It was way back to year 1999 and I was just opening my eyes or you can say trying to open my eyes into the world of information technology. I had prepared my mind for a degree in computer science. I’d been just going through its syllabus, colleges, patterns, merits and my position in the crowd where I could see myself nothing but an alien who had never touched computer before but people around me (read friends, relatives, near and dear once) got a chance to quench their queries regarding IT jargons. I was just a novice in this field who had just switched his mind to IT from civil services thanks to reservations system, number of chance to appear and uncertainty around civil services but they had gamut of questions such as what is internet, what is all about www… , email.. chat and list went on.. It’s not only the ones who were asking questions how could I avoid RAI bahadurs(Advisors .. for exact meaning of Rai bahadur even google wont help you but me;)).. “you know Its just hype of IT things there would be Y2K and they would left with void in computer arena..why don’t you appear in clerical grade exams?, you have pretty good mathematics, don’t you?” All these would make me shivering with fear of failures.
All these made some positive changes inside me at least and I started taking a little interest in all these. I purposely said ”little” because in Rs 45 per hr in cyber café you can take a little interest only and it meant most for the guys like me who would have tight pockets. Thanks to one of my well wishers, advisors, Rai Bahadurs whatever you say I thought of opening my email account keeping an eye on the need of my preparation. I inquired with some of my friends who would visit cyber café often, but the term EMAIL seemed to them as never heard thing instead they poured their mono-centric knowledge of DESI.. sites.
Now the task had become tough for me as I could not spend much time in cyber café when I dint know how to double click or meaning of different keys on keyboard, I dint know where to click because on just opening the internet explorer many alluring pics of english/desi babes popped up, undecided to close or to explore different part of GOD’s most beautiful creation. Speed of computer and 45 Rs per hr were just making matter worse. But there is will there is way I managed to find a guy, computer science engineering student who assured me to get my id on Internet Ocean.
Very next day the “friend in need” accompanied me to nearby cyber café and threw some light on email service provider and formats of email id, emailing, chatting etc. I wanted my unique id (Never thought internet permits only unique id) , unique id of my choice sunil.pandey@.. seemed to be almost perfect.
What would be your id?? Friend asked.
“sunil.pandey” I replied before he could finish his words.
He entered id and I filled password, tried to fill as natural to me as my name. I could see friend turned his eyes off it.
“User name already exists. Please try another one” Message box popped up, giving me some option for the id. I tried various permutation and combination but in vein, I could not get id of choice and I had to satisfy myself with the id provided by world(Internet). May be it was first time I realized how difficult it is to get unique id that too of your choice.
This story seemed to be replica of our journey into the real world, where everybody wants to have his/her own unique id and some works to achieve this. Some compromises owing to the limitations around them, some wait for their time to come and exploit as soon as they get it, some make their own way to get it( Even I got my unique email id when I explored less known service provider, when new service provider joined to this business).
They say everybody has been sent to this world with unique id of our choice to pursue certain goal, the responsibility is on us to find out because even this service provider (GOD) does not permit redundant ids. So let us find our unique id of our choice for this service provider lest we left with our unique id at yahoo, google, rediff, msn……. only.
