Algorithm, Heirloom

WOP #4

Nov 01, 2023

This essay was originally published as part of a submission for David Perell’s Write of Passage programme. It will hopefully find its place within a broader anthology of sci-fi short stories that explores the profound influence of the Internet on the human experience.

For the fifth time in the last hour, and probably the fiftieth time that day, Hari flipped open his brother’s laptop and stared at the screen. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, hesitant.

In his shoebox of an apartment, just beyond the thicket of Mumbai’s sprawling urban jungle, he sat unmoored. Whispers of incense and sandalwood interrupted his thoughts, reminding him of whose place they now occupied. The solitary lightbulb above his head cast an uncomfortable spotlight over his gaunt frame. He didn’t need another reminder that he was now a solo act.

Prakash had departed a month ago, today, barely a week after his illness had arrived. The boys had left it too late. They’d detested the pomp of city hospitals, a vestige of their provincial sensibilities. But there was no homemade cure for this. Neem and turmeric were blunt knives in this particularly brutal gunfight. Prakash had paid a fatal price for his poor choice of armament.

For the first time in his life, Hari was alone, marooned on an island of grief with no sign of rescue. His older brother had left him.

But he had left something behind.

It had been almost five years since they’d swapped the gas lamps of small-town Bihar for the bright lights of Mumbai. Their parents had long departed. Their faces blurred further with every passing year till they became nothing more than strangers in the memories of their two boys.

Like scores of dreamers before them and after them, he and his brother had moved to the big city as teenagers in search of a more elastic launchpad for their lives. Now well into their 20s, they drew upon a worldly wisdom that had been sharpened by the whetstone of their early childhoods.

Hari had been desperately searching for something to anchor himself to. He sought stability in a life that had been bereft of it. He directed all his energy towards grabbing a hold of any professional ladder that would have him, finally yes-sir-ing his way into a local furniture company as a junior clerk.

Prakash, three years his senior, was an artisan. A maverick. A yarn-spinner extraordinaire. He had been blessed with an almost anabolic ambition from a young age. Hari could recall every one of his brother’s schemes - from repairing bicycles back in Bihar, to running a delivery service for office workers in town, to serving chai in paper cups to commuters on the Western Line. Hari - ever eager to emulate his hero - was happy just to be included.

For as long as he could remember, regardless of how good or how bad things had been, Prakash never left home without the trusty chip on his shoulder. Stability to him meant stasis. He didn’t want a stable life. He wanted it all.

When the duo disembarked from their journey from farmland to coastland, Prakash continued his voyage. Not content with just moving to Mumbai, he moved online.

Prakash joined the hordes of young Indians that had swapped the relative paucity of their earthly surroundings for the untold possibilities of cyberspace. He had forever been unimpressed by the cards that life had dealt him. On the Internet, however, he could be the owner, the architect, and the pit boss of his own casino.

He hadn’t planned on becoming an Internet sensation. It had crept up on him. It started with him posting vignettes from his brief stint as a rickshaw driver - his first (respectable) gig since moving to the city. Back then it was an innocuous habit, mostly a way to pass the time between trips. But he began to look forward to the sprinkles of adulation that greeted his daily vlogs (back when the word ‘vlog’ was nothing more than a meaningless grunt in any local Indian dialect).

He started experimenting, covering everything from local weather updates to local news. He reviewed street food vendors as if he was on the payroll of the Michelin Guide. He documented the stories of small businesses and smaller craftsmen. He spent hundreds of hours filming himself struggling to beat the next level of Ludo King. He called his channel Sheher Ka Shor - Noise of the City.

And people tuned in.

10 subscribers. 10,000 subscribers. One million subscribers.

One million humans carving time out of their schedules to watch Hari’s older brother vent about the quality of samosas on the corner of some disreputed boulevard.

The validation was encouraging at first, intoxicating at last. He became exceedingly comfortable turning the camera on himself. Youtube emerged as a vessel for his charisma, and a canvas for his infatuations. Prakash treated his new Internet job with the seriousness and conscientiousness of any distinguished lawyer or accountant. As his trickle of devotees turned into a torrent of fandom, he turned himself into a one-man show.

