Thread by @prstb

#TIL that Shammi Kapoor was one of the first users of the Internet in India

He was the founder & chairman of the Internet Users Club of India. I can't wrap my head around how someone like Shammi Kapoor was in the thick of the internet movement in India?

I did some digging 👇

I found this dead website mafatlal.co.in on the Internet Archive. It was one of the first domains with a ".co.in" TLD.

It was owned by this guy: Miheer Mafatlal and it hosted the IUCI webpage. As tech people stereotypes go, he sure does look the part.

This is how one of India's first independent and private websites looked like.

It couldn't have a more 90s internet aesthetic if it tried. Love it!

Shammi Kapoor and his internet club were also the self-proclaimed gatekeepers of the Indian internet culture.

For instance, check this email sent by Shammi Kapoor, asking Indians in way too many words to basically be less horny on "CityTalk" - an IRC server from that time.

They even set up a "Page of Shame" to name and shame Indians who were beings dicks on the internet. 😳

So I opened this Page of Shame but to my disappointment, the list was empty. ☹️

Maybe the updates to the page aren't archived or they probably decided to drop the idea altogether.

I'm still fascinated by how Shammi Kapoor, of all people, was at the helm of all of this. He had a cute personal website too. According to him, he learnt all the coding and designing himself.

Tbh, this has more character and creativity than some of the personal websites of today

He was into writing online as well and this was even before "blog" was even a term. Read this wild excerpt from a very random post about Librans being very accident-prone (??)

Fin. The boys from the "Bombay Computer Club". The pioneers of our internet. When are we getting an OTT series on them?

You can read a more detailed and complete version of this here: peabee.substack.com/p/15-mafatlal-…

Wow, this thread has become popular! I have nothing to promote, except check this silly little website I made (as a joke) to find half loaves of bread near you. Because I can never finish a full loaf of bread!

halfloafnear.me

And a list of other silly little projects here: peabee.xyz/projects/