oratory deserted me. I sat there gormless; my wit decayed, my muse a jade. Finally inspiration struck and I handed her a piece I was secretly rather proud of: a racy, punchy little sketch of Bangalore's ten sexy women.

She leafed through it perfunctorily and then instead of a brisk, ‘When can you start, you Pulitzer potential, you Woodward?’ she shooed me out the door. ‘Wait, I've got other stuff that'll knock you socks off,’ I bleated, but she was adamant. ‘None of that Shakespeare shit, yaar. Netizens want straight info, happening stuff for the GenY market. All your sexy women are over 30, that's twilight zone, dude.’ Ah well, I might have been found wanting by the Netizens we still have each other, dear reader.