Hari could barely understand it. This Internet gig.

Throughout his life his brother had hammered home the virtues of honest work, of sweat and toil and elbow-grease. To Hari, he sang the praises of buttoned shirts and polished shoes, of monthly salaries and CVs. It had been his signature melody, a prescription on how to reset the trajectory of their lives. The tune had long become lodged in Hari’s brain. His path ahead had always seemed clear, courtesy of the blinkers his brother had placed on his ambitions.

Yet Prakash’s own life choices seemed a discolouration against his painting of the future. In fact, his whole life was a blatant violation of his own diktat. What Prakash chose to do with his time seemed frivolous, at best, and vapid at worst. To describe what they both did as kaam was something of a linguistic abomination in Hari’s eyes.

This same thought would cross his mind every morning as he crept out of the apartment to avoid waking his brother, who (almost as a policy) would avoid stirring till the sun had made considerable progress in its commute across the sky.

It would gnaw at him while he was buried under a paperwork grave, knowing that his brother was probably galavanting across the city, looking to tell the story of some minor roadside accident as if he were covering the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It would punch him in the face every night, when he would trudge home after a day of dodging feces at the bottom of the corporate totem pole, only to witness his brother mid-sermon, confidently hurling his latest uninformed opinion about regional politics like a faulty grenade onto his adoring disciples.

At the end of his week, while he was tallying the inventory of unsold plastic chairs deep into Saturday evening, he wondered if he had been shortchanged. He debated whether it was fair. He questioned why he had been steered towards a path of security while Prakash was free to pursue the heady heights of stardom, a climb for which he seemed especially ordained.

It was difficult for Hari to square the fact that he was living with a celebrity.

He couldn’t understand how his brother - who sought his counsel on profound aspects of humanity like doing the laundry or turning on the stove - had somehow become an authority on everything from Bhojpuri cinema to Chinese electronics to breakup playlists and everything in between. What’s more, he appeared to be very good at what he did.

You could see it in the comments under every one of his videos.

“Praksh is d best💯”

“Sheher Ka Shor is better than going to class🤓”

“I wait all day for this notification❤️”

There were hundreds and thousands of comments and messages over the years. People counted on Prakash for life advice. For relationship advice. For cooking tips. For news. For entertainment. For company. The adulation from his supporters was palpable.

His influence was tangible. Hari had to get used to wading through boxes of free T-shirts, gadgets, snacks, bathroom essentials (and whatever else) from entities that were lusting for a slice of his brother’s attention. Prakash was always kind enough to let him have anything he wanted. Hari, an enemy of style (according to his brother), apparently needed all the help he could get. How quickly he had forgotten that he was once part of the same regiment.

Hari couldn’t get his mind around the fact that this same Prakash - who had once contented himself with using a communal hand-pump for his daily grooming needs - now refused to leave the house without his three-step skincare routine, without trimming and oiling his beard, without a few spritz of deodorant, courtesy of his benefactors at Nivea, Gillette, and Fogg, respectively. Had to look good for the camera, he would say. That’s what the people wanted.

And that was probably part of his appeal. Prakash had always known what people wanted. He was a charmer. He could talk himself into (and often out of) most rooms. He was quick with a joke and (some might say) easy on the eye. He had always invited people into his orbit.

Hari was more of an invitee than an inviter. His opinions were secret by default. He was permanently waiting for someone else to tell him what to do or what to like. He had been a shy boy, and retreated further into himself as the realities of his adulthood set in. With rivulets of stress beginning to crease into his forehead, he could have passed for 38 on a bad day. Hari, perennially enrobed in office garb - a crumpled white shirt and somber grey trousers - never learned how to let his guard down low enough to let anyone in.

He would recoil at the instances when Prakash would suddenly point the camera at him - already loaded with a livestream - telling his followers that “Ab Hari bolega”. At times he felt like less of a brother and more of a character in Prakash’s life, an extra in his grand production. At times he felt like they were living in two separate worlds - Hari, offline and Prakash, online. At times he wondered if he should just pack his bags and join him there.

