The emotion that such urban change evokes in one is perhaps
better described by the Odia word moha-maya (which is a combination of two
words — maya and moha) which can connote everything from pity to longing to
irrational attachment that causes pain. For this writer, more than the STD
booth, what causes the most serious pang of moha-maya are the rapidly
disappearing cybercafes, although the latter have not quite evaporated so
completely as the STD booth.
This might not sound like too much of a loss for those on
the right side of thirty. But to some of us (belonging to what Palash Krishna
Mehrotra categorised as ‘The Butterfly Generation’ in the eponymous book)
inching towards our first hiccups of an early middle age, this will be just
another wry reminder of mortality; all things will fade away, including yours
truly.
I do not remember the first day I accessed the internet.
Perhaps the experience was not very startling; I like many others in my
generation, I lie between the two Indian extremes to technological innovations
— the blind fascination welded with incompetence that characterises so much of
the generation of the midnight’s children, and the blind acceptance of all
technological innovations by the generation born in the 1990s and 2000s. I, for
example, also do not remember the first time I used a telephone. But I do
remember for sure, that it was at our Sailashree Vihar home in Bhubaneswar,
to which we shifted in October 1992; because, one remembers for sure that one
did not have a telephone connection before then.
Similarly, I remember where I accessed the internet for the
first time, although the details of that first interface escape me now. It was
a place called PAN-NET (or was it PLAN-NET? I can’t be sure; my memory,
unfortunately, is like a bamboo sieve; it holds things, but not too much, and
not for very long) on the edge of the IMFA park in Shahid Nagar. Within a year
of this, at least three cybercafes had opened shop near my house in Sailashree
Vihar in the Chandrasekharpur area in North Bhubaneswar.
 |
| Street Scene in Bhubaneswar (Wikimedia Commons) |
The Semi-Public Internet
Thus, my first experience of accessing the internet, like
the majority of Indians of my generation perhaps, was at a ‘public’ place, a
cybercafe. What happened as a result, was that the idea of accessing the
internet, and not only its usage, as a communal exercise, got embedded deeply
inside one’s mind; one saw the internet as a public utility and its usage as
public/semi-public acts.
Sasikanta Bose (name changed), a student of philosophy, feels in a similar way.
He learnt to use computers and the internet in cybercafes in the Jagamohan
Nagar area, near his college in Bhubaneswar. As a regular writer for webzines
earlier, he could not have functioned without these. Although now he has private accesses to the internet, he still uses
cybercafes for taking printouts and for scanning.
Over the last few years,
Facebook is an additional reason for him to be on the World Wide Web, and he is
more comfortable accessing Facebook through a personal device, rather than in a cybercafe. But his
primary reason for accessing the net remains to access webzines and reading
material on the internet, and he feels this is done much more efficiently at a
cybercafe, since there is an immediate monetary pressure to get the most returns
on the money that one is spending. The cybercafe that he would use the most, when he is in Bhubaneswar (he is now a student in Calcutta), is EXCEL
in Sailashree Vihar.
The Case of ‘EXCEL’
EXCEL is a cybercafé established in the year 2001. Mr. Susant Kumar Behera and
Mr. Sukant Kumar Behera (two brothers) are the proprietors. It is located on
the ground floor of a house in the sixth phase of Sailashree Vihar. It must be
mentioned here in passing that Sailashree Vihar is a strange new locality in
Bhubaneswar initially planned and constructed by the Odisha State Housing
Board (OSHB); strange, like a lot of other things that came into being in the 1980s.
It has only two ‘phases’, phase six and phase seven; I do not think even the
Housing Board knows where the other five phases have meandered off to.
EXCEL is located on a service road parallel to the main arterial road of
Sailashree Vihar that divides the sixth and the seventh phases. When Excel
opened, it functioned primarily as a communication center with the cybercafe and the STD-PCO booth as the mainstays of the family concern. The STD booth
reached its peak in 2004 and was almost dead by 2006–2007; the increasingly
ubiquitous mobile phone effectively killed the PCO business. A coin-operated
system was operational for a few more years, till that was also discontinued in 2013.
With
the death of the PCO booth, EXCEL moved into the mobile voucher business for
pre-paid mobiles; but with only two percent commission being offered by most
service providers, this is a high-turnover but low-profit business for the
shop, and has not been able to replace the revenues and profits of the PCO
business.
