Memoirs of a Long-time Luddite — Angadh Nanjangud

Memoirs of a Long-time Luddite

Completion: 100%

5933 words

First published: 2025-11-28 (Revised: 2026-07-27)

Started: 2025-11-28

memoir, culture, technology

This is a memoir-style essay where I trace, to the best my memory can, my early years around the internet and computing. It combines five serialised posts for Inkhaven, which you can also read here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Finale.

My dad, Appa, bought his and, in some sense, my first personal computer when we lived in Lagos. This computer appeared in roughly 1995 or 1996, when I was likely no older than nine. I suppose I could clarify this fact with Appa, but even he might not remember this number too well—he would most likely just give a number with such confidence that I would doubt the number here.

I say “in some sense” because I have an older brother. This meant there was a pecking order of who got access to the computer; first Appa, then my brother, then me. Amma, my mom, well… Indian men, eh? I must have either idolised Appa and my brother. Or feared them. I suppose it was both because what is the difference, really. But this meant I never actually learned how to use a computer because I never got access to one until much later.

This story’s rooted in computers, but I realise that the part about Nigeria is just far more interesting so I’m going to digress.

In Nigeria, Appa managed the weaving section of a textile factory; on some nights, we’d join him on his supervision tasks which involved wandering the shop floor. His main task, as I understood it, was to ensure his section’s employees weren’t sleeping on the job. There was always one who was, and while I knew Appa’s anger could be uncontrollable, I wondered if his rage blinded him to the guns on the Nigerian labourers. They were ripped! But, I guess Appa was the boss in this setting, so there was some installed hierarchical respect that those under him had bought intoNow that I think of it, I wonder if this is how I learned to despise hierarchies and organised labour…?.

He wasn’t the only one who bossed the local Nigerians around—as a child, it seemed to me that was just how it was. I still remember the Nigerian locals on the shop floor referring to him as “Master”. I wondered what they called the owner of the company. Or if they’d ever seen the guy—and it’s always a guy.

This is all crazy, of course, but not just in retrospect; it always flummoxed me how the non-local population that I was a part of got away with this hierarchical organisation around people who were indigenous to the place. I still do not fully grasp what it is about a child’s compass of what is fair or right but it does exist. This felt wrong to me, even back then.

Of course, all of this was well before I learned about British colonisation of India—or Nigeria, for that matter. Had I known this, I suppose minorities bossing the indigenous majority around would not appear as unusual. But back then, it seemed odd, to say the least.

Appa worked at 4-5 companies in Lagos, over 6 or 7 yearsAs I write this, I am not even sure which year we moved there. The details have always felt hazy, even if the memories aren’t.. My recollection of the specific dates of our time in Nigeria remains vague; I was quite young when we moved there. We lived there long enough for it to feel like home when we left. But I also kinda knew that India was also home—I remember the town of Ankleshwar, where I was born, and early school years in Mumbai, as well. We’d also fly back to India every year—in business class!—as his company would buy tickets for all of us; this was standard for all employees. I guess it must have been hard to recruit people to work in Nigeria back then—maybe it still is…

We moved back to India in 1998 (I think) because Appa decided he needed to make some changes. I’ve overheard some of the more gossipy reasons for this as a child, so I can’t confirm their veracity.

The non-gossipy side is that he wanted to no longer be a textile engineer, at the age of 42 or 43; his hope was to move to the United States to live the American dream; the cars, the houses, the movies, the works. But this would require his re-skilling into software things so we moved from Lagos to Bangalore, which was taking center stage in the Indian tech scene but was also where he grew up; it was where two of his three brothers lived.

Moving there felt like a pretty severe upending in quality of life. For me, at least—I cannot speak for my brother or parents. For one, before my teenage years, I’d gotten very accustomed to living in air-conditioned homes and being chauffeured around in fancy cars—or maybe having someone driving you around makes even a modest Peugeot feel fancyAnother lamer and tamer version of The Selfless Driving Car.. If there were power cutsPower outage, but we’ll stick to the local lingo., we had backup generators, too. If there was a water shortage, large drums of water...