But show business was no place for him.

He couldn’t bend words like Prakash could. He didn’t have the long black locks like Prakash did. His only visible fashion accessories were the patches of sweat that peaked out from under his arms.

And even if he could learn to look and speak the part, he could never do what Prakash did.

Prakash had found himself extraordinarily suited to the specific strain of artistry that the Internet imposed on its creators. This was the ability to see the magic in the mundane, to turn the ordinary into opulence.

More than two million people had joined him on an hour-long rickshaw ride as he weaved his way through the fatty arteries of Mumbai’s roads. Several thousand had shared his Independence Day feature where he’d interviewed the silver-haired owner of the crumbling Irani Cafe in their neighbourhood, a man that had set up his establishment when India was still under the fist of the British Crown. Thousands more had joined his play-by-play coverage of waste removal at the Meethi River.

People tuned in to see the world through his eyes. It didn’t matter what he talked about. As long as he was doing the talking.

Prakash realised early on that there was a dislocation between people and places and pastimes in the ‘real world’, and how these things were presented online. To him it was an epiphany - to recognise that ‘the thing’ and ‘the content about the thing’ could exist independently. This was a different kind of art (or maybe it was just art. Period).

Hundred rupee headphones would never be worth more than a hundred rupees. But a well crafted review of those headphones could be worth much, much more than that and last far, far longer.

A friendly cricket game between kids at Shivaji Park would never have the high stakes of a Ranji Trophy match. But with the right commentator, it could still be a worthy spectacle.

No one would want to live in that dilapidated bungalow off of Ghodbunder Road. But a documentary about its Indo-Arab lineage, on the other hand, would bring you a hundred thousand views. Easy.

If you could see the beauty in your everyday surroundings, you could manufacture prestige where none had previously existed. It was all colour commentary at the end of the day. It was about who was best at sharing their perspective with the world. The Internet rewards storytellers, he would always say.

But how much?

Hari could see the numbers. A million views. A million likes. A million subscribers. Did that make his brother a millionaire?

“One day,” Prakash would say, typically with a wink and a hint of mischief dotting his grin. “Internet ko kahaaniyaan sunna hai.”

His choice of career was a renunciation of his humble origins. On the Internet he didn’t have to play by the rules of the ‘real’ world (as if the virtual world was any less real than the physical one).

He could set the stalls himself. He would post his way to riches. Where you were born, how you grew up, how much money you started with - these things were victims of chance. Those things were out of his control. Posting, on the other hand, was a meritocracy. That’s what he would say.

As long as you could construct a narrative, you had a job on the Internet. Prakash had a particular knack for filtering reality through his own proprietary sieve, extracting the heart from what he saw and who he met. With his phone as his paintbrush, he could find substance in the most unruly of forms. Even his own life.

Even as Prakash’s celebrity grew, he continued to share the same tiny apartment with his bhai. In the ‘real’ world, they still lived in what was ostensibly urban squalor, all while Prakash pantomimed as a living, breathing media company.

Perhaps, Hari reasoned, it was because he knew how much his younger brother would hate being displaced again. Perhaps it was because he wanted to keep him close. Maybe it was because, when it came to his audience, it was more prudent to be seen as punching up than punching down. In any case, Hari had stopped asking why his brother refused to trade up for better digs.

All he knew was that Prakash made sure the rent was paid every month, and that he would never have to stress about anything when it came to their life at home. That was enough.

And then he was gone.

It had taken the duo almost five full days to realise that Prakash’s fever wasn’t going away. Hari only understood the gravity of the situation when his brother began to make arrangements for his next move.

On the fifth morning of his illness, feeling a brief respite from his delirium, Prakash had asked Hari to fetch him a pen and paper. He scribbled down two sentences that appeared to be gibberish at first glance, and slid the paper across to his worried sibling. Noting Hari’s flummoxed expression, he added another two words to the document:

‘Username’

‘Password’

The credentials to his Youtube account.

Hari’s heart sunk. This was bad. There weren’t many other reasons why his brother would share this with him now - he had effectively handed over the keys to his diary, his portfolio, and his bank account.

