His tweets target the government, its bhakts and journalists who should do better.@CarDroidusMax discuses himself in an anonymous email chat
Illustration/Ravi Jadhav
When we sat down and counted, there were over 75 tweets in just 24 hours. That's over three for each circumabulation of the minute hand around the clock, not accounting for the fact that the man (at least his ID suggests so) may take some time off for sleeping, eating and other necessities. But @CarDroidusMax, aka The Last Caveman, whose tweets against the RSS, the BJP and certain journalists are becoming the thing of Twitter conversations for their content and language — 'Good morning, UK NRIBhaktGen. F*** you for w***ing all over Wembley, when you went to watch the genius who didn't know it'll be cold in Nov'.
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Yet, from 2009 (when he first appeared on the microblogging site) till now, he has just gained 2,682 followers for over 12K tweets. It's because, he says, it's only this August that he started tweeting furiously. On who he is, he says, "I am a Malayali, a 1980's kid and a 1990's youngster who grew up in a politically super-charged era. Dad's state government job took me on a round trip across the state — thus growing up in Ernakulam, Thrissur, Kozhikode, Kottayam and a few other places. Personality-wise, I'd say its Kottayam and Thrissur that have rubbed off on me. The in-your-face-ness is all Kottayam, while the gross irreverence is all Thrissur, I think."
He prefers remaining anonymous. Cliché much? He agrees it is, but adds that a pseudonym keeps the focus on the message rather than the speaker. "And, we as a society have become unashamedly good at profiling people based on what their names sound like. By staying as the anon blowhard Mallu, I get to say what I want to say without having to compensate for subconscious biases that people apply when they read my tweets. It's also a lot more fun this way — especially when Bhakts go 'You Commie Jihadi Vatican agent', as if that is even a meaningful word-grouping."
The BJP, he says, is attacked because, though it rode the 2014 elections on the 'development for all' plank, it has now "decided to get high on their Hindurashtra joint and has, slowly but systematically, unleashed its fascist tendencies on all social and public institutions". He says he was one of the "idiots who actually thought, 'what the hell, UPA2 is a big mess, perhaps this Modi has turned a new leaf, maybe they need to be given a chance'."
The Dadri-killings and the establishment's response to Dadri was the last straw. Around the time, some time in early August, he writes, he "sheerly out of boredom put out a string of tweets with some data about Achhe Din (or lack thereof) and how the INC is muddling around as an opposition, to my 100 or so followers at that time. That was picked up and retweeted by some folks on Indian Twitter and I added a few hundred followers in the next few weeks."
In his anonymity, he claims to be an 'aam admi'. Much like the invisible Mr India taking on Mogambo. Not, a politically motivated instigator. "I am an engineer, with a desk job. I have said as much openly on Twitter, too. This is just to say that one doesn't need to study liberal arts at JNU or Oxford or work in politics/media to have an open world view. Critical questioning, challenging status-quo, irreverence to dogma — are all really excellent traits to have in any industry, especially science and engineering. So, I'm not the "IT Cell" guy with a bank of monitors, an army of staff and political patronage. I'm the exact opposite — an office worker, tweeting from the train/bus home, grocery bag tucked away safely between my legs."
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