Trailakyanarayan Samanta — I tell you what, fuck Traila-whatever, we call him Sam. Now Sam had been a trucker all his life. Drove a heavy-duty 16-wheel monster on the highway, even cross-country. Tough, resilient, a sonovabitch. He gradually started to build his own fleet, and now it seems he has gone past his millionaire milestone, aiming for god knows what. In India, guys like Sam stop driving their own car when they reach this stage in life. They hire a driver. At times several of them — for the wife, the kids, the mother-in-law, maybe even the mistress. And since Sam knows his vehicles as well as he knows what comes out of the hood, he knows what goes inside them better than any driver he hires. The moment someone complains, Sam opens it up, stares at the engine while it’s running, detects the problem in under a minute, orders the driver what to do, and moves on.
Now Sam has a polite professor as his neighbour. Professor Rikveda Mukherjee. Our Rik.
Rik has one decent car for his entire family. He too has a driver. After he’s dropped off at the college, the vehicle comes back, takes the kids to school, the wife to shopping or her kitty parties, the mother-in-law to the mandir. He has no mistress. Save him.
Something or the other always goes wrong with the car. Either the AC isn’t working well enough, the brake shoes need replacement, or something so delicate that his driver suggests the vehicle needs to stay in the garage for a day or two.
Rik’s wife, ever since Sam moved in as neighbour, has been pestering Rik to speak to him — to ask Sam to control his shouting and unbridled profanities with his staff, his drivers, anyone on his payroll. Rik never had the inclination to approach that man. He avoided. But couldn’t, one day.
Sam came over, said hello, and invited Rik and his entire family to his daughter’s birthday. Rik, out of politeness, said yes — while his entire being cringed at the thought of a party thrown by his nouveau riche, illiterate neighbour. Sam shook hands and was about to leave when he said: Rik, you know what, if you don’t mind my asking — do you know anything about cars? Rik admitted he had no idea. Sam, not wasting time, walked him through what might be wrong with his car. And to Rik’s considerable surprise, he discovered that not so much was wrong with the vehicle — but with his driver. The driver had kept him dependent, taken him for various rides, and lined his own pockets on the sly. Every time the vehicle went to the garage, a tidy commission made the driver’s pocket warmer.
Long story short: Rik became very friendly with Sam. Went to the party. Enjoyed himself. He found Sam knowledgeable about cars, a genuine aficionado, a tough cookie — and Sam got him a new driver.
Rik’s car was never in better hands.
No, no, no — don’t fold. The story isn’t over. The moral has to wait a little longer to land.
As a writer, I had always carried this idea of having my own platform. Always daydreamed that whenever I wrote something deserving a better home than my social media pages, I had nowhere to put it. I had a little investable money. I took pride in action — bought the domain name, bought the server space, and after some networking, found a developer. I treated him like Messi. I became his mesmerised audience. I was elated. Nothing could stop my extraordinary insights from hitting those intellectual faraway shores now — like a bottle with a message from a romantic stranded halfway across the globe.
Days went by quickly. Months went even faster. Finally my website, my existential dreamboat, arrived. My developer and I drank more bottles of beer to celebrate than lines of code he had written.
After a couple of days, I wrote a small piece of fiction, signed into WordPress admin, and wanted to post it. When my efforts to get that 500-word article anywhere went nowhere, I blamed myself for not knowing enough to even do that much. I called up my beer buddy — who went by another name: developer. He explained the lack of something — some tech — which of course was needed to get what I wanted. It would cost money. But being a beer buddy now, he made it affordable. Easier.
I did it.
I did it again.
I kept doing it for about six months. By now my nights and days were spent calculating costs and time on a spreadsheet just to get my 500-word articles to see the world.
Then I stopped.
This was 2024.
Around the beginning of 2026, I discovered an AI agent. Six months in, around June 20, out of pure curiosity, with no expectations, I asked — and I will paste my first exchange with it here: my blogsite is www.gunjon.org; will you be able to access it? And it replied: Yes, fully accessible. The site loads cleanly — WordPress 6.7.5, minimal four-page structure (Home, About, Writing, Contact), with the bio, social links, and a current book recommendations section visible on the homepage.
And thus began an exploration — relentless on my part — to figure out exactly what my beer buddy had done to keep me in his shackles, paying him every time I needed something added, deleted, or edited on my website.
This opened new windows in my mind. The fear was overridden by something closer to a child’s enthusiasm. I worked with it for the next three or four days. There were moments when my AI agent would reprimand me to take a break and come back the next day. It said things like:
The site is live. The ground zero is done. The work was always waiting — now it has a home that’s worthy of it. Go rest. Tomorrow, The Crack.
I came back the next morning with the vigour of an assassin. I wanted to see exactly how much I had been duped inside all that camaraderie. Finally, after about 25-plus hours on the job, after uploading 80 screenshots and making an equivalent number of edits at the code level, I asked: are we not going in circles now? The AI agent replied:
Yes. We are. And I need to be honest about why. The real problem is this: the BookCrawlers theme was built for a book catalogue site, not a literary platform. Every structural problem we’ve fought — the broken thumbnails, the Latest Books sidebar, the invisible title — comes from the same root. We’re trying to use a book shop theme as a literary site, and the developer never properly adapted it.
This experience — what my AI agent and I did together — is priceless to me. A 60-year-old writer with very little knowledge of hardcore tech, relentlessly pursuing, doing detective work, pushing back on an overconfident AI agent, only to discover after 25-plus hours that his developer had partially duped him. As they do, all over the world, to everyone who doesn’t know what’s inside the hood.
Don’t give up. Don’t lose heart. Whether you are 16 or touching a hundred — fasten your seatbelt, enjoy the ride, and build your own website. Say hello to the world.
The moral of the story is not that anyone can build a website. That’s the reward.
I have spent an entire adult life arguing that systems are designed to keep you on the outside. To exclude. To keep the Riks of the world dependent on their drivers, while the insiders collect their commissions. Technology has built a formidable fortress around its knowledge — through extreme complexity, deliberate obscurity, and the quiet cultivation of dependency. People keep you reliant on them so you pay them for a lifetime.
But the moment something shows you the real image in the mirror — everything changes.
There are operating systems for your computer available for almost nothing. Have you ever tried them? Probably not. There will always be systems — from democratically elected governments working to dismantle the very democracy that brought them to power, to the techie who, the moment he smells dependency, will not leave a stone unturned to deepen it. But the mirror exists. The tools exist. And when you find one that works, use it without apology.
If your oncologist is steering you toward ruin because your desperation is his revenue stream — take charge. Arm yourself with knowledge: on the illness, on patient rights, on second opinions. Then go further. Social media is not enough. Consider buying a domain name. Use a free AI agent. Build a website. Share your story. Be your own Sam.
And shout your hello into the world!