Pixels Multimedia: End of Days

Sometimes, life can take you down a path you never thought you'd ever walk 

In an earlier post, I wrote about how things had started going downhill at Pixels, team members had left and I was on my own. I was also on the verge of having to move Pixels out of the Sahara Bazar location, which had proven to be expensive and where the lack of footfalls had stopped the business from growing. The story continues here.

My father had been able to speak to his bosses and eventually got a transfer to Lucknow. He was actually doing very well in Bareilly and both he and my mother were quite happy there. However, he got the transfer in order to help me out and to ensure that we could all be together in one house. We rented a house in Aliganj, where I would have the largest room in the house – the drawing-cum-dining room – from where I could continue to run Pixels Multimedia in its new, diminished avatar.

On the day I had to move out, I drove my father’s car to Sahara Bazar early in the morning. At around nine in the morning, the place was more or less deserted – most shops and other businesses did not open before 10.30 at least. I unlocked the doors and walked inside my little institute, which I had set up just one year ago with such high hopes. On that morning, everything was just… silent. Quiet. The lights, fans and computers hadn’t been switched on. There was no team to talk to or share a cup of chai with. The students had all been informed of the move – some would continue to attend classes at my new location in Aliganj while some others had asked for, and had been given, a refund of the fees they had paid.

Much as it pained me, I knew what needed to be done, so rolled up my sleeves and got down it – unplugged the computers, dismantled whatever had to be dismantled, cleared out the drawers and cabinets, and made repeated trips to the car parked outside with all my stuff in my hands. By now, some other businesses had also opened up and their owners saw me walking from the institute to the car with computers and random other stuff in my hands. They understood that Pixels Multimedia was shutting down and moving out. Some looked away, some had pity in their eyes and yet others smiled at me. Some asked me what had happened, to which I gave the briefest of replies and moved on. It took me about an hour to keep my computers and other random stuff in the car, by which time the carpenters had arrived.

I had carefully measured out the space available to me in the room that had been given to me in my parents’ house and had realised that my computer tables would have to be modified and repurposed so that they could be used in the new location. After I’d moved out the computers and kept them in the car, the carpenters arrived and got to work, cutting and chopping the tables that Guddu had made the year before. It took only an hour or two for them to complete their work, after which all the furniture was loaded on to a small, three-wheeler goods-carrier and hauled off to Aliganj, where Pixels Multimedia would come to life again in a day or two. Once the furniture had been carted off, the place was completely empty and eerily silent. I took one last look around, got out, closed the doors one last time, locked the place up and said a silent goodbye to Sahara Bazar.

Over the next 2-3 days, I worked hard at setting up the computers and repurposed furniture in our newly rented house in Aliganj – the place from where Pixels would function from now. I had already gotten some signboards made for the institute, one of which I got placed right outside the house and the others on the main road that led to the house, so that people who wanted to find the place could do so easily. Placed an advertisement in the classifieds section of the Times of India and once more worked with newspaper distributors and retailers to have our pamphlets and brochures distributed in all residential areas in a 5km radius from our house. This time, of course, I was all alone – Tabrez was no longer by my side to help me with things. But I worked with the unabated enthusiasm that young people – I was still only 24 years old at that time – are often capable of, and soon things were working again. Aliganj being a very large residential area, there was some interest from young students nearby who often used to walk in saying they wanted to ‘learn computers.’ Many did not have any idea of what exactly it was that they wanted to learn, or do, and I used to explain things to them at length and give them as many options as I could. After this, some would pay up and join while some others would walk away, which I think is only fair.

With a combination of teaching, and whatever animation and audio/video editing work that I could get, I was soon earning anywhere between Rs 12,000 to 15,000 per month. I no longer had to pay rent or salaries, which I suppose helped. But the other thing was, there was very little growth – I could see, and realise, that there was simply no way Pixels could compete with the big guys. The franchisee chain operations had big resources, advertising budgets, large teams, better access to the latest hardware and software and, for students for whom getting a ‘certificate’ or a ‘diploma’ was important, the big guys’ certificates and diplomas were way more prestigious and credible. And hence, despite offering better courseware, more personalized instruction and a lower fee structure, Pixels simply could not hold its own against the biggies. We were, at best, marginal players, somehow managing to survive on the sidelines.

