They call it the trough of disillusionment, that mid-voyage void, which consumed those flimsy rafts of Internet ambitions. What's it like to be castaways? Three Indians wrecked by the dotcom storm share the lessons they gleaned from the wired afterlife.

By Samar Halarnkar

HIJACKS, (TEMPORARY) FAME, AND THE ROAD AHEAD

It's 10 p.m. and the smoke-from cheap Wills filters and Davidoff cigars-swirls around the dim interiors of Beyond 1900s, the discotheque at Mumbai's colonial Taj Mahal hotel.

This is e-Tuesday, a monthly new economy networking opportunity. The smoky discotheque is full of wannabe dotcommers, failed dotcommers, venture capitalists, angels, pr people, merchant bankers, and a sundry gaggle of guests brought in by the host, Rajiv Samant, Chief Executive of Sula Vineyards, and once an Oracle techie in the US. Today e-Tuesdays are meeting grounds for the who's who of the wired world, but when they began, they were targeted purely at dotcoms. It was said you could fix a deal over a glass of Sula's Sauvignon or Chenin Blanc. Corner a VC, sell your idea. As the evening wore on, you could be nicely placed to get your first million.

Those times are gone. The e-Tuesday club is now an incestuous place. Everyone seems to know everyone.

Laxmi Gupta, 26, knows this. Yet, she has little inclination to sample the free goblets of Sula wine. Her ambitions of being an Internet entrepreneur are on ice, but next time she hits the market, she hopes it will be more accepting. For now, this bundle of energy and ambition is getting to bounce ideas off the movers and shakers, meeting others like her, and generally soaking in the atmosphere.

I run into Laxmi by happenstance. I am talking to Alok Kejriwal, CEO of dotcom survivor contests2win.com, when Laxmi bounces in. Kejriwal introduces me, and I explain how I am doing this story and how it is so hard to get people in India to talk of their dotcom failures. She smiles and exclaims brightly: ''You can talk to me, I'm a dotcom failure! I had a dotcom, it didn't work, and here I am, still kicking.''

''What!'' To my side, the normally cheerful Kejriwal explodes.

''Failure? What failure? What have I told you about failure? You're a success, whatever you've done is a part of your unfolding success story. Haven't I always told you to tell yourself this?''

For a moment, Laxmi looks sheepishly at Kerjiwal, then turns to me with a big grin, and a clenched fist.

''Yes! I am a success. Yes! He's right, and I know it.''

As she calms down, Laxmi shouts her story to me over the din of techno, and the flash of strobes. No one's dancing; they are only here for the conversation.

Laxmi and three friends set up their dotcom to be a one-stop shop for classes: cooking, dancing, art, mathematics, weaving, you name it. Eventually, they wanted to do the same thing in every major city. Painstakingly, they compiled categories and lists. They rang up every class in town, even boldly asked celebs like dancing pro Shiamak Davar, if he would be associated with them (he said yes).

''We did a lot of outrageous things,'' recalls Laxmi with a grin. ''Who would give the time of the day to three girls? So we began hijacking people.''

The girls had an upfront method of getting to meet the czars of India's cyber world. ''Whenever anyone was coming to town, we would find out which flight they were taking and then simply hijack them from the airport!'' On the list of spirited-away celebs: Infosys coo Nandan Nilekani, former chief of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, the late Dewang Mehta.

''And they came with you?'' I ask, astonished.

''Sure, why would they not?''

Off hand, I can think of a dozen reasons. ''But weren't there cars already there to pick them up?''

''Sure there were cars, but we told them, 'ride with us, we'll take you there, let the car follow'.''

The women even got their column inches of fame. ''The media loved us you know,'' Lakshmi says. ''After all, every dotcom with a wild idea or crazy founders was being written about. Three girls setting up a new dotcom; we got featured in The Times of India and the Mid-Day. It was a great ride...''

Laxmi pauses. ''...while it lasted.''

The hard work and hijacks came to nought though.

Laxmi and gang's mumbaiclasses.com was finally put together and ready for funding. Then, the Nasdaq crashed, the dotcom bubble burst. And mumbaiclasses.com didn't stand a chance of funding. The girls tried, but for once, their persuasive skills failed.

