Life in India

An Indian take on The Social Network, Part 1 – Chehrakitaab?

This is not a review for the movie ‘The Social Network’. Enough accolades and adjectives have been doled out for the Movie, Facebook, Mark Zukerberg and etc. The movie itself was just above the ordinary as far as I am concerned, but all its pitfalls were eclipsed by the raw awesomeness of the story and portrayal on how the guy built up Facebook.

This post is on a throught generated by the movie and Facebook from an Indian perspective, as an answer to the second most repeated question about India after “Why doesn’t India get into the FIFA World Cup?“, which is: Despite being chok-a-block with millions of so-called culture-rich, brilliant, intelligent, (and rich) people, why has India not yet produced a Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Amazon, Apple, AOL..? Heck, even with the world’s largest concentration of Orkutiyas, we haven’t even come up an Orkut, for all our brilliance! We have some of the brightest minds and programmers on the planet, and still there is no product or company that has come out of India. Well, it is not so difficult to fathom why. Let me put it in perspective, by telling a story.

Definitely NOT Indian.

What if Mark Zuckerberg was born in India?

Mahesh Shakkarpahaad was born in Gonda, UP, to middle class parents. He went to “English Medium” where he learned to write letters that say: “This is to kindly beg to bring to your attention that.. ..Please do the needful” and so on. Like most Indian kids, he too was instilled with the great Indian ‘cultural value’ right from his childhood: “Cram your ass off, get into IIT, followed by a job in ‘phoren’, then marry a homely girl from your own caste (who will be chosen by your parents, of course) and do service for your elders.” Or something on those lines.

Our boy was brilliant, intelligent and was immensely talented. He grew up learning immensely useless algebra, trigonometry et al, which helped him understand world-saving facts like how much time a train will take to cross a lamp post and how the world functioned in x-y and Sine theta. He successfully crammed his way into IIT where he falls in love with the college belle, but couldn’t muster the courage to tell her so. In a dreamy attempt to put his adolescent amor in material form, he creates a website where male IIT students can compare FLAMES with any girl in IIT of their liking. However, the network was not designed to take all the hits it recieved from the 200+ male students at the same time (there were only like 10 girls in IIT anyway). He was seriously admonished by the IIT management for crashing their network, and was suspended for 2 weeks after ‘enquiry’, hearing which his parents went into shock as if he was convicted for first-degree murder.

Not one to give up, Mahesh came up with an idea for ‘Chehrakitaab’, an online service where people could connect with other people (especially women) online, through profiles and messages. He burned the midnight electricity perfecting his plan, complete with code and GUIs. But when he presented his idea, the entire Shakkarpahaad khandaan was scandalized!  His mother wept silent tears, his father threatened to disown him and his mamaji and other relatives rued about how life in the big city with ‘modern girls’ had corrupted him making him go against Indian traditions and values. He was reminded about what the goal of his life was, that he was supposed to cram his way and get “good grades”, and not to go around inventing useless stuff. His professors, most of whom were self-importance and ego-encrusted fossils and relics of another era, were aghast at the thought that one of their students could be more creative and intelligent than they are. He was told him he had better pull his socks up and study, anymore deviating from the line would result in “serious repercussions.” Also, scoffs of “Who do you think you are, Bill Gates/Steve Jobs?”

His dreams shattered, Mahesh gave up, crammed up whatever was pounded into his brain and vomited it on his answer sheet. At the end of the course he was picked up by SoullessMegaCorp, Inc., the leading software US MNC, prompting a shortage in Laddus and Cadbury’s supply in Gonda. Within 6 months he was ‘onsite’, drawing salary in crisp US Dollars and ‘elders’ declared that it was time for him to propagate the Shakkarpahaad clan. A frenzy for dowry ensued and 30 acres of land, enough household appliances to fill a Croma showroom, 100 tolas of Gold and a brand new Honda Civic sealed his fate. The bahu, as Mataji insisted, always wore the pallu above her head and made nice rotis. 15 days after the marriage, Mahesh was on a Continental Airlines flight back to Newark. The bahu followed 6 months later.

Mahesh Shakkarpahaad is now settled in Edison, New Jersey, has two girls aged 5 and 3, and still slogs for SoullessMegaCorp as a software programmer on H1B as his Green Card processing will take a year more. He earns a meagre salary by US standards, and the bahu knows just enough English to shop at the nearby 7 to 11. Trips to India are once a year on Air-India out of JFK in economy and his mother still prays for a grandson. He sees his future laid out before him. Sometimes, sitting in his claustrobhobic cubicle, he looks into the distance and pauses to think about his idea – Chehrakitaab – What If? He knows how it all could have been different.