While the money wasn’t exactly great, I did enjoy spending time with the few students I had. One of them, Anurag, was an expert at playing the keyboard and had half a dozen Yamaha synthesisers hooked up in his room, which he used to play regularly. He used to come to Pixels to learn to use MIDI and digital audio editing and composition software, which I also used to find very interesting. I was a self-taught keyboard player – could not read sheet music but I could play by the ear – and had a Casio keyboard that I had connected to one of the computers, so I could experiment with MIDI. Since Anurag and I both had a deep interest in computers and music synthesisers and in how we could get the two to work together, he used to sometimes load up one of his big Yamaha synths into his car and bring it over to Pixels, where we’d hook it up to one of the PCs and mess with various editing software and talk about music for hours on end.

Another remarkable student was a certain Mr Saluja, who was in his mid-50s and used to work with a bank in a mid-level managerial position. After spending a full day at work in his office, he used to ride his scooter to Pixels, where he used to spend an hour or two with me every day, learning the intricacies of 3D animation software, Photoshop, CorelDraw and Adobe Premiere. Why did he choose to learn and what would he do with them once he learned to use all these software? His only reason was that he found the software fascinating and that he wanted to learn everything, while understanding that he would have no actual use for any of it later on. His dedication to learning – the sheer commitment – is something I remember to this day, for he would never, ever miss a single class and he’d always be there right on time. Today, I suppose Mr Saluja would be in his late-70s and wherever he is, I hope he continues to follow technology with the same passion and continues to learn new things.

Among other students whom I particularly remember was Manjul, who was a passionate cartoonist – the boy could really draw. He wanted to learn CorelDraw and Photoshop and combine the two to create new-age digital art, in addition to what he could already draw by hand, with a pencil. He was pretty good and while I’ve lost track of his whereabouts, I hope he went on to do well as a cartoonist. And finally, there was Madhumita, a smart, young lady who must have been about my age, or maybe a year or two younger. Good-looking and always very well-dressed, Madhumita could easily have been a fashion model but wanted to learn computers. With her large eyes, soft voice and gentle demeanour, Madhumita was always ready a with smile and, I have to admit, she made quite an impression on me. She later got married and moved to Delhi, and we did keep in touch for a few years. She is now based in Canada and, unfortunately, we haven’t met or spoken to each other in many years.

While Pixels Multimedia was soldiering on, in my spare time I also used to write for a weekly tech supplement that the Times of India (Lucknow edition) used to publish in those days. My friend Ashish, who used to work in the TOI’s response department, had given me my first writing opportunity and got me started with this. I used to write about hardware and software, about animation and digital arts and anything tech-related – as long as I found the subject interesting and if the TOI editors were okay with it. It didn’t pay very well but seeing my byline in print always made me happy. That said, I never really thought about doing more of this and never tried reaching out to other publications to see if there might be any other writing opportunities elsewhere. If anyone had suggested to be back then that I’d someday be working as a full-time writer/journalist, I would have never believed them. But life works in some pretty amazing ways and sometimes takes you down paths you’d never imagine walking.

In those days, I used to read as many computer magazines as I could get my hands on, every month. All the Indian computer magazines, certainly, plus older (sometimes second-hand) copies of foreign mags, which I would find once in a while in some bookshops in Hazratganj. One day, I rode down to a local bookstore in Aliganj and spotted a new computer magazine – CHIP – on the stands. I flipped through the pages, quite liked it and bought a copy. That evening, I ended up reading it from cover to cover and the magazine made a big impact on me. Compared to the other computer magazines being published in India at that time, CHIP was quite a revelation in terms of design, production quality and how it made stuff accessible by avoiding excess usage of hard-to-understand jargon. I liked CHIP so much, I suddenly wanted to be a part of it. I had already been writing tech articles for the TOI, so maybe I could also write for CHIP? I thought to myself, hey, this is something I can do, this is something I want to do.

The next day, I decided to send an email to Gourav, CHIP’s Editor and ask him if there might be a vacancy at CHIP. Things at Pixels were steady, but slow. There was stagnation – no growth, nothing new happening. I couldn’t see myself doing what I was doing at Pixels for much longer; I was hungry for change, and CHIP I felt might be that change. Little did I know how that email – the one I wrote to Gourav – would change my life forever. Soon, I’d be winding up my business, saying goodbye to Lucknow, and going to Bombay, where I’d spend the next 10 years of my life.

The story continues here