Mishra

A true story - a firsthand experience. Even the names are real.

One of my favorite funny scenes from the movie “Lion King” is when Pumba, the taken-for-granted happy-go-lucky pig says about the stars, “Oh gee, I always thought they were balls of gas, burning billions of miles away!” and Timone, the smart one, ridicules him. My children used to roll over laughing, I myself chuckled every time we watched it!

… and, it always reminded me of Mishra!

I was studying Computer Science during the dark ages of that subject in India. Few of us were staying late one day, completing our programming assignments. My assignment was to design the shortest train route between two cities in India. In those pre historic times, we had to get the program code punched on to the cards and have it ‘compiled’ on the mainframe computers. Only a select few Temple Guards, working in the innermost Sanctum Sanctorum were privy to the precious so called “CRT terminals” where you could be “Online” with the Gods. The great unwashed masses like us had to be content with the huge unwieldy printed outputs.

Mishra, my classmate, was on his dream trip that day. He was always the odd one out, a strange curiosity among us. From a Bihar village, older, working, married, a father of two and carrying responsibility for his parents and siblings - his world couldn't be any more different from us carefree 20 somethings’. He was in our class only because his company had ‘sponsored’ him for this course.

“Hey, what if these train timetables were available on the computer for anyone to check!” He said, glazed eyes staring at some faraway point.

The other three of us in the room just burst out laughing, overcoming our usual politeness for his insane ideas!

“and why would anyone want to do it, when they can just go to the nearby railway station and inquire about the schedule?” said Smart Alec #1. Smart Alec #2 chimed in “and a fat lot of good will this timetable do sitting inside a computer! WE barely get our printout responses in a couple of days after putting in the request. How do you think the general public, who do not know a computer exists, or have ever seen one, will get that schedule. The train would have left the station a long time ago, by the time they see the timetables. Hah!!”

Mishra kind of cowed down, as he often did in our company. Meekly, he said, “You know, what if one day, all the school and college libraries could have terminals connected to the giant Indian Railways or the Government computer? You could sort of look up all kinds of information quickly.”

Such a bizarre, outlandish idea! Why would anyone want to do that? Libraries already have reference books for that! SA1 and SA2 rolled their eyes, in deference to his age and otherwise nice and humble persona, and just muttered something meaningless.

I, quite sympathetic to the SA fraternity, tried my humor and said, “Mishra, we should all live to see that day!”

Obviously, I didn't know I will live so long… or the time will fly so quickly! I also didn't know Mishra was born in the wrong country, at the wrong time!!