Mr. Susant Behera (Bunu bhai to most of his customers and to me as well; and he
also happens to be a close friend of one my closest schoolmate’s family
friend), says that when they started the cybercafe business, they were very anxious
to be a ‘different’ kind of player. Most cybercafes in Bhubaneswar, then
offered primarily the illicit joys of pornography as their primary attraction.
This was reflected in the very design of the cybercafes; most of these were
designed in the form of small cabins with often curtains on their small doors,
and the computer screens faced the wall.
 |
| Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons |
Therefore, when EXCEL opened shop, I
remember it being a refreshingly new kind of cybercafe. All the monitors were
placed on reverse ‘U’ shaped tables with the backs of the monitors facing the
wall, and the monitor screens facing out towards everyone; there was thus, no
privacy. But this completely removed the sleaze that was then associated with
cybercafes and the internet, and made it popular with new social
groups using the internet, such as single young women. EXCEL remained popular with young women as a node for accessing the internet for the longest time.
Now EXCEL is a very different kind of space from the time I remember it from my
college days (1999–2002). It was, even then, popular with the young. But now it
is much more of a safe hang-out place for college going young adults and those
who have newly joined the work force, with fast moving snacks items such as
puffs (called ‘patties’ in Bhubaneswar) and rolls, and ice cream being sold at
the shop. It is much more of tuck shop and grocery store (housing pre-packed items) now, with national and international
brands of packaged food such as Haldiram and Nestle fighting for rack space.
This transformation started in 2003 itself, two years into the opening of the
business; but whereas earlier EXCEL was primarily a PCO booth and cybercafe where one could get something to eat, it is primary a tuck shop and grocery store these days. The
shop also functions as a travel agent now, and books all kinds of bus, train
and flight tickets.
Till 2015, the cybercafe remained important for this family business and contributes
around 20% of its total profits; but this was down from an all-time high of
50–60% in 2006–07 and from 30% when the business started in 2001. From 2005 to 2015, the capacity of the cafe came down by ten computers, and by then it
operated with only six systems; till 2010, the cafe had 20 systems, and by
2012, the number had decreased to 14. A large part of the revenue is now from
the ancillary services provided by the cybercafe, such as scanning and
printing; data does not drive the business any longer.
Even the six systems now
operational in EXCEL stay unused for some parts of the day; it operates at full
capacity only in the evenings. During the day, often half of the systems lie
idle and unused. But the cybercafe in EXCEL has other roles in the family
business; it often provides an entry into other services such as ticketing that
are offered; often a customer who steps into the shop to take printouts in the
cybercafe, ends up buying a recharge voucher for her pre-paid mobile
connection, or picks up a family pack of ice-cream for her home.
Imagining a World without Cybercafes
Ajay Kumar Puhan (28, from Jajpur district), who works at EXCEL, feels that
cybercafes in their present form will survive only for another three to four
years. After that period of time, they just might survive as glorified ‘printout
and scanning’ cafes. He worked for around nine years at Excel, since he was 18 years old. He also studied for a diploma in mechanical engineering while working at EXCEL.
According to him, the customer profile has drastically changed over the last
ten years; only those who cannot and/or do not access the internet through
mobile devices come to the cybercafe for their browsing needs. Students also
drive demand for the cafe with their needs for filling up forms. He feels that
the situation is very similar in his village as well, with almost everyone who
can afford a smart phone has one with an internet pack.
 |
A Scene from Biju Patnaik Park, Bhubaneswar
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons |
This decline in the cybercafe component of the family business in EXCEL is
reflective of a larger churning in the business. Till around 2010, there were
around ten cybercafes in the greater Sailashree Vihar area. By 2015, only three
survived, of which EXCEL is one. Elsewhere in Bhubaneswar, the story is a
similar one; often cybercafes have added additional services such as
photocopiers or have transformed into gaming stations to survive as businesses.
This change has been driven by fundamental transformations in the ways in which
the internet is accessed in the country and in the city. Mobile phones have
become the dominant device for accessing the internet in Bhubaneswar (and in
India), and this has had significant effects on cybercafes in the city. The
gentrification of many parts of the city and the consequently increasing rents
for commercial property, and increases in wages of attendants at the cafes, are
the other reasons why cybercafes are increasingly going the way of PCO-STD
booths in the city.