Laxmi is a manager today with ZDNet India. It's a steady job, but it doesn't compare with the thrill of starting up. You can still find mumbaiclasses.com on the web. It's on ice. One day, says Laxmi, it will rise again.

''And I will be a success!''

She waggles her finger at me and leans forward.

''Be sure you get that.''

CAUGHT IN THE CARS ON THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE

The Diwali of 2000 had rolled in and Sridhar Krishnaswamy, 23, received an offer that he couldn't refuse.

A software contractor offered him a job that would take him to a corner of India that resides on the eastern seaboard of the US: New Jersey. He was to get $70,000 per annum to work for an Internet start-up. It aimed to use his code-writing talents to produce an e-retailing tool for the New Economy. Thousands of Indian before him had followed this route to h-1b heaven.

It wasn't that Krishnaswamy had a bad job. He was reasonably happy earning Rs 35,000 a month at Delhi's software hub of Noida. His company offered the best working conditions possible: a soaring centrally airconditioned atrium where everyone worked, designer canteen, sunlight, and space-very contemporary in a world of slave coders.

''There was nothing wrong with my job,'' says the wiry young man with the frizzy hair, two-day shadow, Lee jeans, and adidas tee as he puffs away on his Dunhill. ''You know how it is-in India doing a first-world job doesn't mean you live in the first world.''

The son of a Tamil Nadu government clerk, Krishnaswamy had come a long way from his origins in the deep South, from his cramped three-room house in Mylapore, Chennai. From an Atlas bicycle of his college days, he now drove from his two-bedroom house in Noida to work in a silver Hero Honda CBZ. In the ways of the new Indian, Krishnaswamy wanted more. ''You know how it is,'' he says. ''I wanted more than to dodge Noida's cows on my way to work. I wanted more than to wait for the power to come back during Delhi's damned summer.'' He pauses. A faraway look glazes his eyes. ''I wanted to actually do it-you know, like the Simon and Garfunkel song, be caught in the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.''

In January 2001, under a grey winter sky, Krishnaswamy couldn't believe his eyes when he actually saw the sign- white on a fluorescent green signboard, like all American road signs-saying ''Next Exit, New Jersey Turnpike.''

He was here!

Ten lanes, a steel logjam of sleek stretch limos, beefy sports utilities, elegant cruisers, 18-wheeler trucks, all muscle and chrome, all crawling at a fraction of the permissible speed limit of 55 mph.

The Turnpike is American commuter hell, but it was Krishnaswamy's heaven. He remembers his first snow, he remembers his childhood friend Thanga Velu chattering away after picking him up from the airport, he remembers the advertising sign that said: 'Ingle Ells, Ingle Ells. What would Christmas be without J&B?''

When Krishnaswamy finally got to his work place, the euphoria crumbled in the blink of an eye. He did get the customary welcome, the expansive ''how-ya-doin-today''. But within an hour, he listened with trepidation as his new boss, a 30-something Welshman, told him that he didn't presently have a project to work on.

''He told me how there was this slowdown, how the Nasdaq wasn't recovering and how clients had cancelled,'' recalls Krishnaswamy. He gazes out from the coffee parlour, where we're sitting, at the tangle of autos, scooters, cars, and buses trying to make headway on Bangalore's heaving CMH Road. ''Man, I first got a cold shiver going down my spine, and then that nasty hollow feeling in my stomach.''

After two idle weeks, Krishnaswamy's boss called him in again, and said he would have to pay him only 45 per cent of his salary until the company could find a project for him. It never happened. As the newspapers filled column inches with the tech downturn, as stories of benched body shoppers filtered through to Krishnaswamy and his friends, it became clear that this was serious.

In the second week of January 2001, Krishnaswamy was called in by the human resource manager and told plainly that he would either have to go back home or survive without pay. ''I had to take a hard decision,'' says Krishnaswamy. ''Was it worth staying back and waiting for a job that might never happen, or cutting my losses and coming back home?''

Krishnaswamy decided to pack up. Half of the $2,000 he had brought with him was gone. With the remainder, he scrounged a ticket for home. On another of those grey New Jersey winter days, he took off, another Simon and Garfunkel song ringing in his ears. ''Sounds dramatic,'' Krishnaswamy says wryly, ''but it's true. I kept hearing the chords of Homeward Bound.''

