“Server Is Down!”

(Text & Sketches by D.B.)

You all must have experienced or have come across this menace, at least, once in your life. The three words that ‘slows down’ the process, it may be the process of getting a document signed or the process of progress of ‘the nation’, anything and everything could be easily delayed due to this ‘technical’ problem about which none can do anything! This blog might seem to be an aftermath of a personal bump into such a condition, which is apparently true, but more than just that, it is about handling, seeking the solution and questioning the mushrooming of this parasitical – custom of ours, which has grown equally in technical and manual facets of our ‘office’ culture.

Origin

As the name suggests, it started when the ‘server’ came into existence. For someone who is not technically sound, like me, it seems to be a body or a system that governs and contains all the files and data of user (or users), connected through a network. The name ‘server’ suggests that it is meant to ‘serve’ the user, not to ‘govern’, but I used the term on the basis of my own experiences.

Effects

All the offices, be it private or public, do have a server these days and thus they get an infallible advantage of shutting down their work, anytime, without notice. Paying of bills, transactions in the bank, upgrading of official documents, these are only some of the many ‘tasks’ that an average man has to deal with, almost every month. And the same ‘average’ man puts these inescapable duties in the ‘weekend-jobs-to-do’ slot. Note: First, an average man is the one who is also in the majority and second, most of the offices are half-day-open on the weekend. Result: Long queues in the offices!

"Actually, I am helpless!"

A hot June-morning in Delhi, bathing in sweat you reach and stand in a queue to pay the bill. You cannot even see the counter-window due to the ‘long’ queue in the front, though you can see people standing hopelessly, with pankhas (actually, a newspaper or for instance, the same bill) in their hands, trying to get some respite from the summer-heat. You witness some wearing helmets and some with a wet piece of cloth on their heads. The childhood manners, ‘stand-in-the-queue-with-one-hand-distance’ comes into scene unintentionally, as no one wants to get his hands on other’s ‘sweat-shirt’. The females and the senior-citizens have an upper-hand in this scenario, as they have a separate queue for the purpose. Dealing with all this, suddenly you realize that your position has changed. From being the last in the queue to standing in middle of it, you wonder whether you have moved ahead or people behind you are increasing with an unstoppable speed. The self-realisation leads to a thought, “Why am I not moving..?” The trauma intensifies and you step out of the line to examine the position. You have not moved at all! The shock instigates you to finally ask the person standing in front, about the situation, which leads to, “Arey kya hua bhai?” , “Aagey kyu nahin badh rahi line?” and many such comments and queries start flowing in. The movement reaches its peak and a reply comes back, “Server is down!”   

You cannot find a single come back for this. No one can. The queue gets dispersed that very moment, without any revolt or showing any piece of aggression, which normally, is not in our habit. But, if a person says that server is down, no one questions him. We all are now habitual to this, we have actually adapted this ‘failure’ in our routine and we have customized ourselves accordingly. Now we know that “Server is down” means “We cannot do anything..!”

It is spreading

Just imagine, all the viruses that are being generated in computer programs get an access to human brain, what will happen? Something near to that is happening these days. Technically, the ‘server-down’ situation slows down the process; manually (or rather physically) also, it is happening. I might sound like promoting the famous TV series “Office Office”, but unfortunately, it is happening. More unfortunate is that even after years of continuous attempts of satirical attacks by the makers of the series, we have not changed! The purpose of the series was to expose the flaws in a lighter way so that we could learn from our mistakes. We got busy in taking the humour with gusto and forgot to learn from it.

Mssg service was fast, then.

They say, in earlier times, one of the fastest means of sending messages was through bow-arrows. The ruler of the state used to place his best archers at long distances near huge trees. They were so profound that they used to attach the messages with the arrows and target the trees. Thus, from one to other and so on, the message was sent. These days, we have an office, made up of few rooms, and still the message, or for instance, an ‘office file’ would take days to reach its destination. As architects, whenever we design an office, the basic idea is to utilise the space in such a way that everyone is positioned according to the hierarchy thus facilitating the movement, which shall be effort-less and effectual. We spend nights envisaging how we can make the space workable and flawless. But, we seldom consider that a space can become workable only when - ‘what occupies it’ - is working; after all it is just an empty space without humans.

'Manual' - Server - Down

Why we still don’t have that office culture where things are properly managed?

Why there are no ‘priority lists’?

Why we have so many formalities to reach to the desired person?

Why the applications or requests linger around for months?

Why can’t we have a Diwan-e-aam, today? 

Why we still stick to the 9 – 5 timings and stop working after that?

Doesn’t all this sounds as if our own ‘server is down’? Why, in fact, only our ‘server is down’? It is not just the architecture of ‘Googleplex’ (California), ‘Red Bull’ (London), ‘Twitter’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Pixar’, (for those who don’t know, these all have made to the list of the coolest offices in world), that makes them the best. They are prolific in every term. Being coolest in terms of architecture is one thing; with that, they are the successful ones too. What makes them different from us?

If only we could trim down the gap between ‘public’ and the modern babus, half the troubles were gone. The office formalities, ‘paper-work’, and other indirect approaches don’t actually solve the problem, but delays the process. I just wonder what would have happened to our ancestors if this had happened earlier.

Give it a thought!

Sending Message......

Message Sending Failed!!!!