Now, the Semi-Private Internet
Rahul (name changed) uses EXCEL very infrequently. But when he was a student in
a big engineering college four years back, he used to sometimes go to the bunch
of cyber cafes dotting the area surrounding his college in South-west
Bhubaneswar. His visits were infrequent; he would go to a cyber cafe for some
project related work, to quickly check his Facebook account, or to get his fix
of porn. Even when internet was available at home, the cybercafes offered a
sense of freedom because of the anonymity of the interface.
There was very little regulation of the cybercafes a few years back, and one
could get a cabin and access the net without any identity proof. One could have
anonymous chats, browse for pornography and watch it in the semi-privacy of a
cubicle, or get one’s dose of social networking sites (sometimes registered in
a fake name) without the usual fears when one does these from one’s private
connecting devices.
But his accessing the internet through the cybercafes was more often than not a
very hesitant activity. Quite a few times there would be people making out in
the next cabin; more often than not, these would be seniors or batch-mates from
his college. In those days cybercafes were infamous for being places where
girls and boys, often college students, with no other place to hang out in,
would indulge in some heavy duty necking and petting. The owners of the cafes
were aware of what was happening. But they would not interfere, as that would
mean turning away customers. Raul did not have a problem with people making out
in a cabin that shared the same partition as his cubicle; but, he would feel
odd and get a nagging feeling as if he was intruding.
For Rahul. The semi-publicity of the cyber-cafe was manifested by its obverse —
semi-privacy. He sometimes misses the hothouse atmosphere of the cybercafes of
yore, when you could slice the sexual charge in their atmosphere with a scythe,
and reap private moments in ‘public’ places. He has not searched for a
cybercafe with any urgency in a long time, because he does not need them for
his project work; and his smart phone answers his social networking needs. But
he feels a certain moha-maya for the semi-privacies of the internet that existed
outside the fully private smartphone and the laptop.
 |
A Panel from Pasurameswar Temple, Bhubaneswar
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons |
Conclusion
Moha in sankrit means everything from infatuation, delusion, lack of
discrimination, ignorance and falling into error, that are captured in the Odia
word as well. The word maya also captures all these meanings in both English
and Odia. And moha is a vice, for both Shankara and Buddha. It is a vice for
Odia saints such as Achyutananda Das and Arakkhita Das as well, spanning the
whole pre-modern experience from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Moha-maya is a
feeling, a condition that one has to overcome to arrive at true knowledge —
knowledge that simultaneously provides insights into the self and the world.
Hence, to be free from moha-maya one needs to stay in the moment; any moha-maya
for the past therefore, is supposed to be spiritually debilitating. Therefore,
the Odia relationship with the past is a complicated one. One has to honour
tradition; yet, one has to be free of moha-maya of the particular, peculiar,
material manifestations of the tradition, of the past. This applies as much to
dead relatives, as to disappearing socio-technological forms such as the STD
booth and the cyber-cafes.
With the attack on the cybercafe continuing in all these various fronts, it is
highly unlikely that it will survive into the third decade of the twenty-first
century. But like other attacks on communally shared, semi-public/semi-private
social spaces, these attacks of ‘inevitable’ forces of technology and market
need to be resisted. But there are no easy answers as to how to go about doing
it.
As for me, even though I have a smart phone that I use to access the internet (as well as using its 'hot-spot' feature to access the net on my laptop), even
when I do not need to scan or print, I often pay a routine visit to
the neighbourhood cybercafe. Token gesture, I know; but when one is fighting
forces that are infinitely larger than oneself, one perhaps has to resort to
all kinds instruments of resistance, including the token, ‘weapons of the
weak’. One cannot eliminate death, but one can definitely prolong life.
Especially, when the final moha-maya is for life itself.
Note: This essay was originally published in September 2015, with the title, 'The many lives and sites of internet in
Bhubaneswar,' on the website of Center for Internet and Society (CIS), as part of the ‘Studying Internets in
India’ series.
While editing the piece to post it here on the blog, I tried to update it somewhat so that it did not seem dated. But I realised soon enough that large sections had to be left unedited, so as to give a sense of the time in which it was written, i.e. the middle of the year 2015. Therefore, in a sense, the piece that you have just read is a strange piece, occupying at least two niches of time.
But it is perhaps no stranger that life itself, where each body in which it is expressed, carries sediments of infinite instants of time.
.JPG)
