Vinay Abhishek Vemu

Vinay Abhishek Vemu is a communications professional with more than 12 years of experience in writing for the web, print and creative sector. He has been involved in Dramanon Hyderabad as a theatre actor and also teaches theatre to children. He has published books for children too. Vinay was also the second runner up in MTV Roadies Season 9 in 2012. Through this project, he will explore the memories of accessing internet cafes 25 years ago through an audio play titled The Chat Room in Alwal.

The 25-minute audio play will be an experiment with a mix of voices and sounds recollecting the excitement, frustration, love, loss, and resignation of those first few years of the internet. The characters in the play would include an internet cafe owner and manager in his fifties; a middle-aged couple in love who find the cafe to be a safe space away from family and prying eyes; a first-time job applicant trying to emigrate to Dubai struggling with their resume; a student anxious about board results contemplating on her future; an underage porn addict; a chaiwallah who aspires to open his own chai stall; and a geek customer who doubles up as the troubleshooting guy whenever there is a technical problem and in turn uses the internet for free as a reward. These are characters Vinay had seen, observed and known intimately. 

Other than the audio play, Vinay also wants to reconnect with the friends he had made at the internet café and bring together a collection of internet cafe photos of the interior and exterior extracted from people’s personal albums and emails, revisited again to give a glimpse of the past. Vinay will post the collected photos and other materials in a WordPress blog. 

It is important for IFA to support this audio play that will bring together a set of sound images that are reminiscent of the early days of the internet in a small town in India. The sounds and the photos are pointers to the internet as a channel of emotions and social memory. The outcome of the project will be this audio play and the blog with photographs of internet cafes. The Grantee’s deliverables to IFA along with the final reports will be the audio play, the link to the blog, and all the materials of the blog downloaded on a drive.

This grant is made possible under the special initiative 25x25, with support from lead donor Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners, Titan Company Limited, Priya Paul, and Sethu Vaidyanathan.