Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
The journey is more fulfilling than the destination, they say. The build up to an event more exhilarating than the event itself. The mind conjures up many a picture of the destination before the universe unravels the physical reality of the event. A cricket match is played in the minds of not a Tendulkar or a Dravid the night before. It is played in the dreams of scores of children who have subjected themselves to the scorching summers of Chennai or the famous Bangalore weather, which today resides only in the cherished memories of old timers. A hackathon too. The holy grail of hackers. Best known for the fancy hotels, free lunches, free beer, free t-shirts, free goodies.
But, today promised to be different. It wasn't only the gum chewing, MacBook flaunting, Adidas shoe wearing, JQuery mantra uttering, the oblivious-look wearing geek who was invited. A few "others" too were. The data nerds. The design wizards. No longer an event for the geek hiding behind the green and black Vim editor, the ones behind the colourful posters too were invited. To say the event was precluded by a sense of excitement would be an understatement. There was anxiety. There was doubt. There were questions. It was confusion. Perhaps, mayhem too.And hope.
It was tough to miss the last emotion. After scouring the venue for a common theme, after scavenging through various tweets, pictures and posters, for a common theme and just when I was about to resign to my inability of find one, I did. If, there is a word to characterize the entire exercise, it is HOPE.
A nation has just risen from its slumber. Will we finally meet our tryst with destiny?
It is 10.30. After marvelling at the beauty and splendour of IISc like Hanuman who casts his envious glances at the regal luxury of Lanka the chatter of a few kids brought me back to the hackathon. The registration form read 80 teams from Bangalore. Hacker city after all. Hardly, a few teams had braved to come this soon though. Cut to 11 am and suddenly there is a buzz around the venue. The cast as promised was diverse. The symbols of a hackathon were all there. The MacBook was out. Ruby,Rails,Java, Cobal, Gopal.The air was ripe.
Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
Even amongst the hackathon veterans, when the booming voice of Sam Pitroda went on air, a new sense of patriotism and enthusiasm was evident. And when Montek said, "An endeavour to not bring the plan to people, but people into the plan", even the voter ID card less Bangalorean suddenly felt a part of the government. "Dilli,abhi dhoor nahi hai". If I were to accord myself the luxury of opinion, it was already mission accomplished. India 1 Detractors 0.And to talk of it, this is only the beginning of a story. A story which we hope is as romantic as the story of India itself.To a question on how the progress of India was not as fast as China, Montek quipped, "China has been progressing at a faster rate than us from the last 25 years. It is only in the last decade that India has started performing to a higher degree".
Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
As the afternoon wore down and the participants settled to what do they best, a stroll past them revealed a lot about the teams. While, each participant had a story to tell, it was the passion for contributing meaningful to the country which united them. And as any Tom, Dick and Harry would guess, the Bangalore demographics made sure that majority of the participants planned an app. The tech city sure did live up to its name with the highest participation. Arun Manohar, an engineering graduate from Bangalore and freelancing software projects for a day job was furiously abusing his MaCBook Pro when I interrupted him. Hailing from a middle class background and having faced a lot of problems himself, he was building a mobile application to help find the nearest officials to communicate to when faced with urban problems like drainage, water supply etc. A veteran hackathon visitor, Arun was a bit miffed at the quality of the data. But give a hacker a challenge and it brings out the beast out of him. As they call it, he was using his "bleeding edge" brains to cleanse the data. In a bigger canvas, a nation was getting cleansed. There was a Phillip, a reverse engineer working with geological data. There was Naveen. There was Akshay. Different apps. Different stories. A common theme. And then Shwetha and Abhinav. Kiran and Pooja. Hackathons were no longer a men's bastion. While, it would be foolish to be blind towards all the problems that women in India face, It was encouraging to find young girls tapping code. Yes, the ratio is still skewed towards men. But, the story of India is only just beginning to take shape.
Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
Perhaps, this is the only place where India cannot afford to wait for its time to come. Things have to be done now. Today is the time. Now is the time.
And then, a design team who call themselves Team "Hack-choo"! One team member calls himself geek at heart. Studies design in a day school. His accompanier, a long-haired guy with all the marks of an artist. A girl, who didn't seem to bother about her make up but beautiful nevertheless. A small grievance they had. Not many participant interactions till the evening,they said. Small lessons to be learnt for us as we embark on the journey.
I did not wait for the results. It did not matter. There was only winner yesterday. And the winner was India. Yes, the story of India is best summarized by Gandalf.
Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
PS: I forgot to ask the name of THAT girl. my twitter handle: @accusedengineer
