Wit Wisdom and Whoop

It was 1996 and Internet, which is so ubiquitous today and literally touching our life every minute of the day, was a novelty, an unknown faceless blackhole that was a wonder to most of us. I remember meeting a senior Infotech guru who showed me something called email and it was so complicated that I wondered why anyone would even want to use it. The state run VSNL, as it was then called had started this thing called internet and for those who were born around that time, I must explain how it worked. It was fascinating. Sure, after reading this you will think of Dinosaurs but that was how it was. Firstly, we used to dial up a number and after hearing a prolonged – Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, Wuiiiiiiiiiiiiii, Keeee, Peeeee and such strange noises we were connected to god knows what. All we saw was a black screen. We the cattle class had what was called a Shell account while the likes of Infosys, TCS and such others had a TCP/IP account. The shell account meant that you didn’t see any grap...