Nerds

I’m trying to set up my computer for wireless internet so I don’t have to rely on the unreliable connection I have available to me in my apartment. As has been my experience in most things Indian, I’m being shepherded through the process with a personal touch (this time by a guy named Santosh, who comes to my house on his motorcycle and then rides me around to troubleshoot the software problems) and what I’ve come to see so far (even though we haven’t gotten the thing to work) is that computer nerds are pretty much computer nerds the world over, at least insofar as their attitudes and interactions with each other.

I’m making this potentially fallacious generalization based on our experience at the place we went to try to get the wireless modem to work. Sitting behind a desk, sometimes talking on two phones simultaneously, while also playing a computer cricket game, was the computer genius guy.

I couldn’t tell what he was saying to Santosh, but he came across pretty much just like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons: supercilious, condescending, and wickedly immature in a kind of endearing way. It was pretty clear he thought Santosh (as the sales guy) was kind of clueless and he rolled his eyes is to be expected at my friend’s attempts to troubleshoot. Ultimately, he took over the effort to fix things and for a minute, it looked like he’d done so. But then, as do nerds the world over (again I generalize), when the modem still wouldn’t connect, he blamed it on the hardware and said we’d need to buy something else, something more expensive, to get online.

I sat there enjoying myself—what else you gonna do?—and eventually endeared myself to the assembled by asking about the upcoming Cricket World Cup, which naturally, all the nerds are into.

They assured me that India would prevail and I got a laugh when I said my money was on Australia. So, we didn’t connect the modem, but we did with each other.