The Common Man Speaks

The best & worst of times: Musings of an Arts graduate who had taken Commerce

February 20, 2021 by Keyur Seta Leave a Comment

It was the worst of times. This is what I feel when I look back at a period in the early years of the new millennium.

During my growing up years, there were norms in the society on what stream a student should opt for after passing 10th standard. The best students or scholars, as they are called, should go for Science. The worst should go for Arts and those who fall in the middle should latch onto Commerce.

As I had always been an average or an in-between student, I took Commerce; also because most of my friends were opting for it.

The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what comes under Commerce as part of studies. I hardly even knew the meaning of the word. Once college began, I realized I had absolutely no interest in subjects like Accounts, Economics, etc.

Worse, I found it way too difficult to grasp even the simplest of teachings. But I felt it was too late. I tried studying these subjects somehow. I opted for special tuition at the end of the year and just managed to pass the year [read: promoted].

The following year, 12th or HSC, wasn’t as difficult but it was certainly not interesting for sure. Again, because of the tuition, I crawled towards 51% in the boards. This isn’t a big score by any means but for me it was a major achievement. My family was happy as they hadn’t expected even this much.

Best and worst - 3 Idiots
R Madhavan in 3 Idiots

I thought that the nightmare was over and I would somehow clear the remaining three years and secure a B Com degree. But the actual nightmare had just begun in the first year after 12th, which is known as F.Y.B.Com.

It was just impossible for me to grasp any subject. The biggest villain being Maths. I used to regularly feel sad and helpless. I just dragged myself till the end of the year. But by that time, I had lost all mental energy to associate myself with Commerce any more. It was the worst period of my life.

Right before our final exams, I took a major decision of quitting Commerce and opting for Arts to complete my graduation. I was deeply interested in writing from my school days. By the time the final exams neared, I became more convinced about it.

Changing my stream in between after 13th meant that I would lose one year, but that was fine. I just had to divorce Commerce.

After some hesitation, my parents agreed; thank God for that. The scene in 3 Idiots (2009) where Farhan’s (R Madhavan) father allows his son to follow his passion towards photography had happened with me much before that.

Just like how we change a TV channel, my life changed after I took Arts. Subjects like Psychology, Sociology, History, English and Hindi made me feel at home. Now, I didn’t feel I was studying. It was fun.

After passing the third year and acquiring the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree, I opted for a Post Graduate course in Journalism and Mass Communication as I had decided I would be a journalist or at least go into a profession that involves writing.

The PG course was more enjoyable since I got a chance of dabbling into things I love the most and knowing that this will help me in the future. It was also the only time in my student life when I was very good at studies. It was the best of times.

*This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda*

Filed Under: Personal experience Tagged With: Experience studying commerce, Experiences of Commerce students

My 1st encounter with INTERNET through a cola drink 20 years ago

February 2, 2021 by Keyur Seta Leave a Comment

Internet has become one of the basic needs today, especially for city-dwellers; whether professionals or students. It has penetrated so much into our lives that it often makes us wonder how life would be without its presence.  

This makes me recall the time when I was introduced to the internet for the first time ever or when I took baby steps into this medium, which was called revolutionary back then. It makes me feel strange to even imagine the time when I was able to live without the internet!  

During the start of the new millennium (in the year 2000) I was an addict of colas. It is this addiction that played a major role in me getting introduced to this medium.  

Coca-Cola had come up with a scheme then of offering free internet surfing for 30 minutes with every glass of the soft drink. They provided a card that could be exchanged at any of the cyber cafes listed by them for half an hour of net surfing.

When the person at the counter gave me and my friends the card when we bought Coca-Cola for the first time after the scheme was launched, we were surprised. When he explained to us about the internet, I was confused. What is internet? What is a cyber café? I could hardly understand any of it but still decided to go ahead since it was for free and involved sitting in front of the computer.

Internet logo

The cyber café closest to my house was located in a crammed place near Dadar railway station. It appeared like a shady office space but the person running it was kind enough to explain to us what exactly internet is and what all can we do with it. But it took us some time to even get used to handling the ‘mouse,’ since we hadn’t learnt Windows in school.

We soon came to know about something called an e-mail address and that it’s a different way of sending a letter, since the word ‘digital’ hadn’t become common then. It didn’t take me long to keep ‘iamthebest’ as my first e-mail ID; based on one of my favourite songs from Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (2000). [Few months later, my next e-mail ID included the words ‘raj_aryan’ when Mohabbatein (2000) became my next favourite film.]

By the way, kids from today’s era won’t know that we used to connect to the net through a device called modem. And it used to make strange sounds before connecting.

The sounds emanating from the modem in olden days before connecting to the net

Funnily, we opened an e-mail ID but we had nobody to whom we can send e-mails. So, we started sending mails to each other.

In one of my next visits to the café, someone else was sitting on the computer I always used. The owner asked me to take the next PC. But I opposed saying I have always accessed my mails from this PC, so how can I check them from another machine? That’s how I came to know that e-mails can be accessed from any computer in the world and that’s why it’s called the World Wide Web (www).

In today’s times, it’s obvious that if we send an e-mail to someone, it gets saved in the address book automatically. But what wasn’t the case then. We actually wrote down e-mail IDs of people in a diary! We didn’t know we can copy-paste the e-mail ID of a person from his or her previous mail.

It felt like a sense of achievement to surf news from the computer. The two most common websites I used to visit were Cricinfo.com and IndiaFM.com [which later became BollywoodHungama.com].

I felt more triumphant when I could open and load pictures of film stars or cricketers. The speed to open one picture back then was the same to download a 20 or 30 MB videos today.

The now defunct Yahoo chat rooms through Yahoo messenger

Internet soon became our latest sensation and we started visiting cyber cafes on every weekend; this time by paying. We started visiting a different and more sophisticated café at Gokhale Road (North), Dadar where you could also order food.

Slowly, we were introduced to the idea of chat rooms [In MSN, followed by Yahoo]. And this made us familiar with the concept of making friends online, even in far distant countries. It took us just few weeks to become pros at using the internet.

There was a sense of pride to have become ‘experts’ in this new medium much before our other friends in the building, relatives and a large majority of the Indian population.

But my pride was demolished either in the same year or the next when I noticed that this famous paan wala at Breach Candy with the name of the shop as ‘Muchhad Panwala’ was having his own official website since 1998!

And we were feeling on top of the world by just having an e-mail ID!

P.S – Just last month, the paan wala was arrested in a drug-related case, but that’s a different story.

Also read:

Rape threats don’t go against Facebook’s ‘community standards’

Walking out of abusive marriage was the best decision: Social activist Urmila Chanam

Filed Under: Personal experience Tagged With: Internet 2000s, Internet experience in 2000, Internet invention, Modem

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