In under two seconds, on the back of some ancient supermarket receipt, his brother had prepared a crude will and testament. (3 packets of milk, 2 packets Parle-G, and all my life’s work - real funny). The idea of an ‘official’ will was laughable. Everything they owned was in their apartment. He could literally see everything they owned.

Prakash was making sure to pass on the only other thing in his life that had any value.

By the time they got him to a hospital later that evening, he was already on the ropes. Two days later, he had moved on. Gone.

It had been a month.

He hadn’t left the house for a week after the funeral.

The apartment felt massive.

He’d been stuck with this cursed piece of paper - with its couplet of hieroglyphics - unsure of what his brother had expected him to do. To his knowledge, there was no guidebook on how to manage someone’s digital estate. He was on his own.

He had debated logging in several times. And always found a compelling argument for why he shouldn’t.

Was it his job to break the news to Prakash’s fans? They hadn’t heard from him in over a month now. They still flocked to the comment section of his videos, engaging in one-sided conversation with their host, their teacher, their guide, and their friend. He could still play these roles in their lives, couldn’t he? Did it matter if he wasn’t physically around to do it?

Could he just do nothing? And leave it to be a digital grave - a mausoleum for those who wished to remember him. In a way, Prakash had attained a kind of immortality. His thoughts, his jokes, and his personality were all still there. Frozen in time. His digital footprint would be etched in the sands of the Internet forever. Would it be better to just delete the channel altogether?

Was it possible for the show to go on? Could he just place his brother’s Youtube feed at the altar of some omnipotent AI that could spit out new videos of him forever? Could he use this digital clay to bring him back to life? Is that what his brother would have wanted?

Was this a gift? His digital inheritance. A final invitation to join one of his brother’s schemes.

How could he even begin to answer those questions. This was all so new. This was all so strange. To have his grief be intertwined with such a callous responsibility. Even after he was gone, Prakash had still managed to make it seem like his life on screen was the one that mattered.

No, that was unfair. His brother would try his best to look out for him. Even now. He always had.

It occurred to Hari that humans had likely taken for granted the ease with which we had slipped into our double-sided lives. Online and offline. Leaving bits of ourselves all over the Internet, preserved in the amber of binary digits. Maybe this is our destiny. For our virtual selves to provide comfort, wisdom, and entertainment to our people long after we’re gone.

These profiles, like Prakash’s, were like piles of ashes, riddled with dark magic, from which you could conjure a living thing with the right incantation. Each one of us, each of our loved ones - could find permanence online.

Maybe this was Prakash’s plan from the start. To build something for him. A digital legacy that he could carry on. Maybe this was his way of making sure they’d always be together. Divided by the physical world and reunited in cyberspace. A cruel joke.

All of these big tech companies, trying to disrupt this and disrupt that. They had disrupted the concept of samsara, of reincarnation itself.

Those numbers on the screen. Those big numbers. Millions of everything. They represented a different kind of wealth. Less tangible but no less real. It was ephemeral. Fleeting. It was like sand. It could slip through your palm in an instant if you weren’t careful. But in the hands of the right craftsman it could be moulded into something real. Something formidable.

His brother knew that.

Hari could choose to be selfish, and indulge his despair. He could continue Prakash’s legacy. Maybe they would accept him as the new steward of Sheher Ka Shor? Maybe he could don his brother’s mask? Who could begrudge him that? His brother had spent the past five years making his name on the Internet. His channel - it wasn’t just some house he rented on Youtube. It was a mansion he built brick by brick, one that he had every right to bequeath. To ensure its upkeep would be to honour his memory. To let it it rust would be to let half a decade of toil go to waste. Like flushing money down the drain.

But how would he ever move on? If he chose to animate Prakash’s dormant account with life again. If he woke him from his slumber. How would it feel? To hear his brother’s voice again, saying things he had never heard before, thinking things he’d never thought.

The password on that sheet - he realised that it could be a key to some spectacular treasure or a key to surefire tragedy.

But how could he know without trying the door.

Taking a deep breath, Hari pulled up the page and logged in.