Chicken Coop and more

There are hundreds of talented Zuckerbergs in India, but in India, balls to talent! The only thing that we are supposed to do is act as our family tells us to do, which we are bonded to by ‘cultural values’, the most effective brainwashing tool ever invented to keep an entire people from discovering themselves, from which we cannot break free. Only people who have immensely hard conviction of mind and rock-hard will can rise above this bond to create worlds of their own.

In addition to this “Chicken Coop” mentality as Arvind Adiga calls it in his Booker-winning book “The White Tiger“, talent is scoffed at and ridiculed and brilliant ideas are brutally repressed as we wallow in our long inculcated inferiority complex and sub-conscious slave mentality. The British designed our education system to create cheap literate clerk labor for them. We are following it even today, creating clerks of a different kind. Ideas generated by talent are thrown into the dustbin of egoism and tradition. And like everything else wrong in this country, it is not going to change anytime soon. You know now why India has no Facebook.

A tear, to all that great talent going wasted like a lit candle inside a closed pot.

Read Next: Bollywoodization of the movie “The Social Network”

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The Half-Blood Geek

Super Like, Man! You reflected my thoughts in the most effective manner!

vadakkus

Thanks a lot! :) I know many people are thinking the same thing!

amaresh dey

hats off to u dear….i’m also suffering through the same since long..

vadakkus

Thank you! Hey if you have an idea, go ahead with it!

Purvesh Janee

Awesome One :)

vadakkus

Thank you Sir! Oh you have a personal URL now? Checking it out!

Pradyut

Brilliant!

vadakkus

Thanks! :)

Prateek

Awesome post. Very apt. And congratulations your your this featured podt.

The Unwise Prevails Over The Wise

vadakkus

Thanks a lot! :)

Xylene

Awesome !
Everytime someone tells me about culture and values. I ask them to define culture and values. Ask this to anyone and they would start with “Marriage”

vadakkus

And Virginity. Two of the most overhyped things in India, which were taught to us by the British. So much for ‘Indian’ culture.

Thanks!

Akshay

Of women, mind you. :P

George Mankottil

Expressed beautifully what most Indians think and many discuss about but only a few dare to write. I wish someone create a platform for such creative minds!

The Half-Blood Geek

“I wish someone create a platform for such..”
You just read Ramayana, and you are still looking for the relationship status of Sita!
If you want something to change and if you are that desperate, You shouldn’t expect “someone” to do that!

vadakkus

Exactly. But unfortunately, I have no talents fr that… I once joined an engineering college to acquire such abilities, but all I did was to end u another B.Tech Victim. And I could not defy culture and tradition as well.

Shawn Michael Adams

I watched The Social Network lastnight and the first thing I really have to say about this movie is that I don’t believe that there has ever been a movie that has been more over hyped than The Social Network has been. Read More: http://www.shawnmichaeladamsonline.com/2011/03/social-network-apache-servers-and-my.html

Akshay

Hi, this is an excellent and well-articulated piece, I can totally relate to.

The aversion to new ideas and independent thinking is an unfortunate consequence of centuries of inequality and social stratification. In a culture characterized by the blinding opulence of the Few but a miserable existence for the Many, the obscene luxuries and avarice of the Few became an unfortunate benchmark.

The goal, for the privileged people in our country, is merely to emulate these people,doing whatever it takes to become (rich) like them. I think this mentality is responsible for the stifling of original ideas and the claustrophobic atmosphere. You’ve got to get rich, you’ve got to engage in crass displays of wealth, you’ve got to do whatever gets you rich, powerful and famous, atleast in the eyes of the small social circle you inhabit. No need to try something untested,unproven. Something that is not a proven money-minter.

It’s no wonder we have a ‘culture of migration’ in which a person who could have contributed in India as a lawyer or a journalist ends up doing a PhD in Computer Science abroad because of familial and social pressures. It’s the ‘prestige’ and fame associated with the NRI tag.

Other examples abound. The new trend of innocent, impressionable children being subjected to new-fangled reality shows which are a huge emotional drain considering the manner in which the poor kids are treated. Or the emergence SAD reality shows that feature a lot of young rich kids trying to act cool. And who can forget IIT, JEE and the associated grind. What of the ‘maggu’, ‘get-marks’ culture in our schools and colleges, where questioning is discouraged and a real education thrown out of the window all in pursuit of those grades that will land you a great job/foreign scholarship/whatever. News-channels with crappy content?

The cultural issues that you mention, such as family pressures, etc. are nothing but a result of this kind of elevation of material riches and certain cultural indicators as embodiments of a satisfactory life.

Hopefully, as we become more mature as a society, the pressures of ‘culture’ will reduce on the parents and our minds will receive the encouragement and nourishment that they deserve.

Srijith

Hey, awesome one! I’d attempted a similar post, but must say, this one takes it way ahead. Btw, link to my post – http://srijithadvtg.blogspot.com/2010/06/great-indian-pendrive.html

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