Cybercafé Thanks to Indian Railways

It must have been at least two years since I visited a cybercafé.

Tonight, I was to board a special train to Hyderabad from Pune. Procuring a ticket was an adventure in itself. I am sure you have better things to do than read about an idle dork's tales about buying tickets through a travel agent with connections. The climax: I ended up buying my first ever AC II Tier ticket. You all know how good this could be. Instead of squeezing yourself between thirteen sweating men in a cabin with eight or nine berths, you could sit in a spacious cabin with six berths spouting about the sins of politicians with six skinny sweeties (five plus their friend). They don't know that you haven't voted.

Yeah, about that. It didn't turn out that way. After all, it is I and not you in this situation. Even if it were you, cross your hearts and tell me, would six girls have ever listened to you?

My train got delayed by three and half hours. To 0140hrs of tomorrow. I couldn't go back to my apartment because transport at that hour is impossible, unless you counted my roomie dropping me on a friend's bike, which thanks to Pune roads would make you a stupid again. So I decided to spend my time in the railway station.

First, law. I bought a platform ticket. I had to spend twenty-two rupees to get three rupees change and then dropped it in a platform ticket machine, which is another first for me. While sitting on the pavement outside the station -- breeze there -- I saw this "24 HOURS Broadband Internet Cafe".

So here I am. After presenting an ID proof.

Being the careful and conscientious guy I am, I cleaned up the cookies, history, and cache in the browser. Yeah, they still use IE6 but also Quick Heal, a well-known anti-virus product in. No, I didn't check out the address bar for previous addresses, the search strings in Google, nor the usernames in Gmail. Would have been great fun. On top of it, the previous person had used Windows Messenger with a status message "L'amour est le sens de la vie , que c'est beau si cet amour est accorde au Createur" and left without logging out. You're welcome, dude, I won't reveal your username but promise me that you won't forget logging out next time.

Then I heard a woman come in and ask the guy sitting in front of me for five minutes of his computer time. Time is money, so he declined. I offered, she took a couple of minutes to cancel her ticket (she could have been one of those accompanying me in the train), and left.

Too bored to surf, I began tweeting my sob saga. Being a verbose old-fashioned fool, I soon shifted to blogging and finally posted something on this blog after almost a year. Thanks for listening. The girls in the cabin wouldn't anyway because I won't be awake in the train.

Towards a Freelance Career

A few of you know that I broke my leg in the beginning of this year. I was bed-ridden for about a month and have been "house-ridden" since then. Yesterday I bought an elbow-crutch, like the one House used in House's Head! After another month I hope to buy a fancy walking stick, again like House! There are a few more striking "similarities" with House, but I will stop here.

In case you didn't know about the injury, sorry, I was only concerned that you might be concerned and thus kept you in the dark. Things are better than they sound. My writing career has never been better. I felt that you would be more impressed if I boasted several successes once, than one at a time.

After unofficially abandoning my writing course by joining my job, I started working on it again. I completed the last three assignments and am now waiting to receive my diploma. I will also get my certificate from IITM for serving on the editorial board of The Fourth Estate during 2006-07. Perhaps both before the end of this month.

I entered a writing contest for the first time, with my final LR assignment. On the Premises is a contest-based ezine. Every quarter they announce a premise around which stories must be written. Until now my fiction had more to do with fancifully chasing a brilliant idea. This time I enjoyed fewer degrees of freedom. I was forced to come with an idea adhering some rule, and weave a story around it. Challenging.

I sold my first article, to my writing school itself. The article might be published in July. The pay is not high, but it isn't a pittance either.

On the face of it I haven't blogged for over three months. The fact is, I have. One is the rafterjumpon website, where I applied to become an official rafter. I now doubt whether it is worth the effort. The rafterjumpon board has been postponing its plans to officially launch since April 2007, and did not announce new official rafters after 8th of this April. While this promises good prospects if it happens, the other blog, someone else's, to which I contribute weekly has been more fulfilling though it pays little in terms of money.

Talking about money, I have started taking my writing seriously in terms of a career and not just as a hobby. I made a few "investments", I continue to research about freelancing and offer my services on the market.

I completed working for my first client whose website material I rewrote. I rejected two long-term writing offers because the pay is low. I got another long-term offer recently; we are in talks and it looks promising and interesting. I will be disappointed if it falls apart.

The best thing about all this is not that I made my first sale, finished my course, have a growing portfolio, have offer(s), and of course not that I have been sitting at home. It is that I'm able to place my work and my services on the market. Sure, I don't hear from most of them, but that doesn't deter me. I consider myself a writer, irrespective of the rest of the world, irrespective of the number of rejections.