Hey wassup bro. !! did you check out my scrap yet.?
That’s what started it. Or not that particular event really but a few actions taken days before on my part, by signing up for one reputed social networking site. I loved the connectivity. The thrill of getting in touch with people who I knew a long time ago but since had dropped out of sight somewhere, and the combined effort of inertia and time constraints had eroded their from my mind.
First came the calls. Frantic. Muffled sounds like a lot of whispers which I took to be Arabic in nature. This continued for some time and then came the emails from groups like jihadibaba.com etc. It gave me shivers. And then I was kidnapped. That blew the lid of the whole thing. And that flying lid has hit social networking in the nose, at least to me now.
I was not kidnapped in the proper ways of kidnapping. Wasn’t whisked away in a car, hood over head and then taken aboard a chopper etc. It was the most mundane case of kidnapping. I was called by my boss at the MNC I work in and told that the police need to see me.
I was shocked but when I met Havaldar (Sgt) Shinde, he was profusely sweating with adjectives of apology. He assured me that all protection takes top priority to being shifted around and he was here to make arrangements for my safe keeping.
I asked him as to how come I would need protection and he laughed. Ka Payje, saab? – What do you want, sir. Death or life? This hit me between the eyes, specially when your life is in danger and the police protecting is protecting you.
Realization struck at about an hour after the event above, once I had been through the entire red tape associated with Z+ security matters etc. I was told that as per my online profile, my life lead directly to one of country’s biggest gang names. This grim reality was not in the least true, and far from being funny it was a horrible tense time. I tried my level best to be the good boy and with a speak-the-truth mantra, a position which people like me (the ones who haven’t got crime on their record yet) take when faced with such absurdity. But the local police station and its good platoon of staff and then the division headquarters and the state headquarters, couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of what I said. For I was ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ and hence had to be the No 1 suspect in a largely spread crime network. I was supposed to be the rival gang leader and had supari (contract) on my head. Hence the police were quite happy to see me. You see, I was missing for the last few days and in case I had not showed, they probably wouldn’t have gotten the credit of having taken me alive. I was, according to dispatches later disclosed, ‘Encountered but got away’ cases. So when I showed, because someone had posted a profile with enough hints for the right people to reach him and used my profile and hence changed it around.
SO, here I am in the police station trying to go my way and live my life but for one blunder. The police treats me with respect but I can’t live with a respect I never earned, cause I am not their MAN. But life is such.
So what happened to it all…..luckily for me the rival gang had a tie up with ‘us’ because they did not want to loose me. And so the gang war never happened. The police were felicitated on capturing the ‘right’ man. The media had a field day. The day before I was to be released to my brethren, the hacker who had done the trick was caught. He has given leads to the whereabouts of the actual leader (who is fine so far so the treaty stands). They choose me since I happened to have the closest match to their ‘bhaaiya’ face wise and figure wise.
I got back my mundane profile online and offline again. I got ‘protection’, since I held up so well with the police. But adventure calls….
PS – The various terror groups can misuse the online networks to access their own needs in ways we cannot imagine yet. Also it proves that the terrorist is not foreign anymore. They are among you and me. We need to look at how we are going to deal with terror of any kind. The worst case is that no one can see the information networks as a battleground except a few groups here and there. The kind of access to information available online and not impervious to the determined attack tactics employed by the cyber terrorist, will blow your mind. It is often joked that you can build a nuclear bomb in case you have access to the Net. Yes, it’s true. But only to those determined enough and cash rich enough. Still it is possible only when terror groups use networks again to their advantage, by hiding out in the various screens available in various parts of the Net and trading deals.
In tomorrow’s collaborative world, the one with the most network is going to rule. Either it’s the Bad, or with all our support, the Good will win.
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Nice blog Mr. Addy!!!!
I guess the conclusive part could have been a little interesting…..dragged a little..
Excellent writing though…keep it up!!!
Comment by awantika May 14, 2009 @ 5:16 amyour first account throwing insights on ‘world of Baai’s’ was not only intersting but was equally entertaining . I would rate the writing ****/***** however the same could have been better by sharing 1 real life funny account with a baai.
looking forward to many more such accounts from daily life
Comment by Rohan May 19, 2009 @ 12:43 pmVery interesting and different…
Comment by Misha July 2, 2009 @ 10:29 amKeep writing !