How I Managed to Get Online: A Saga Shortened to Four Pghs

Little did I know the ways in which accessing the internet (something that shouldn’t be hard to do in a land of tekkies) could be so time-consuming, flabbergasting, and outright ridiculous. It took me nearly eight weeks: Yes. Eight Weeks to have access to and communicate with my people out there in the world. And you can imagine that, since I’m such a net junkie, that this was not an easy period for me. It was probably also one of the reasons I had a mini-breakdown.



I started to write all of it down here but then realised it would bore everyone to tears. So to summarise: It took eight weeks. It involved men visiting with paperwork, and then visiting separately to install the wires from the rooftop. It involved calling a supervisor 30 to 40 times to get a technician back here to finish the installation. And when he came, I couldn’t believe it.



In the photo you see various wires. As I watched from my balcony, one guy on my rooftop threw a cable to a guy onto the building next to mine, who threw the cable onto building #18 (two buildings from mine). Then he just yelled down to me, ‘okay, we’re going to lower the cable to your balcony. Just grab it and pull it in !’ They lowered the cable, slowly, swaying it back and forth so that it brushed against the metal cage that surrounds my balcony, allowing me to grab it. I pulled in the wire, he came downstairs, fished it through the doors, and voila! Finito.



This is India. This is how things are done. So now I have a cable just hanging from the rooftop of my building, three stories up, to my balcony, and coming in through my French doors. Too funny! One final note: as I write this, I’m having trouble with my connection. I called them four days ago but because of the Diwali holidays, they haven’t yet sent someone out. Hope this is resolved soon.