The following morning, I woke with one thought burning in my mind: India wasn't ready for the wave of change I was going to bring, but it didn't matter. This was my time to break through, to give birth to an era of technology that would transform everything. My starting point was simple: a computer, an idea, and a small room full of pioneers waiting to make their mark.
The first steps I took after that cold night spent sitting alone at the café were admittedly modest—very modest. I had no grand office. No investors lined up eager to fund the revolution I envisioned. But I had the one thing that everyone here lacked: a vision of what was possible. A glimpse of the future.
As I stood on the crumbling roads of Mumbai, I couldn't help but feel the weight of history upon me. I was holding in my hands the potential to set India on a path unlike anything it had ever known, to build up an economy that could rival the superpowers of the world.
My first order of business was securing a base, a small, manageable workshop that could serve as both my test ground and incubator. I had spotted a small electronics store earlier—one that sold parts in a shop no bigger than a typical one-room flat. A man by the name of Ravi Patel ran the place, and something about his hands-on, mechanical understanding struck me. His business model seemed outdated—he was merely repairing radios and selling electronic parts—but he understood how things worked beneath the surface. He could, if guided, make things work at the forefront of an emerging tech wave.
My next move was to offer him a deal.
---
The little shop smelled like wires, soldering iron, and spilled paint. Ravi looked exactly like what you would expect someone entrenched in the grit of Mumbai's industrial trade: rugged, tired, and slightly unkempt. He looked up as I entered the room, looking at me cautiously, as though preparing for another one of those "customers who were all talk" to walk out on him.
"Morning," I said, smiling and gesturing at the rows of disassembled radios on dusty shelves. "Nice setup."
He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"I need your help," I continued. "More than just with repairs. I'm looking for someone who understands how the world of electronics works but can think beyond it."
"Beyond?" he asked, clearly confused. "I'm a repairman. I fix the machines people break."
"Well, what if you could help build something different?" My words hung in the air between us. "Something better than a radio. Something that will shape the future. I'm talking about computers. A personal machine. For businesses, for schools, for people. A whole new kind of world."
"World?" He spat a bit of tobacco on the floor, eyeing me with skepticism. "And what kind of machine would this be? We don't even have the resources to repair cars around here, let alone invent new ones."
"But you're wrong," I said. "You do have the resources. All it takes is the right focus, the right guidance. And I need someone like you—someone who knows how wires connect, how the basics can be turned into something revolutionary." I could see his resistance melting, just slightly. A cautious interest was forming, the same way a quiet river starts to tremble before a storm.
"Alright, kid," Ravi said with a grunt. "Let's hear your crazy idea then."
I smiled, feeling a sense of anticipation I hadn't felt in years. The blueprint for the future of India's tech industry was now at the tip of my tongue. But, first things first—I needed to show Ravi what could be done.
"I'm going to teach you how to build computers. Not the big, bulky machines you know from old factories, but small, personal ones—machines that fit into the pockets of businessmen, students, laborers, anyone who needs them. One day, everyone will carry a machine that fits in their hand but does the work of a thousand people."
Ravi looked me up and down once more, still not quite buying into it, but also intrigued. "And this will happen how? Where will you get these parts?"
"I have a contact in Hong Kong who can provide the best components for cheap," I answered. It wasn't entirely true, but it didn't matter at this stage. I had to convince him. "I know people who can help. You don't need to worry about that. What I need from you, Ravi, is to start thinking bigger. Look beyond the pieces and think about the system. We can create something that will blow this market wide open."
He eyed me closely, thinking. After a few seconds, he sighed.
"You're crazy, you know that?"
"I've been called worse," I said with a grin.
There was a momentary silence before he gestured towards the back of the shop.
"Alright. Let's see what you've got then. But I warn you, if this 'computer thing' is as bad as I think it will be, I'm going to make you eat your words."
And so, we began.
---
I spent the next few weeks in that cramped shop, late nights filled with disassembled parts, motherboard testing, wires running across countertops, and heated debates about microchips and software that didn't exist yet. In those days, I could barely sleep, so immersed was I in the process. Each moment was consumed by one thing: building the seed of the future. What Ravi and I were doing—what I was teaching him to build—was nothing short of a small miracle in motion.
The machine took shape slowly, at first appearing more like a pile of disconnected parts than anything usable. But the promise of personal technology was slowly coming alive before my eyes. We used what resources we had: spare processors, crude circuit boards. It wasn't much—but it was more than anyone around us thought could exist. And each piece pushed me further into the realm of creation.
Weeks turned into months, but at last, we had a working model. It was an overly simplistic, perhaps clunky machine by modern standards, but it worked. A humble computer—nothing revolutionary by today's standards—but it could process text, it could calculate numbers. And for 1980s India, it was everything.
---
That afternoon, I felt something I had never felt before. Power.
I looked at Ravi, his worn face aglow under the glow of a single hanging light, his hands trembling with nervous energy as he turned the first key on the system.
"We did it," he said, barely a whisper, though it felt like a shout.
This was just the beginning.
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End of Chapter 3