In a crowd of card-sharp journos on a junket, I tend to stick out like a sore nose when I dig in for my weather-beaten wallet to pay up in soiled notes for the bhajias and chai en route to some television factory.

The bhajia-wallah of course is backward enough to not have installed a card terminal by the new millennium deadline, so it comes as a bit of relief mixed with bemusement to the others that they have with them someone who shares the poor bloke's position on the monetary evolution chain.

It could be the dinosaur's last grunt, but when I read (or even write) about the poor guys who found a few thousand dollars eroded from their net worth by some sex-starved hacker surfing for pleasure using stolen credit card codes, I always dismiss any thoughts of finally filling in the form.

Forget credit cards, I'm paranoid even about my ATM card. Or smart cards, debit cards, not to mention playing cards. And soon you will have optical laser cards that digitally distill your very existence (including intimate details like the scar below your navel) to a small strip of code.

Ostensibly, the card will help one pay for all the products or services one consumes right from milk to road tax and power bills, not to mention the new sari you must get your wife to celebrate the acquisition of the card.

It will also keep all your personal and official records and keep track of details such as what angle you like to push back your seat while driving the car. Of course, you'll also have to get a smart car fitted with a computer that can read the car and adjust the seat/temperature to your preference. But that's a small charge for such convenience.

The big price will be paid when a smart hacker gets his hands on your card or accesses it over the Internet. And is privy to everything you don't want anyone else to find out.

The business world has already woken up to the commercial spinoffs of hiring hackers to build databases that will give them demographic and individual consumption patterns.

So when that laser beam flashes across your card in the not too distant future, it could be your lifestyle and, indeed, your very life under someone's microscope.

Although this conjures up Orwellian nightmares, this is not to discourage worshippers of the God of Small Conveniences. For, developers are assiduously developing security measures to ward off the Evil Hacker. In fact, companies are hiring hackers to learn the tricks of the trade from them and then plug those holes.

But. As a white witch in the community of hackers recently said, "100 per cent security on the Net is not possible."Since that element of risk is always there, if you belong to the pack that juggles credit cards, leaving a trail of passwords in your wake on the information highway, you could be maximising the risk factor.

And although I understand that money as we know it today will soon go out of circulation, for now I will continue to pay for my chai at The Oberoi with the trusty 100-rupee note. This is one card game I am not about to play for some time.