NepalByte

I was in my very early 20s when the first personal computers appeared in Nepal.  They were mostly used for word processing work.  They appeared when people were just getting used to electronic typewriters with right margin justification, daisy wheels, modest memories, and digital displays.

Telex machines with monitors and memories had just replaced those with simultaneous paper printouts and perforated tapes.  Cordless telephones were a rage, and mobile phones had yet to be born.  Fax machines were still a bit further down the road. Notebooks and notepads were still made of paper, and the only blackberries available were edible.

Pink Floyd and the Eagles ruled, and free dope and the hippie culture were abdicating. Only a few hung-over hippies still sported long hair and bellbottoms at the famous Freak Street of Kathmandu.

For most people including me, computers were a mystifying new gadget with a mild hint of voodoo: the early AT/ XT personal computers with monochrome monitors and 40 MB hard disks were said to be capable of a limitless range of tasks, like the genie in the bottle. 

Sandeep came from a business family headed by his father Govind.  Govind had made a sizable fortune from running the country's biggest business in household and office appliances.  This business occupied the whole of a large two-storey edifice in Nepal's most prestigious stretch of land, right across the road from the royal palace.  He owned this structure.  He had recently moved here from a shopping complex in New Road, the commercial heart of Kathmandu.  He owned that building, too.  He owned an enormous portfolio of real estate in Kathmandu Valley and elsewhere in Nepal.

Govind was a traditional type of guy, a man who invested idle money in an extensive portfolio of land holdings and was probably deeply suspicious of innovations and those who chased them.  Thus, when Sandeep one day expressed his interest in setting up a business in computers, the old man was rattled.

"Hey, Dad," said Sandeep.  "I want to go into computers."

The old man stared, puzzled.  "Computers?" he asked.  'What are they - some new play thing?"

"No," said Sandeep.  "Computers are machines that can do anything.  They are the future.  I want to go into business selling computers and computer-related services."

The old man looked doubtful.  "How much money can you make from computers?  Can you possibly make more money from computers than from photocopiers, typewriters, washing machines and refrigerators?"

Sandeep knew he had to keep his spiel simple and non-technical, like teaching children about storks and babies.  He sighed and tried.

"Yeah, you can." Sandeep replied.  "We are making about 25% on average on our photocopiers and washing machines.  I can make at least 40% on computer systems. I can make much more than that on parts, accessories, and peripherals."

"Peripherals?" asked the old man.  "What are they?"

"Optional stuff for computers, like joysticks for games," explained Sandeep.

The old man glared at his son.  "Games?" he snorted.  "So that's what this is all about-you just want to play.  Well, son, I don't play with my photocopiers and refrigerators, I sell them and I make money.  If my customers want to play with them, that is fine by me.  I will make more money on the spare parts."

"Playing is not what computers are primarily for," protested Sandeep.  "They are used for writing letters and reports.  They are used for accounting, for calculations, to maintain information and data, for help in complicated analyses.  Financial institutions like banks use computers to maintain their accounts, keep them updated at all times, access them at any time.  When I start selling software, I can get even bigger margins than on the hardware.  I can easily make margins in excess of 100%."

The old man wavered a tiny bit.  He did not know Hardware from Hebrew or Software from Senegalese, but Money in big Margins he knew.

But he still was not convinced. 

Sandeep continued to wax lyrical on how computers would rule the world and would be able to do just about anything, including maybe sexual reproduction.  He tried to draw a picture for the old man of how everyone in the world, but just everyone and his uncle, would one day own a computer.  Whoever got into the game up front, he explained, could become famous as a pioneer and as rich as Croesus.  Sandeep would have named Bill Gates, but Bill Gates was still a humble wannabe who probably had not even made a measly first million at that time.

It was like Sandeep was orating to the sphinx.  The old man was not having any of it.

"I made my money without any of these newfangled contraptions," he said.  "So did my father, and before him, my grandfather.  You can, too, so just join the family business. I let you wear your hair long, and I let you wear bellbottoms as wide as a woman's petticoat.  I let you stay in bed till late in the morning, and I let you keep the neighborhood awake till late at night with your Bugs or Beatles and the Who or Which. I let you do just about every darn thing you want to, but this is where I draw the line."

The old man pondered a bit before continuing. "I am wondering if I did right in sending you to a Jesuit school.  They seem to have addled your brains."

Sandeep continued to work on his dad.  Every time he brought up the subject, the old man sneered and got sarcastic about greenhorn kids who thought they knew it all.  He would end by ordering his son once again to join the family business. 

"What's good enough for your grandfather and your father is good enough for you," he said repeatedly.

One day, the old man relented, to his own and Sandeep's amazement.  Maybe he had made a killing on a stock lot of refrigerators that day, or maybe he had bought a real prime piece of real estate real cheap.  At any rate, he was in a real good mood and he was magnanimous with Sandeep.  He staked out Sandeep with money and one single room in his big building, though grudgingly, predicting that he would regret his folly in letting his son prevail over his better judgment.

Contrary to the old man's dire predictions Sandeep's business did well.  It progressed more like flame in slightly damp coal than like a brush fire, but the results were slowly visible and undeniable even to the old man.  Sandeep soon had to move to more spacious premises nearby, also owned by his father, when the old man could not let him have more room at headquarters.  The old man was kind enough not to collect rent from Sandeep.

