Monday, December 18, 2000		Article

‘I want to be Indian Bill Gates’
by Peeyush Agnihotri

MAKING a Web site is not a child’s play. Ask 10-year-old Abhay Vats. While kids of his age are busy learning the nuances of spoken languages, this boy from Delhi is busy dabbling in Java, a language that’s all g(r)eek to most of us. His classmates might be happy making paper boats and aeroplanes, but this Class VI student from St. Marks Senior Secondary School, Meera Bagh, New Delhi, is content making Web sites.

Abhay, who loves maths and computers, has named his Web site kidsanza.com, which means "a bonanza of knowledge for kids." He has used HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language), Java Script and Front Page, regularly used by most Web site creators.

The site has sections devoted exclusively to India — tourist attractions, festivals and states. What is, however, outstanding is the "Few Records" section. This section has agriculture, transport, structures, science and nature sub-sections that can even teach adults a thing or two.

"I chose general knowledge as the theme because this topic is not there in any of the Web sites for kids. Once as I was searching for such sites on the Internet, I was not able to find even one that was comprehensive," Abhay says.

His father is a General Manager in a telecom company and his mother a housewife. "My dad only pays for the site hosting and the money for domain. That is hardly any money. I learnt computers from SSI, Janakpuri, an institute of a friend of my father’s," he says.

This lad has also devoted a section to his seven-year old sister, Shubra, a Class II student, and has made a page on his school as well.

"Oh! I love computers and I want to be an Indian Bill Gates when I grow up," he says.

It was all not smooth sailing for Abhay creating the site. "Once my site got corrupted and I was not able to get anything on my computer. I wept the whole night. My mom consoled me. In the morning, Papa woke me up and asked me to restart work, right from a scratch. He gave me some data saved in his folder and by night 90 per cent of the site was ready again. This time it was better than my previous work," he narrates boastfully.

His skills notwithstanding, this boy rates himself as an average student. "I hate writing answers even though I know them. My handwriting is bad," he says. Apart from playing computer games, Abhay plays badminton and when he is not on the keyboard, he’s busy pressing Casio keys. "I am learning to play the bongo also," he says.

Kidsanza.com was put up in the second week of November. And the hit rate?

"I have not yet put in a hit counter. I will do that in the next updation. I think the hit rate is good because I am receiving a lot of e-mail," he says innocently.

The site, however, has a few spelling mistakes. Record is "recoard" and country’s is "countrie’s." But then, were all of us not bad at spellings when we were 10 years old?