After a month of recovery at home, he found a job in a hardcore software company in Bangalore, paying him Rs 20,000 a month. ''At least I have a job. Bangalore is a good city, you know, and I can make a living here.'' Krishnaswamy cannot but help thinking of what might have been, but he says the experience has left him stronger, more resilient. ''Sometimes you have a dream you know, but when you achieve it, it suddenly disappears.'' He shrugs. ''But you must believe it will return. Only then can you achieve your dream.''

PRAWNS, PROMISES, AND THE END OF PERMANENCE

On December 31, 1999-Debasis Sen cannot forget the day-the prawns at Delhi's INA market looked plump and ready for some serious Bengali makeover, perhaps spiced and fried in mustard oil.

In the vast, confusing sea of humanity and choice at INA, most shoppers head instantly for the stores where they know they can get the things that comfort them. This behaviour, Sen mused after buying the prawns, was pretty much replicated on the Internet. Instead of aimlessly trawling the expanse of cyberspace, people mostly head for sites where they know their culture is available.

It was a time when the dotcom wave had hit Indian shores. Sen, corporate communication head of a software company and former journalist, thought it was time to take the plunge.

So, he dreamed up www.banglahaat.com, a virtual meeting place for Bengalis. It would have stories about Bengalis, community success stories, and columns from prominent Bengalis. It would finally sell Bengali sarees, handicrafts, perhaps even foodstuff. ''I wanted it to eventually be a platform to bridge the digital divide between well-off Bengalis living away from Bengal, and those not-so-fortunate living in rural Bengal.''

Sen had no VCs, no godfathers. He only had the Rs 2 lakh he had saved in his bank account. His wife, a school teacher, backed him. They agreed that they would survive on her modest salary if the site made no money.

In March 2000, he quit his secure job and ''plunged into the journey of uncertainty with high hopes and prayer on my lips.'' Sen says that at no stage did he dream of becoming a millionaire and selling off the site. His motivation simply was to cut himself from the rat race, and work for himself.

For the next nine months, the website, resident in his computer at his home-cum-office in the suburb of Dwarka in Delhi, was the receptacle of his efforts, his hopes, and some decidedly paternal feelings. ''Every week, I religiously clothed her with a new dress made of strings of words and a bit of wisdom. Then I proudly e-mailed, telling everyone what she was wearing. That was my ritual for nine months, every Tuesday night.'' The rewards came in appreciative e-mails from Bengalis in 29 countries. On some days, they received 100 e-mails within 24 hours of posting a new edition of banglahaat. "There was," says Sen, "jubilation in whatever we did.''

Unfortunately, there was little else, certainly no money in the bank. Sen always dismissed the fears of friends who asked him how he would make money. They were right. ''Readership grew every week, but alas, the companies with high advertising spends never came forward.''

He also realised that using the Internet to allow rural economies to pull themselves up the economic ladder was an outrageously grandiose plan. ''The technology enabling it is simple,'' Sen says ruefully. ''But I realised social habits don't change as fast as technology.''

Finally, on December 31, 2000, when the world was ushering in the new millennium, Sen was alone at his desk. Should he take the job offer he got through an online search? Or should he wait until banglahaat.com made money? His mind was a whirl and tears flowed down his face. The next morning, Sen decided to join an NGO as consultant writer. Three employees who he picked up because they couldn't find jobs elsewhere, had learned to rewrite and edit from Sen. When the site folded, they all found jobs.

''Banglahaat.com withered before it could proudly celebrate its first birthday,'' says Sen. ''But for me from the pain came learning and renewal. I never knew I could do so much alone.''

Today, Sen no longer worries about taking risks, about the future. To a middle-class Indian brought up on the concept of permanent employment, that is mindbending change. ''I was never an entrepreneur in the mould of Silicon Valley geeks. In college I dreamed of joining the IAS (Indian Adminsitrative Service),'' he says.

Back in the job market today, Sen says he has no regrets about his brief spell of madness. ''A decade ago when I was being offered my first job, the first thing I asked was if the job was p-e-r-m-a-n-e-n-t.''

''I would never do that now.''
  

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