I first laid my hands on a computer at Sandeep's new place of business, when he asked me to help him prepare an urgent multi-volume report for some aid mission. Time was very short, and I was known to be very fast on the typewriter keyboard.  I agreed with alacrity to this first date with a computer.  For about a fortnight, I went every evening to Sandeep's office, where I pounded on a keyboard for a few hours and then we all went home after being wined and dined by Sandeep.

Those old PCs were something.  Every so often, the computer would beep warnings, and I had to wait while it caught up.  Words continued forming across the monitor while my hands were still, like some invisible man was working on the keyboard.  I ended up wondering just what was so great about the computer.  I got the feeling that maybe my electronic typewriter was better.

Soon, Sandeep had franchises for some of the top names in computers and peripherals and software.  He had entered the field at the right time, and he was considered one of Nepal's pioneers by those few who had an inkling of where computers came from and those many who thought they did.  Most people, though, shared Sandeep's dad's feeling that the boy would come to grief.

Sandeep gradually eased out of secondary services like desktop publishing.  He hired himself some nerds and began writing his own software.  His first software was an accounting package for banks, which he tried out on Nepal's first "foreign" bank-a joint venture between an overseas bank and local investors.  This institution, which also boasted of being "Nepal's first computerized bank," initially operated a computer system that used perforated cards for data storage. 

Sandeep's success softened up his father somewhat.  With a great show of grouchy reluctance, the old man allowed him back to headquarters, which had in the meantime been demolished and rebuilt on a larger scale.  Sandeep was given a fair chunk of space.

Sandeep continued to grow.  He shed his long hair and bellbottoms and took to waking up early and wearing a shirt and tie.  He tried out Mozart and Bach along with Boney M and Bob Marley.  He read up on Dale Carnegie and Lee Iacocca, laying Arthur Hailey and Robert Ludlum aside for awhile.  He became a globetrotter, a regular participant in, and later an organizer of, exhibitions and trade fairs.  He traveled more and attended more business meetings and seminars and exhibitions and trade fairs in one year than his father had in his entire life.

Nowadays Sandeep's old man leads a life of leisure, though he visits the workplace just about every day.  He's got just one room for his personal office.  Sandeep occupies the rest of the building.  I don't know if the old man realizes the irony.  He still gripes, but his heart is not in it.  He refuses to use a computer himself, though.  He just doesn't trust these new gadgets, though he hasn't said no to a fancy cellphone that seems to do everything except conduct seances to summon the dead.

One of the nerds working for Sandeep was Prasad, who came from Nepal's political first family.  In 1989, when the movement for democracy fired up the nation, Prasad quit his job and teamed up with his uncle, who was one of the head honchos of the movement. The movement was successful.  Absolute monarchy was booted out and democracy as heralded in.  Nationwide elections were held the following year.  Prasad's uncle became the Prime Minister and Prasad became a member of his inner circle.

For a long time, Prasad had been building up a comprehensive computer database on all government officials, bureaucrats, and public figures in Nepal.  Invariably, he added his personal comments, critiques, and praises to the resumes he created.

I don't know if Prasad had a deliberate plan behind his computer database.  Anyway, he was able to provide the newly installed Prime Minister with a detailed file on just about every senior government official.

He flabbergasted his uncle, who was a schmuck as far as computers went.  The old man probably believed that his nephew was a sorcerer and that the computer was a tool of sorcery.  The old man developed a rabid faith in Prasad and his computer, and gave serious credence to Prasad's comments on the resumes.  The computer enabled the old man to feel that he had his finger on the nation's pulse.

The data contained in that computer sure was responsible for a lot of hiring, firing, and reshuffling of government personnel.

This happy situation lasted just a year or two, till another of the old man's nephews came back from college in India.  This nephew told the old man that the computer was not capable of sorcery, that it was not capable of some magical insight or of creating its own knowledge.  It only spewed out what had been originally fed into it.

"Garbage in, garbage out," said the kid, fresh from his studies, in a kind of ultimate denouement.

The old man took a while to ponder over this severe disillusionment.  He possibly did ruminate on all the careers that had been made and all those that had been destroyed by his nephew's accursed computer.  He then roused himself and called Prasad over for a powwow.  I do not know what exactly ensued at that meeting, and Prasad has never wanted to talk about it.  He just bares all of his teeth in a sour grin when the subject is brought up, like the vegetarian who is reminded about the time he attended a Korean dinner and landed up eating hot dog unknowingly.

Nowadays, Prasad works as a consultant for some information technology firms.  He and his uncle still meet frequently.  Time seems to have healed the rift to some degree. In the eighteen years since Nepal's movement for democracy, no elected government has lasted a full term.  There have been over a dozen changes to the post of the prime minister and his cabinet.  Prasad's uncle has been prime minister five times already. He probably considers the prime minister's chair a family heirloom.  He continues to hire, fire, and shuffle public servants when in that chair, though ironically the results are not as encouraging as when he acted on the input from Prasad's computer.

The old man has inaugurated a few trade fairs organized by the Computer Association of Nepal, in which Sandeep has a major role.  But he still won't pay any attention to Prasad and his computer.

Instead, the old man consults a venerable old astrologer.  This astrologer has the habit of listening sagely to the problems and questions posed to him in an outer consulting room, retiring alone to an inner room to meditate and coming out after a while to offer his wise and considered opinion. 

The outer consulting room has portraits and statues of various Hindu gods and goddesses, with joss sticks and oil lamps burning and throwing fragrance into the air.

The inner room has a computer with an extensive database on astrological signs and
interpretations.