What do you do if you're in an elevator when the clock strikes 12 on new year's eve, goes a joke that has been in circulation for many months now. What do you do to inoculate yourself against the Y2K bug? It may be followed up with a rather lame retort nothing, lifts don't operate on computers - but chances are it has provided little comfort to multitudes already aquiver at the thought of the doom impending as they party into the year 2000. Oh, and while on the subject, will your toaster survive slippery passage into the 21st century? It's not clear whether an East Asian home appliances giant is seeking to attract customers with a sense of humour or with masses of gullible genes, but it has launched a Y2K compliant toaster. Where will it end? Will wannabe revellers at global hotspots be too highly strung contemplating the End of the World As We Know It to enjoy the marketing marvels on offer?Computer glitches due to lazy programming in decades gone by are, no doubt, a cause for deep concern, but theirrationality informing most public discourse is amusing. The Y2K compliance of nuclear installations in Russia is, no doubt, giving most folk sleepless nights, but when we speak of millennium madness, we have in mind bugs of an entirely different sort. Given the fact that most software programming in the last decade was Y2K compliant to begin with, that most loopholes have been addressed - at considerable benefit to Indian software experts, it may be added - it is the Y2K compliance of everyday people that is now in doubt. Airplanes may not nosedive, as feared, assorted glitches may not hamper the delivery of food and civic utilities, but come January 1, 2000, how will most people who count themselves among thinking, concerned individuals occupy their contemplative hours? If not the past year, at least the last couple of months have literally whizzed passed amidst a collective frenzy of compiling lists and participating in hopelessly unrepresentative polls. As the men and women of the millennium, ideasand innovations, books and films, are assessed and chronicled, it would seem that humanity is leaving behind all baggage and transitioning into a gaping vacuum.And part of that baggage being left behind is very tangible. The billions of dollars spent in virtual repentance for the laziness of yesteryears have been estimated, but not the cost of time capsules that have been buried in countless backyards and hotel compounds. It is not clear what use posterity will have for samples of quotidian preoccupations in 1999 and for piles of CDs it will have no technological gizmo to play, but the ecological hazards of embedding non-biodegradable memorabilia seems to have been lost on an otherwise achingly politically correct generation. So where does Y2K compliance lie? For a start, in ceasing to give undue "millennial" weightage to the minutiae of daily life and in surrendering oneself to awe inspired by the grand cosmic calendar.
